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:

• Masten Space Systems Xombie rocket (Easiest way to space)
• SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket (First astronaut-worthy private rocket in orbit)
• Boeing X-37B spaceplane (Most mysterious aircraft)
• Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne/Boeing X-51A Waverider (Fastest jet engine).

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.

The X-51 WaveRider is an unmanned aerial vehicle designed for extended hypersonic flight durations. The successful boost with the ATACMS rocket motor will allow for future advancements in hypersonic flight.

In this test, the modified ATACMS motor was air-launched from a B-52 aircraft at 50,000 feet, and data collected validates its performance well beyond the original design specifications. This was the first time an ATACMS rocket motor has been used as a booster for an air-launched vehicle. More tests using the ATACMS motor are planned.

The modified motor included a Boeing designed lightweight, high performance exit cone which was produced by Aerojet, a GenCorp [NYSE:GY] company, for Lockheed Martin. The program is managed by a Boeing and Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne team for the U.S. Air Force and DARPA.

“The ATACMS rocket motor has proved its power in combat, and now we’re happy to see it performing a mission that advances hypervelocity flight technology,” said Scott Arnold, vice president of Precision Fires at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control.

“We are proud to have played a part in this new milestone in hypersonic flight and to have been given the opportunity to demonstrate our ability to modify existing motor designs for future applications,” said John Myers, vice president of Tactical Programs for Aerojet.

Aerojet is a world-recognized aerospace and defense leader principally serving the missile and space propulsion, defense and armaments markets. GenCorp is a leading technology-based manufacturer of aerospace and defense products and systems with a real estate segment that includes activities related to the entitlement, sale, and leasing of the company’s excess real estate assets.

Headquartered in Bethesda, Md., Lockheed Martin is a global security company that employs about 136,000 people worldwide and is principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture, integration and sustainment of advanced technology systems, products and services. The Corporation’s 2009 sales from continuing operations were $44.5 billion.

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.

These two vehicles, along with a hypersonic missile that made its first test flight one month later, the X-51 WaveRider, have all been mentioned as means to carry out the “prompt global strike” concept, which calls for the U.S military to deliver a conventional warhead anywhere on the planet in significantly shorter time spans than are currently possible.

The X-37B’s top-secret payload has nonproliferation experts wondering if it is meant to deliver weapons. Air Force leaders won’t say how high up the experimental spacecraft is, how much it costs, or exactly how long it will loiter before returning to Earth. And it definitely won’t reveal what it is carrying in its bay.

Read the full story.

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.

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(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.

Air Force officials called the test, the first of four planned, an unqualified success. The flight is considered the first use of a practical hydrocarbon fueled scramjet in flight.

“We are ecstatic to have accomplished most of our test points on the X-51A’s very first hypersonic mission,” said Charlie Brink, a X-51A program manager with the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. “We equate this leap in engine technology as equivalent to the post-World War II jump from propeller-driven aircraft to jet engines.”

The X-51 launched at about 10 a.m. from here, carried under the left wing of an Air Force Flight Test Center B-52 Stratofortress. Then, flying at 50,000 feet over the Point Mugu Naval Air Warfare Center Sea Range, it was released. Four seconds later an Army Tactical Missile solid rocket booster accelerated the X-51 to about Mach 4.8 mach before it and a connecting interstage were jettisoned.
The launch and separation were normal, Mr. Brink said.

Four X-51A cruisers have been built for the Air Force and the (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) by industry partners Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne and Boeing.

Air Force officials intend to fly the three remaining X-51A flight test vehicles this fall, Mr. Brink said.
Air Force officials currently plan to fly each on virtually identical flight profiles, building knowledge from each successive flight.

Hypersonic flight, normally defined as beginning at Mach 5, five times speed of sound, presents unique technical challenges with heat and pressure, which make conventional turbine engines impractical. Program officials said producing thrust with a scramjet has been compared to lighting a match in a hurricane and keeping it burning.

“This first flight was the culmination of a six-year effort by a small, but very talented AFRL, DARPA and industry development team,” Mr. Brink said. “Now we will go back and really scrutinize our data. No test is perfect, and I’m sure we will find anomalies that we will need to address before the next flight. But anyone will tell you that we learn just as much, if not more, when we encounter a glitch.”

Mr. Brink noted while development of the X-51A’s engine and the test program are complex, controlling costs has been a key objective. The team has incorporated or adapted existing proven technologies and elected from the outset not to build recovery systems in the flight test vehicles, in an effort to control costs and focus funding on the vehicle’s fuel-cooled scramjet engine.

Mr. Brink said he believes the X-51A program will provide knowledge required to develop the game changing technologies needed for future access to space and hypersonic weapon applications.

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.

A U.S. Navy P-3 Orion aircraft supporting the test was safety scanning the Pacific Ocean test range for shipping traffic shortly after 9 a.m. Pacific time when its crew discovered a ship steaming in international waters underneath a block of restricted airspace located in the vicinity of the X-51A’s potential splashdown zone.

A B-52 Stratofortress from the Air Force Flight Test Center here was preparing to takeoff with the X-51A under its wing when the mission was scrubbed due to the ship’s presence.

Weather permitting, the X-51A will make its first hypersonic flight attempt May 26. Air Force officials will release additional information on the flight test later that day.

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.

As spectacular as space shuttle flights still are, they are also about the past. Scramjet propulsion is about the future. Unlike rocket engines, scramjets (supersonic combustion ramjets) are air-breathing engines that inhale oxygen from the atmosphere to achieve near rocket engine velocities and altitudes without carrying tons of oxidizer supplies.

Scramjets should eventually enable flights to hypersonic near-space velocities and altitudes, just like high performance jet engines propelled the Anglo-French Concorde to supersonic speeds in the upper atmosphere….

This air-breathing scramjet capability is expected by about 2025 to begin a revolution in U.S. space launch capability especially for rapid, aircraft-like launch of small, but critical U.S. military spacecraft.

Read the full story.

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.

Like an airliner’s jet engines, supersonic combustion ramjets – or scramjets – work by compressing air enough to ignite fuel which drives air out of the back of the engine to provide thrust. It is designed to work at hypersonic speeds – above about 5 times the speed of sound.

A handful of experimental scramjets have flown successfully, reaching speeds as high as Mach 10, but not for long. “No one has successfully flown a vehicle of this nature for more than a few seconds,” says Joe Vogel, X-51 programme manager at Boeing. “Our goal is about 300 seconds of powered flight.”

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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.

Orbital is slated to conduct a single demonstration flight of its Taurus 2 rocket and Cygnus cargo capsule next spring under NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program. The company would then fly eight cargo-delivery missions to the space station through 2015 under a separate $1.9 billion Commercial Resupply Services contract.

The additional test flight would loft an instrumented test payload rather than the Cygnus module, Thompson said. The test package “would better define the physical environment for the payload and prove out the rocket before we go all the way” to the space station, he added.

Although no firm plans will be made until the budget is approved, Orbital has evaluated how any COTS budget increase could be used to reduce program risk and accelerate program milestones.

Read the full story.

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.

The missile-shaped X-51 will be carried aloft under the wing of a B-52 bomber, Joe Vogel, Boeing’s director of hypersonics, said in a Feb. 22 interview. It will be released from the jet over the Pacific Ocean and drop for four seconds until its rocket motor ignites and accelerates it to about 5,800 kilometers per hour, just shy of the widely accepted start of hypersonic flight at Mach 5, or about 6,100 kilometers per hour. At that point, its air-breathing scramjet — or supersonic combustion ramjet — engine, built by Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne of Canoga Park, Calif., will kick in, shooting the craft to Mach 6, or more than 7,400 kilometers per hour.

Grand plans for hypersonic vehicles have been around for decades, but their goals were often unrealistic and not matched by budgets, resulting in failure. The approach on X-51 has been to demonstrate the technologies that could one day enable things like single-stage-to-orbit vehicles.

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X-51 Waverider

PRATT & WHITNEY ROCKETDYNE PRESS RELEASE

The U.S. Air Force X-51A WaveRider vehicle yesterday successfully made its first captive carry flight under the wing of a B-52 carry aircraft at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. The X-51A is powered by Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, a United Technologies Corp. (NYSE: UTX) company.

The X-51A is expected to demonstrate hypersonic flight up to six times the speed of sound in test flights beginning early next year. The X-51A program is a collaborative effort of the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), The Boeing Company and Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne.

A captive carry flight, in which a test vehicle is attached to and carried by another aircraft, is a common approach for testing a new type of aircraft before it flies on its own.

“The successful captive carry flight keeps the X-51A team on track for a major breakthrough in propulsion technology and the realization of scramjet powered flight,” said George Thum, X-51A program manager, Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne.

“This was a great day for the program,” said Charlie Brink, X-51A program manager, Air Force Research Laboratory. “The early look is we successfully captured all of our test points without any anomalies. I’m really proud of the AFRL, Air Force Flight Test Center and the Boeing/Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne teams’ efforts to move us toward the big event.”

During test flight, the B-52 took off heading north, climbed to 50,000 feet and performed gentle maneuvering.

Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, Inc., a part of Pratt & Whitney, is a preferred provider of high-value propulsion, power, energy and innovative system solutions used in a wide variety of government and commercial applications, including the main engines for the space shuttle, Atlas and Delta launch vehicles, missile defense systems and advanced hypersonic engines.

Pratt & Whitney is a world leader in the design, manufacture and service of aircraft engines, space propulsion systems and industrial gas turbines. United Technologies, based in Hartford, Conn., is a diversified company providing high technology products and services to the global aerospace and commercial building industries.

X-51 Waverider

Air Force’s X-51 WaveRider close to first flight
AviationDayton

The first “captive carry” flight of the Air Force’s revolutionary X-51 WaveRider is scheduled for Wednesday, Dec. 9, in California, a spokesman said today.

It will be a major step towards an eventual free flight of the experimental craft early next year and an attempt at an engineering first – reaching six times the speed of sound on the power of an air-breathing engine burning jet fuel. If achieved, it could open the door to a new class of high-speed weapons and quick-response, airplane-like space lifters.

Weather permitting on Dec. 9, a B-52 carrier jet will fly from Edwards Air Force Base with the unmanned craft snugged under a wing, Derek Kaufman, a spokesman for the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson, told AviationDayton.com.

Following successful captive carry, the next X-51 flight is expected in mid-January, said Charlie Brink, X-51 program manager for AFRL’s Propulsion Directorate at Wright-Patterson. Telemetry support and systems will be evaluated, but the X-51 will not be released from the B-52 and its engines will not ignite.  It will be a “full dress rehearsal” for its first hypersonic test flight, now planned for mid-February, Brink said.

Read the full story.

X-51 Waverider

Mach 6 test aircraft set for trials: X-51A WaveRider could change aircraft design
Network World

The aspiration that jets may some day fly at over six-times the speed of sound took a very real step toward reality recently as the US Air Force said it successfully married the test aircraft, known as the X-51A WaveRider to a B-52 in preparation for a Dec. 2 flight test.


The X-51A flight tests are intended to demonstrate that the engines can achieve their desired speed without disintegrating. While the X-51 looks like a large rocket now, its applications that could change the way aircraft or spaceships are designed, fly into space, support reconnaissance missions and handle long-distance flight operations.

At the heart of the test is the aircraft’s air-breathing hypersonic scramjet system.

During the test, the B-52 will carry the X-51A to 50,000 feet over the Pacific Ocean and release it. A solid rocket booster on the X-51 will then ignite and accelerate the X-51 to about Mach 4.5. Then the fun starts. That’s because after that, the supersonic combustion scramjet will blast the vehicle for five minutes to more than Mach 6. The longest-ever previous scramjet test, lasted only about 10 seconds, the Air Force stated.

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X-51 Waverider

PRATT & WHITNEY PRESS RELEASE

Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne’s scramjet engine SJY61-2 has been installed in the second X-51A flight test vehicle at Boeing Phantom Works in Palmdale, Calif. This is the second of four engines that will be used in flight testing of the X-51A scheduled to begin later this year. The X-51A is expected to exceed Mach 6 and set the foundation for several hypersonic applications. Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne is a unit of United Technologies Corp. (NYSE: UTX).

The X-51A SED-WR program is a collaborative effort of the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), The Boeing Company and Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne. The X-51A flight tests are intended to demonstrate extended-duration, hydrocarbon-fueled hypersonic flight. Potential applications for this technology include access-to-space, reconnaissance-strike and global reach.

“We look forward to final assembly of the second flight test vehicle and the continuing progress toward a successful flight test program that will show that hypersonic flight is practical,” stated George Thum, X-51A program manager, Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne.

Following final assembly and evaluation, X-51A Flight Test Vehicle 2 will be moved to Edwards Air Force Base, Mojave, Calif., where flight testing will take place.

During flight demonstrations, the X-51A will be dropped from a B-52, and a solid rocket ATACMS booster will accelerate the X-51A to approximately Mach 4.5 where the scramjet engine will take-over and power the vehicle to a flight speed of Mach 6 or more. The flight is predicted to occur over several minutes. There are four test flights planned for the X-51A demonstration program.

Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, Inc., a part of Pratt & Whitney, is a preferred provider of high-value propulsion, power, energy and innovative system solutions used in a wide variety of government and commercial applications, including the main engines for the space shuttle, Atlas and Delta launch vehicles, missile defense systems and advanced hypersonic engines.

Pratt & Whitney is a world leader in the design, manufacture and service of aircraft engines, space propulsion systems and industrial gas turbines. United Technologies, based in Hartford, Conn., is a diversified company providing high technology products and services to the global aerospace and commercial building industries.

On the flightline of Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., Staff Sgt. Jonathan Young prepares to upload the X-51A WaveRider hypersonic flight test vehicle to a B-52 Stratofortress July 17 for fit testing. Two B-52 test flights are planned this fall prior to the X-51's first hypersonic scramjet flight over the Pacific Ocean scheduled in December. Representatives from the Air Force Research Laboratory, DARPA, Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne and Boeing are partnering on the X-51A technology demonstrator program.

 

AIR FORCE PRESS RELEASE

Airmen successfully mated the X-51A WaveRider flight test vehicle to a B-52 Stratofortress July 17 at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. The fit check followed integration earlier in the month of the Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne scramjet propulsion system into the X-51 at Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, Calif.

The X-51 test vehicle is now back at the Boeing facility in Palmdale where additional systems integration and testing are taking place in preparation for its inaugural flight test in December, said Charlie Brink, X-51 program manager from the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Propulsion Directorate here.

During the flight test, currently planned Dec. 2, the Air Force Flight Test Center’s B-52 will carry the X-51A to 50,000 feet over the Pacific Ocean then release it. A solid rocket booster from an Army tactical missile system then will ignite and accelerate the X-51 to about Mach 4.5. Then, the supersonic combustion ramjet propulsion system will propel the vehicle for five minutes to more than Mach 6. Hypersonic combustion generates intense heat so routing of the engine’s own JP-7 fuel will help keep the engine at the desired operating temperature.

Engineers expect a great deal will be learned about hypersonic flight during the nearly 300 seconds under scramjet power. The longest-ever previous scramjet test, lasted only about 10 seconds, Brink said. As the engine ignites it will initially burn a mix of ethylene and JP-7 before switching exclusively to JP-7 fuel.

“The heart of this aircraft is its engine,” Mr. Brink said. “We’re really breaking new ground in our understanding of hypersonic propulsion, but our four planned test flights will also enhance our knowledge of airframe-engine integration, high-temperature materials and other technologies. Together they will help us bridge air and space.”

Data from the flight will be telemetered back to Edwards before the X-51A test vehicle plunges into the Pacific.

Two B-52 flights, one captive carriage and one dress rehearsal, are planned this fall prior to the X-51′s first powered flight scheduled in December, Mr. Brink said.

The X-51A WaveRider program is a joint effort by representatives from the Air Force, DARPA, Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne and Boeing.