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Science & Technology

Military conducts hypersonic jet test flight

By T.K. Randall
August 15, 2012 · Comment icon 21 comments

Image Credit: USAF
The Waverider jet project aims to fly the aircraft at a speed of 4,300mph, six times the speed of sound.
At that speed the plane would be able to travel from London to New York in the space of an hour, the Pentagon and NASA are hoping to use the technology in the development of faster missiles. In the future it is possible that passenger aircraft will also benefit from it by taking over from Concorde in the provision of super fast flights around the world.

"The business community who wanted to be in New York in three hours made Concorde highly viable, and now there's interest on both sides of the Atlantic to jump a generation and go from supersonic flight to hypersonic flight," said Peter Robbie of European aerospace and defence giant EADS.
The US military has conducted a test flight of its hypersonic jet Waverider, aiming to reach Mach 6 (4,300mph; 6,900km/h) above the Pacific Ocean.


Source: BBC News | Comments (21)




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Recent comments on this story
Comment icon #12 Posted by highdesert50 12 years ago
Disappointing to see two billion dollars and ten years of research fail.
Comment icon #13 Posted by DHopper 12 years ago
It took roughly a year for the latest mars rover to get to its destination. I wonder what the difference would be had they used this type of propulsion or if it would even work in space
Comment icon #14 Posted by King Fluffs 12 years ago
Interesting. I saw some very fast (blink and you miss it) jets in Whales th e other day.
Comment icon #15 Posted by Kludge808 12 years ago
they make it public to prevent idiots from saying tat they saw UFOs Heh, a lesson learned from the YF-12, SR-71, F-117 et al. If possible, publicize.
Comment icon #16 Posted by ColoradoParanormal 12 years ago
Something does not smell right here. Since when does the military publicly announce they are testing a new aircraft or a new whatever for that matter? History tells us they test these things in secret and only years or decades later do we actually learn about them. This scramjet tech has been talked about for a very long time, I don't believe this is the very first test of it. The military guards its secrets, so whatever is happening here is something other than what we are lead to believe. Here's the deal with the Government. If we're being told about these tests, or that they are "looking" i... [More]
Comment icon #17 Posted by Timonthy 12 years ago
Didn't it crash into the ocean?
Comment icon #18 Posted by Kludge808 12 years ago
Didn't it crash into the ocean? Yep. That was #2 to go into the briny deep. There's only one left and the Air Force isn't sure it wants to commit it to flight quite yet. Can't imagine why.
Comment icon #19 Posted by Render 12 years ago
ah damn it; another fail too bad
Comment icon #20 Posted by Arcturus17 12 years ago
If they used this type of propulsion for Mars space travel, it would take us much much longer to get there. This little jet only acheived Mach 5, where as, out in space these rockets travel 37,000 MPH (Mach 48)!! We got to mars in just under 9 months. This jet would have to travel at a substaining speed of Mach 5 for 56 months before it would reach Mars (almost 5 years)!
Comment icon #21 Posted by Arcturus17 12 years ago
Helios 2 Space Probe - Fastest man made object in the world with a Top Speed of 150,000 MPH ( Mach 195 ) If we took this kind of propulsion, we would reach mars just over 1 month. Almost a month and a half. Reason it was so dang fast was because it went to study the Sun, and the suns gravitational pull yanked it right in! Now that is FAST! Instead of it taking us 9 years to get to Pluto, we could be there in just 2.7 years


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