News NASA's X-43A to Attempt Mach 10 Flight Next Week

From PhysicsOrg:

The first flight attempt in June 2001 failed when the booster rocket went out of control and the “full stack”—the booster rocket and X-43A combination—was destroyed by ground controllers. The second attempt at Mach 7, in March 2004, was highly successful.

The final flight of NASA's X-43A hypersonic research aircraft is scheduled to occur on Monday afternoon, Nov. 15, weather permitting. The mission is intended to flight-validate the operation of the X-43A's supersonic-combustion ramjet - or scramjet - engine at a record airspeed of almost Mach 10, or 10 times the speed of sound. Mating of the X-43A and its modified Pegasus booster rocket to the B-52B launch aircraft is scheduled for Thursday, Nov. 11. Takeoff is tentatively scheduled for about 1 p.m. Pacific time Nov. 15, with launch about an hour later over the Pacific test range off the coast of Southern California.

As with the first two flights, the third X-43A will be carried aloft by NASA's B-52B launch aircraft from NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center on Edwards Air Force Base. The B-52B "mothership" will release the combined X-43A and Pegasus booster stack at 40,000 feet altitude off the coast of Southern California. The booster will then accelerate the experimental vehicle to nearly Mach 10, or almost 7,000 mph, at approximately 110,000 feet altitude. At booster burnout, the 2,800-pound, wedge-shaped X-43A will separate, and fly briefly on a preprogrammed path, performing a set of tasks and maneuvers before splashdown in the ocean.

Project officials consider this Mach 10 flight somewhat riskier than the Mach 6.8 flight last March, due to less wind tunnel comparison data being available as well as the thermal heating almost doubling on the vehicle. However, the risk is mitigated by the experience of having already flown a successful mission and that the upcoming flight will be flown over a large portion of the same trajectory as the last mission.

NASA made aviation history with the first successful flight of a scramjet-powered airplane at hypersonic speeds—speeds greater than Mach 5 or five times the speed of sound. Compared to a rocketpowered vehicle like the Space Shuttle, scramjet (supersonic combustion ramjet) powered vehicles promise more airplane-like operations for increased affordability, flexibility and safety for ultra highspeed flights within the atmosphere and into Earth
orbit.

A ramjet operates by subsonic combustion of fuel in a stream of air compressed by the forward speed of the aircraft itself, as opposed to a normal jet engine, in which the compressor section (the fan blades) compresses the air. Ramjets operate from about Mach 3 to Mach 6.

A scramjet (supersonic-combustion ramjet) is a ramjet engine in which the airflow through the whole engine remains supersonic. It is thought that a scramjet can operate from Mach 5-6 up to at least Mach 15.

The highest speed attained by a rocket-powered airplane, NASA’s X-15 aircraft, was Mach 6.7.

That's the whole thing, but the article is here


Mach 10!?!? Jesus Friggin Christmas!!

 

wow, firing any weapon at that thing would be pretty much poinless.

 

Unmanned I would feel confident to assume.

 

It is once it lands.

 

Would be one he!! of a ride though wouldn't it?


Damn,


E

 

now thats just pants wettingly fast

 

If it could sustain it, at a speed of mach 10 you could get round the world in 1.6 hours. Now just why exactly do you need to go that fast?

 

incase you left the oven on.

 

Sound like fun to ride but with this scramjet space travel closer as they acn get high up in the atmosphear at high speed they should be able to reach orbital veloctiy soon space colonys then war beetween the(the gundam senario). This just one step closer to a space plane like in the fifth element

 

the only problem is once you hit space it stops working

 

True, but just using it to attain orbit would save a lot on the expensive rocket fuel required for a space shuttle to be launched

You'd still need another means of propulsion, seeing as mach 10 is less than half of what you need to attain orbit (though I'm not sure what's required for low earth orbit, someone google it).

And just think the damage a concrete filled bunker bomb with a scramjet could do

 

Prety simple the americans would use it to conduct strikes on terrorist bases, for instance a intel stat picks up a terroist base in country x, within an hour it could be destroyed with no way to defend agasint waht would be a very fast and very stealthy aircraft.

Also having afleet of aircraft like that would mean the us could close its over seas air bases and just launch all strikes from its home turf

Nikumba

 

When you REALLY, REALLY need that new motherboard..

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LoL- how fast do heat seaking missiles travel? mach .... let me check.

apparently "up to" mach 4. Oh dear! You'd fire off a missile from the scramjet plane.... and watch it disappear into the rear! hehehehhe. Despite the smaller cross-sectional area of the missile, reducing the drag exponentially, I seriously doubt even a solid state rocket booster would be able to keep up with the supersonic engine speeds of the jet. What fun!


But how do they turn on the brakes?

 

you would never be able to launch a missile from a plane powered by a scramjet, it would disintegrate (sp?) at about mach 6, since at mach 4 they are probably reaching their structural limitations.

 

Just heard that this flight will be the last of its kind as kind Mr Bush has decided he'd rather go to the moon and to mars:
http://www.sundayherald.com/46057

But there are plans to use the technology on missiles. I don't know if that's a good thing or not...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1350964,00.html

 

actually if you fired a projectile(self propelled or not) it would start out going the same speed (+ whatever its getting from the craft) and it wouldnt really start to show lag until you got to the point where there is too much wind resistance for its propellant to keep it going at that speed.

however i think it will decintigrate long before it got out of the tube. they just dont have the structual integrity to hit that mark and live

 

Way to go! The yanks can definitely do the big stuff in style.

 

Why....did Bush leave his brain there or something? *sniggers*

 

Off that news link, love the americans mentality, if they knew Bin Laden was in a cafe, they would send a cruise missle at the target

doesn't matter about the coffee house owner
....the workers
....the people outside the coffee house
....other people in it for that matter


just as long as they get that one human being...nothing else matters

- M@

Oh and the point of they can't get a bomb on target when its travelling at its terminal velocity...or fired at mach 1-4, so they could control a mach 10 one , americans and the word 'prescision' dont go together