OT - Air Force X-51A goes Mach 5
...and travels 170 miles in 3 minutes and 30 seconds. Wow.
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/x-51a-scramjet-sets-hypersonic-…
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/05/27/air-force-hypersonic-jet-wave…
Thats from where I'm at (Temperance, MI) to the suburbs of Columbus, OH in 3:30. Wow.
They keep one-upping gillettes razors.
I'm going to use this as a pickup line next time I'm at the discotheque. Success is virtually guaranteed!
Where I come from, that's pretty damn fast.
So does Michigan. His name is Denard.
Both the X-43 and X-51 are testbeds for "scramjet" (Supersonic Combustion Ramjet) technology. The difference between the X-43 and X-51is that the X-51 was designed to test a scramjet with a relatively long burn time (up to 300 seconds, if it works out). The X-43, which was primarily a test to see if they could get a scramjet to fly at all, had a maximum 12 second burn time.
But a SCRAMjet has relatively few moving parts, correct? There is no turbine or anything else. It's merely the air pressure created by the forward motion of the craft that causes the air to compact and pressurize in the combustion chamber, right?
That's right, there's basically nothing that moves other than the fuel itself. That's why they need a booster rocket to get them moving fast enough to ignite. A ramjet operates under the same principle. This difference is that, in a ramjet, shock waves in the inlet slow the airflow down to subsonic velocities in the combustion chamber. In a scramjet, the airflow is still supersonic in the combustion chamber. It is extremely difficult to keep a flame burning at supersonic speeds, which is why these things are still in a very experimental stage.
So does MSU, it's called parole.
X-51A fly over for the 2011 ND night game.
Book it.
Unless you want 220,000 bleeding ears from the sonic boom destroying ear drums, probably not.
Actually, I know of some Air Force guys who are Michigan grads who've formally asked to fly over Predator and Reaper drones for the ND night game... paperwork is in progress.
Not really sure how cool this would be, as far as I know these drones are extremely quiet and would be very difficult to see at dusk (I think you were trying at sarcasm).
They're not ultra quiet, but you probably wouldn't hear them over 100k+ fans.
As awesome as UAVs can be... surely we have a F-22 or B-1B pilot who's a Michigan grad by now. That would be awesome.
A 14 foot long, angular, "shark-shaped" craft with no wings to speak of traveling Mach 5... Yeah, that's not going to prompt dozens of calls to local TV stations about aliens every time it flies.
I believe this just proves that the Air Force really gets off on messing with the foil hat crowd.
Yeah, except this will never, ever be tested anywhere close to populated areas. The risk of something going wrong and the aircraft veering off course into an elementary school means that all of these will be tested in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
That would seriously cut down on my travelling time on football Saturday's...
The company I work for is also on the super/hypersonic bandwagon, having also just launched a craft that flew 110 miles at mach 3.3 and executed a dive. Their whole purpose is to serve as target vehicles for the military out over the Pacific. Exciting stuff - hopefully it finds its way into commercial air transportation sometime in our lifetimes!
Orbital's Pegasus also served as the booster rocket for the Mach 10 X-43 several years back.
Where do you work for Orbital? I'm at LSG in Chandler.
I work OCO2 for SSG in Dulles. Been here for just over 5 years and love the company. Did you graduate in Aero? Which year? I was 04 and 05 (MSE).
Because a picture is worth a thousand words per meter per second, squared.