Hypersonic aircraft that flies at 20 times

[Still Waters]

An experimental unmanned aircraft that can go 20 times the speed of sound is to undergo a crucial test flight today.

The Falcon HTV-2 will be launched on a rocket into space then will glide back down to Earth at speeds of 13,000 miles per hour.

The previous test flight lasted only nine minutes before being deliberately crashed as a safety measure due to technical difficulties.

Today’s missions, should it succeed, could set new records in sub-orbital space travel and could pave the way for a generation of super weapons.

The rocket carrying the Falcon will take off between 7am and 1pm Pacific Standard Time from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California aboard an Air Force Minotaur IV rocket, which is a decommissioned ballistic missile

The Falcon will then separate off and come back down at colossal speeds - it would take less than 12 minutes to fly from New York to Los Angeles, a journey which takes a normal jet more than five hours.

Read more...

[chainsawcam]

AWESOME - is this one of the UFOs I've seen???

[philbo]

Erm..lots will now be jumping on that bandwagon.

Secret military project explains some UFO sites.

Well lets apply some common sense here..by reading the first sentence...test flight !

Now they will no doubt be the uninformed crying that they have been testing this aircraft for over a decade blah blah....Why do you think they would tell you now?

The reality of course is its made now and they are to test it...if they had already done so then they would be no need to test it would they ? let alone tell us they are about to test it.

[NotoriousNinja]

seriously? launch it into space then to it's destination? how much money would that cost?

[Terra 333]

20,000 children die every day due to starvation or very easily prevented disease. I hope these "BOZOS" at the $Punt-it-Gone$ can sleep at night. The military industrial complex has spent this country into the "Greatest Depression"...yet they continue as if nothing is wrong. Sick....

[Robert1]

20,000 children die every day due to starvation or very easily prevented disease. I hope these "BOZOS" at the $Punt-it-Gone$ can sleep at night. The military industrial complex has spent this country into the "Greatest Depression"...yet they continue as if nothing is wrong. Sick....

I agree. This project is just a horrible and unjustifiable waste of taxpayers money at this

point in time.

[Mr Supertypo]

Terra and Robert, scientific and tecnological project are always justificable. Because it has positive repercussion to us all. Even if u dont feel it right away.

[Khaleid]

Just for fun, I did a little calculation...

Assuming a standstill at takeoff and landing, and given the travel time of 12 minutes and top speed of 13,000mph, a hypothetical pilot would have to endure a constant force of a little under 2G for the entirety of the flight. That's the equivalent of the feeling you get when a car or motorcycle goes from 0 to 60mph in 1,86 seconds (the average male would weight 370lb while the average female would weigh 310lb for the entire flight).

[Grandpa Greenman]

20,000 children die every day due to starvation or very easily prevented disease. I hope these "BOZOS" at the $Punt-it-Gone$ can sleep at night. The military industrial complex has spent this country into the "Greatest Depression"...yet they continue as if nothing is wrong. Sick....

New and better ways to kill, that is all it is. How much of this c**p do we really need. I concur Terra.

[Von Bismarck]

There was no immediate information on how much of the mission's goals were achieved.

It was the second of two planned flights of a Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle-2. Contact was also lost during the first mission.

Contact lost with hypersonic glider after launch

[Mr Supertypo]

actually we need more of thise tecnological marbles...GO DARPA :-D

[Globerunner]

Range assets have lost telemetry with #HTV2. More to follow>

So they've lost a pretty expensive aircraft it seems.

Follow on twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/DARPA_News

[BeastieRunner]

Isn't this the one that is currently stuck and flying around and DARPA has no idea where it is right now?

[Verneph]

So it apparently crashed into the Pacific somewhere.

“Here’s what we know,” said Air Force Maj. Chris Schulz, DARPA HTV-2 program manager and PhD in aerospace engineering. “We know how to boost the aircraft to near space. We know how to insert the aircraft into atmospheric hypersonic flight. We do not yet know how to achieve the desired control during the aerodynamic phase of flight.

You know what would have helped? Not shaping your aircraft like a damned arrowhead. That's not exactly a design that has a good history with that aerodynamic control thing you seem to be missing. Functional planes have proper wings for a reason.

[ROGER]

So it apparently crashed into the Pacific somewhere.

You know what would have helped? Not shaping your aircraft like a damned arrowhead. That's not exactly a design that has a good history with that aerodynamic control thing you seem to be missing. Functional planes have proper wings for a reason.

I think at these speeds a conventional wing would shear right off.

Now a telemetry lose on two tests tells me the internal electronics did not hold up under the temperature and pressure. Pity it was not recovered for study.

[marcos anthony toledo]

They gave the X-30 Scram-Jet the ax so now the military gets the HTV-2 this just like with the military shuttle X-37 the military is the only one that gets the good stuff now NASA and civil aviation get the junk and we have to pay for this stuff it's not fair.

[Verneph]

I think at these speeds a conventional wing would shear right off.

I can understand that. The air-friction at those speeds would be tremendous. But without some kind of wing the aircraft is going to suffer some serious stability issues.

[Anotheryahoo]

320 MILLION down the drain............Im trying to think about all that money and what it could do for education,healthcare,etc and what do we get? another military missile but not a missile project. We need to stop building new weapons and start working on the future of mankind. Will this ever stop? will we ever grow up as a species? Endless war and endless weapons. Makes me sick that we are stuck in this endless cycle of fear and new weapons...fear and new weapons....fear and new weapons....anyone see a pattern here?

[DarkJedi]

The US government should sort their economy out before wasting billions building aircraft to spy on other nations. Why not put these DARPA scientists skills to better use and help find cures for diseases rather than silly projects at Area 51.

Edited August 12, 2011 by DarkJedi

[Indiogene]

Oh Lord, 13,000 MPH...very fast! Imagine to pilot the super-mach-speed jet. You can travel around the globe in about 2 hours...the circum/curvature (sp?)of our planet is about 20-25,000 miles in total diameter (from both ends, the poles or around from start or end in the prime meridian). Science is able to break another barrier and further cut down travel time around the world in a smaller number of time. The world gets smaller everyday, and someone start investing in the FHTV-2 project.

Edited August 12, 2011 by DeMikeDe

[maca02]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-14497641 OOPS Edited August 12, 2011 by maca02

[Still Waters]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-14497641 OOPS

I was just about to post that ^.

US military loses contact with hypersonic aircraft (link is in above post)

Not a very good start for them

[Robert1]

To think of all that money wasted when we could have used it on more important things such as Healthcare, education, and repairing our infrastructure.

[Verneph]

Oh Lord, 13,000 MPH...very fast! Imagine to pilot the super-mach-speed jet. You can travel around the globe in about 2 hours...the circum/curvature (sp?)of our planet is about 20-25,000 miles in total diameter (from both ends, the poles or around from start or end in the prime meridian). Science is able to break another barrier and further cut down travel time around the world in a smaller number of time. The world gets smaller everyday, and someone start investing in the FHTV-2 project.

I'm pretty sure the intention behind this project is to create a high-speed, fully functional unmanned aircraft. Even trained fighter pilots would be hard pressed to withstand the G's you'd get at those speeds. The pilot of this craft would be safely at a desk on the ground, flying the craft with a remote terminal (unless they want this thing to be robotic and fly itself, which opens up an entirely new area of issues).

[Grandpa Greenman]

320 MILLION Crashed and burned. How much more money will be spent on figuring out what went wrong. (I would have love to see that crash. It must have been spectacular.)