hypersonic

Unlocked fin likely brought down X-51A in August crash

The U.S. Air Force said today that an experimental test in August of its hypersonic X-51A Waverider failed due to a fin inadvertently unlocking and sending the aircraft into a corkscrew that ended in a crash into the Pacific Ocean.

At the time, the Air Force said only that the August flight had ended with the crash, but didn't reveal what had been at fault. But in a conference call today, X-51A program manager Charlie Brink explained what he and his colleagues have learned over a couple of months of investigation.

The August flight was the third of … Read more

Futuristic X-51A fails in hypersonic bid

No one ever said it would be easy going Mach 6.

The U.S. Air Force's experimental X-51A Waverider failed yesterday in its bid to hit that hypersonic speed. Although the aircraft did separate as planned from its B-52 mother ship in midair, things quickly went wrong. Today's official Air Force statement, issued just minutes ago, describes things this way:

The X-51 safely separated from the B-52 and the rocket booster fired as planned. However after 16 seconds, a fault was identified with one of the cruiser control fins. Once the X-51 separated from the rocket booster, approximately … Read more

Hypersonic bomb: One-hour delivery?

The U.S. Army has successfully tested a hypersonic aircraft that can travel five times the speed of sound and reach anywhere on Earth in under an hour.

Described by the Pentagon as a "glide vehicle, designed to fly within the earth's atmosphere at hypersonic speed and long range," the Advanced Hypersonic Weapon (AHW) was launched aboard a rocket from the Pacific Missile Range Facility in Hawaii.

It hit a target at Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, some 2,300 miles away, in less than 30 minutes, according to Department of Defense and AP reports. … Read more

Unique take on Firefox

You know the gag where film credits list one guy as the producer, director, writer, star, publicist, music composer, and key grip? It came to mind while trying out Michael Hardy's HyperSonic Web Browser, a customized version of Firefox. The developer--Michael Hardy--says his browser proved five times faster than Firefox. It's fast, but as far as we can tell, the only real difference, other than frequent mentions of Michael Hardy, is that it's a bit less intuitive than the latest version of Firefox. However, it's highly customizable and, like Firefox, freeware.

Obviously, HyperSonic resembles Firefox and … Read more

X-51A races to hypersonic record

The X-51A Waverider flew today, and it flew fast.

The scramjet engine in the experimental aircraft burned for a little over three minutes at around 10 a.m. PDT Wednesday in a test range over the Pacific Ocean, pushing the X-51A to the hypersonic speed of Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound. That was the top speed reached by the aircraft in its brief flight, according to Boeing and press reports citing U.S. Air Force officials. (Editors' note: A separate Air Force News Service report had initially cited a higher speed, but was amended to give … Read more

New brief on DARPA's Vulcan engine

DARPA has released some tidbits of information in a briefing on how one might build a propulsion system that combines a Constant Volume Combustion (CVC) engine and a full-scale turbine engine to accelerate a hypersonic jet to multiple Mach.

It's called the Vulcan, and it's a demonstration program designed to power a full-scale reusable hypersonic cruise vehicle like the Falcon HTV-3X, and to do it by 2012. The key, according to the DARPA briefing, is to integrate a currently produced turbine engine like the F110-129 or the F119, with minimal modifications and a CVC (PDF).

The CVC, or &… Read more

Hypersonic cruiser is one step closer

Oh ye of little faith, behold: Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne has successfully tested a sub-scale combustor for a dual-mode ramjet engine that could power the DARPA-financed Falcon HTV-3X hypersonic cruiser to Mach 6 and beyond. Dual-mode because the engine can function both at subsonic speeds and then kick up to supersonic scramjet speeds (greater than Mach 5).

By contrast, one of the fastest conventional Air Force jets--the SR-71 Blackbird--does a tortoise-paced Mach 3.4.

The engine technology was developed for Lockheed Martin's Falcon Combined-Cycle Engine Technology (FaCET) program. The goal is to develop hypersonic technologies that would … Read more