Anybody here read about NASA’s pland to build a unmanned hypersonic ramjet capable of flying at speeds over 5000 mph? When I first read this story I thought to myself, “Good Lord, 5000 mph? Thats well over triple the speed of a high powered rifle bullet” :eek: . In this news report, they were saying that if this thing prooves sucessful, it will lead to testing for other planes capable of flying even faster and will allow the US Military to launch this thing from within our own borders and strike any targer in the world within TWO HOURS. Man, I don’ tknow about you all, but reading about this really send a cold chill up my spine. Anyone else read about this?
You mean as opposed to an ICBM?
I wouldn’t be too surprised if the military doesn’t have this capability already, with aircraft carriers, cruise and ICBMs on subs, and what-not.
It seems this would be more of a cost savings thing than a readyness thing. It’s gotta cost less to house bombers on dry ground than on carriers.
We went over this a while back. Look here
It would be shocking indeed to learn that NASA is trying to build a jet bomber, since NASA is not a branch of the military. It is a civilian agency dedicated to the manned and unmanned exploration of space. NASA has never built a bomber, fighter, ICBM, or any such thing. Not even one of those guns that deploys a little orange flag saying “BANG”.
Now, NASA research in flight dynamics might certainly find its way into military aircraft, simply because engineers in the field tend to read the same journals. But those are still Defense Department projects, not NASA.
Modern ICBMs can hit any target in the world within one hour, and the reentry vehicle hits at a speed of 7,000 mph – and that’s after the atmosphere has slowed it down. The downside is that they’re really expensive and we are currently restricted by treaties from launching these without calling up all of the signatories to START (this prevents knee-jerk reactions to test launches resulting in war – it’s a Good Thing™ ).
The idea of a hypersonic strike bomber is nothing new. Strategically, this has been the “holy grail” of precision engagement since pretty much the beginning of rocketry. This article talks about how the concepts have been in various types of development since the 1950s:
When you look at the hypersonic work of the 50’s and 60’s, a lot of it was really very good, far in advance of its time. What was not advanced was the ability to develop the structures, materials, propulsion, guidance and controls to make operational vehicles based upon the research. We can contemplate vehicles today that are far more practical to develop than in the 1960’s, when much of the pioneering work was done.
Turns out that the development of the ICBM actually stalled a lot of the work on this because it was so much more efficient of a solution with the materials and processes available then. Our scientists went down that road, and are just now becoming re-interested in this “branch” of the tree.
That is a very misleading and sensationalized thread title and doesn’t belong in GQ in my opinion. This plane is in no way a bomber. It is an unmanned test plane designed to gather data and test theories.
There were three of these planes built. These planes are not designed to be landed. They are a one shot test. The first was launched about three years ago and failed. Let’s hope for better results this time around.
Here’s a link to the current story: X43 Update
Well to be fair there is an increase in interworking between NASA and the DoD in areas of mutual interest. Hypersonic flight definitely falls into that area. Honestly I thought the OP was referring to the proposed HCV