Space Tourism … and Much More
X-51 Waverider
Popular Science‘s “Best of What’s New 2010″ list includes four projects that we have been closely following here at Parabolic Arc:
Congratulations to all the winners!
X-51 Waverider
LOCKHEED MARTIN PRESS RELEASE
Lockheed Martin announced today that its Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) rocket motor successfully boosted the experimental X-51A WaveRider beyond Mach 4.5, the speed at which a scramjet will start and begin to provide thrust. The successful boost helped the X-51 hypersonic scramjet engine to accelerate to a historic Mach 5, a first for the vehicle.
Continue reading ‘Lockheed Rocket Motor Helped X-51 Hit Mach 5′
Spate of Hypersonic Vehicle Tests Fuels Global Strike Debate
National Defense Magazine
The military’s reusable space plane, the X-37B, and its classified payload lifted off in April only one day after the maiden flight of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Hypersonic Technology Vehicle-2 suborbital glider. It flew nine minutes before operators lost its signal and were forced to abort the mission.
Continue reading ‘Debate Over U.S. Military’s Hypersonic First-Strike Technology’
X-51A Waverider
Air Force Sees Hypersonic Weapons and Spaceships in Future
Space.com
A recent United States Air Force scramjet test has hinted at a future where hypersonic vehicles streak through the sky at many times the speed of sound around the world, and perhaps even open up access to space.
The experimental X-51A Waverider used a rocket booster and an air-breathing scramjet to reach a speed of Mach 5 and achieve the longest hypersonic flight ever powered by such an engine on May 26. That technology might not only deliver cargo quickly to different parts of the globe, but could also transform the space industry and spawn true space planes that take off and land from the same runway.
The wealth of possibilities offered by aerospace vehicles that can ride their own shockwaves likely explains why the project has drawn support from the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA), NASA, and the U.S. Navy.
“We could have in the future such things as hypersonic weapons that fly 600 nautical miles in 10 minutes,” said Charlie Brink, X-51A program manager with the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, during a June 1 teleconference.
Read the full story.
(AFNS) An X-51A Waverider flight-test vehicle successfully made the longest supersonic combustion ramjet-powered hypersonic flight May 26 off the southern California Pacific coast.
The more than 200 second burn by the X-51’s Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne-built air breathing scramjet engine accelerated the vehicle to Mach 6. The previous longest scramjet burn in a flight test was 12 seconds in a NASA X-43.
Continue reading ‘Video: X-51A Waverider Goes Hypersonic Over the Pacific’
X-51 Waverider
(AFNS) The scheduled May 25 launch of the X-51A Waverider hypersonic flight test vehicle has been postponed 24 hours. The delay was due to the presence of a freighter transiting in a section of the Point Mugu Naval Air Warfare Center Sea Range several hundred miles off the California coast.
Continue reading ‘X-51A Waverider Hypersonic Flight Delayed’
X-51 Waverider
Over at Spaceflight Now, Craig Covault has a detailed story about the military’s X-51 hypersonic vehicle, which is set to take its first test flight next week. The test is a precursor to what officials hope will be an entirely new way to send payloads into space:
The first hypersonic X-51 scramjet powered long-duration flights to give the Pentagon a new “Prompt Global Strike” capability that ties atmospheric and space propulsion will begin as early as May 25 at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. The X-vehicle scramjet flight tests are also a key step for the use of air breathing propulsion to launch into space.
Continue reading ‘U.S. Military Sees X-51 as the Wave(rider) of the Future’
X-51 Waverider
Scramjet with stamina ready for hypersonic test
NewScientist
In the last week of May, thousands of square miles of airspace above the Pacific Ocean will be cleared to make way for a skinny, shark-nosed aircraft called the X-51.
The 4-metre-long prototype will drop from beneath the wing of a bomber and attempt to become the first scramjet to punch through the atmosphere at hypersonic speeds for minutes, not seconds.
Continue reading ‘X-51A Hypersonic Vehicle Set for Flights at End of May’
Orbital Would Use COTS Boost To Augment Taurus 2 Testing
Space News
If Congress approves NASA’s plan to add $300 million to its 2011 budget to develop commercial cargo delivery systems for the international space station, Orbital Sciences Corp. likely would use its share of the funding to augment ground testing of its planned medium-lift Taurus 2 rocket and possibly conduct an additional test flight of the vehicle, according to David W. Thompson, Orbital’s chairman and chief executive.
Continue reading ‘Orbital Would Put Additional COTS Funding Toward Testing, Extra Test Flight’
X-51 Waverider
U.S. Air Force Set To Begin X-51 Hypersonic Flight Tests
Space News
The maiden flight of the X-51 Waverider aircraft — the first U.S. hypersonic vehicle to fly in six years — is scheduled to take place later in March. Boeing Defense, Space & Security Systems of St. Louis has been developing the aircraft since 2003 on behalf of the Air Force Research Laboratory and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Continue reading ‘Air Force to Fly Hypersonic X-51 Waverider Vehicle in March’
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