Contact lost with hypersonic glider after launch

This thing is freaking fast XD well i think so anyway
Tell me what you think of it i thought i might as well post this rather interesting story
news.yahoo.com...

Its weird that it plunged into the ocean

reply to post by Sorayugiman

Scratch another few billion to the fish. Another headline today has bold print about how we've totally shut down the entire U.S. Stealth Aircraft fleet. Every plane, in every class for one reason or another. The U.S. currently has 0 airframes capable of flight in the Stealth arsenal.

www.wired.com...

I hope there weren't any enemy nations actually working to find this out. I'd hate to think anyone spent good money on something as useless as an intelligence agency when the U.S. Government just publicly announces anything which may have been of strategic or tactical interest to any enemy in the world. Thanks Uncle....the world really needed to know we're crippled at the moment.

reply to post by Sorayugiman


Now we know where the USO started from. A long tested, man made object, that can fly & submerge into the water. Still believe in Alien life but it's quite possible that these types of stories were created to protect our top secret inventions.

Cool, I get to reuse my jokes in the other thread about this.

Originally posted by Sorayugiman
Its weird that it plunged into the ocean

That's what it was designed to do:

The HTV-2 is designed to be launched to the edge of space, separate from its booster and maneuver through the atmosphere at 13,000 mph before intentionally crashing into the ocean.

It's an unmanned glider, they have to target it at the ocean for safety reasons. It's not designed to land, it's really more of a very unusual new missile design.

It's interesting that this and the one that preceded it both lost contact. I wonder if that's a factor due to its flying so fast (flies up to mach 20!)

Yep, the second test failed also. I think they are blaming it on the self destruct mechanism. The first one self destructed rather to quick. But didn't they have problems testing out the X51 waverider to just the other day? Both projects are suppose to reach double digit Mach speeds. Maybe they'll get them down pat soon enough. Seems like this is our last line of defense. Every other country is coming up with stuff to equal or better what we have now. Hopefully we'll get this worked out soon enough.

Originally posted by Wrabbit2000
reply to post by Sorayugiman

 

Scratch another few billion to the fish. Another headline today has bold print about how we've totally shut down the entire U.S. Stealth Aircraft fleet. Every plane, in every class for one reason or another. The U.S. currently has 0 airframes capable of flight in the Stealth arsenal.

www.wired.com...

I hope there weren't any enemy nations actually working to find this out. I'd hate to think anyone spent good money on something as useless as an intelligence agency when the U.S. Government just publicly announces anything which may have been of strategic or tactical interest to any enemy in the world. Thanks Uncle....the world really needed to know we're crippled at the moment.

Complete BS on their part..I have personally seen with friends the stealths running traing flights recently at night at Travis AFB..They really are amazing to watch at night and I can totally see them being mistaken for ufos

It occurs to me that the US is better at keeping secrets than this? I mean, this is a pretty good cover story for something else.

They've likely had these things since the 60's and are only now bringing them out with "we're not quite there yet but" stories. Ludicrous I know. I need an ATS break! lmao!

Originally posted by Wrabbit2000
reply to post by Sorayugiman

 

Scratch another few billion to the fish. Another headline today has bold print about how we've totally shut down the entire U.S. Stealth Aircraft fleet. Every plane, in every class for one reason or another. The U.S. currently has 0 airframes capable of flight in the Stealth arsenal.

www.wired.com...

I hope there weren't any enemy nations actually working to find this out. I'd hate to think anyone spent good money on something as useless as an intelligence agency when the U.S. Government just publicly announces anything which may have been of strategic or tactical interest to any enemy in the world. Thanks Uncle....the world really needed to know we're crippled at the moment.

do you honestly think u.s intelligence would release ANY information that would make them vulnerable..

there is another reason for this..

This just seems plain suspious because they just told us they had it and now its "lost" no details on it so they of course are not telling us anything big surprise

Originally posted by SavedOne

Originally posted by Sorayugiman
Its weird that it plunged into the ocean

It's interesting that this and the one that preceded it both lost contact. I wonder if that's a factor due to its flying so fast (flies up to mach 20!)

Speed is somewhat of a factor, it makes things happen very quickly. As the primary tracker on the two successful X-43 Hyper-X flights, the final two, it is a matter of overkill when the op planners assign too many trackers to the operation as an attempt to get the best coverage, but they end up interfering with each other and can knock a locked-on track off its target. I used a very unconventional approach to maintaining track on the X-43, a method I never consider using on a conventional op, and it worked, twice.

I briefed our boss on the method I used, which possibly could have compromised track data if the computers could not adequately compensate for and calculate accurately my "skips" but it allowed us to maintain track throughout the flight. Telemetry trackers have to also track the vehicle but will "slave" to the metric tracker to maintain the lock-on. I'm not sure how well flight analysis could decipher my tracker's data but our flights were considered successful.

My recommendation was to allocate fewer trackers to the item and designate those that are geographically located that would have no crossovers to cause interference. Of course a mere technician such as myself can tell nothing to the engineers and the other "experts" coordinating the operations. They will go with "the more, the better" philosophy which no doubt has doomed these tests for the same reasons.

When such a test vehicle loses track lock-on and can't recover it is then considered lost and command-destruct is used to keep it from being a potential danger. I've been retired 5 years this month so have even less input than before, and no hands-on. I am amused and annoyed they are still having the problem and likely still using the track configuration I warned about.

Part of me thinks this is how it works:

1) Publicly announce research into groundbreaking technology
2) Test said technology
3) When tests succeed, tell everyone that it failed.
4) Pretend project is scraped
5) Send successful technology into black budget to weaponize it

Wash, rinse, repeat.

Darpa got serious about ground testing after the April misfire, with month after month of trials. A scale model of the HTV-2 was covered with a temperature-sensitive paint that glowed brighter, the hotter it got. It was brought to the Air Force’s hypersonic wind tunnel, near Silver Spring, Maryland, for trials. What engineers discovered was that the HTV-2 had a problem stabilizing itself in flight. When it tried to correct its yaw, it went into a roll. That triggered the HTV-2’s malfunction in April, 2010, leading to “a self-destruct sequence that sent the missile tumbling like a football into the ocean,” as Danger Room co-founder Sharon Weinberger puts it.

Fortunately for Darpa, those problems appear to be correctable on the vehicle they’ve got. “For its second test flight, engineers adjusted the vehicle’s center of gravity, decreased the angle of attack flown, and will use the onboard reaction control system to augment the vehicle flaps to maintain stability during flight operations,” the agency notes in a statement. The stakes are huge for the upcoming flight. Darpa has no plans to build a third vehicle. And, unless this test goes well, it’s unlikely that the Air Force or any other branch of the military will pick up on the agency’s work.

source

reply to post by iforget


Similar to the article I found also.

What happened to HTV-2? An independent Engineering Review Board (ERB) says the problem was more yaw than expected, which turned into a roll that was too fast for the autonomous flight control system to handle. The programmed response to that was “flight termination” via a forced roll and pitchover directly into the ocean, which is what happened 9 minutes into the 30 minute flight.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that DARPA got data from the flight covering aerothermal, aerodynamic, thermal protection, navigation, guidance and control; and now knows that the flight termination system works. DARPA TTO Director David Neyland thinks HTV needs tweaks rather than a full redesign, and wants to repeat the test in late 2011, after adjusting the vehicle’s center of gravity, decreasing its angle of attack (nose-up angle), and augmenting the flaps with the onboard reaction control system.

One has to understand these tests are over twice the speed of the X-series flown, namely the X-51. These tiny unmanned testbeds are just that, testing the limits set higher and higher than previously ever achieved. Makes one think, or at least me, the role man has in bringing the Space Shuttle through the atmosphere from MACH 25. However these are supposed to be powered flights, and unlike the successfully demonstrated X-37 gliding through reentry must be a simpler cookie to bake. In fact the X-37 is still in orbit as we speak, since March I believe.

Maybe it went back in time, superman-style.

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