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from the Los-Angeles-to-Boston-in-less-than-an-hour dept.
In May of 2013, the Air Force successfully tested the X-51 WaveRider — an uncrewed, hypersonic "scramjet" capable of reaching Mach 5.1, or more than five times the speed of sound — by flying it at hypersonic speeds over the Pacific Ocean. Now, the Air Force is looking ahead to its next aircraft.
Air Force Chief Scientist Mica Endsley told Military.com this week that the agency is working on the next generation of its hypersonic vehicle. While the X-51 was a test designed to show that a scramjet craft was feasible, the Air Force now wants a vehicle that can "operate at the kind of temperatures you have when you are going at hypersonic speeds," and plans on building a guidance system that can also work at extreme speeds. The goal is to produce the new craft by 2023.
That is, of course, a long while away, and the US military has had some trouble with hypersonic defense technology. The X-51 was only successful after a string of high-profile failures, and last year, a hypersonic missile being tested by Department of Defense exploded during takeoff.
http://www.theverge.com/2015/6/2/8708255/x-51-waverider-mach-5-2023
Original Submission
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2015, @11:30AM
They want to do it "themselves" now. Until the 60's, the work was being done by kidnapped German Nazi (OMG!!!!) scientists. Then those kidnapped scientists retired, and the U.S space race halted. Its been quite a while since then and they want to repeat the work done in the 60's. And why would they do it? Because they want to do it themselves instead of watching someone else do it.
Its similar to what a kid intern would do at a coding job. First he watches a real programmer do the coding. Then he is given the code and he is able to compile it. He brags about it. Then he changes something and it stops compiling and he can't understand what went wrong. Then much later he writes a 'hello world' program and feels so happy and fulfilled, he tells everyone. Then much later he writes a program copying large parts from the "real programmer's" code calling it his own. Now its time to really brag.
Pathetic.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2015, @06:59PM
With all the trillions the US military has been spending I would have expected flying saucer tech or warp drives or antigrav (there seems to be tiny progress on this - but not via the military...) or better.