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Re: US military to launch fastest-ever plane
By the time you finish reading this sentence, the Falcon HTV-2, the fastest plane ever built, could have flown 18 miles. It would get from London to Sydney in less than an hour, while withstanding temperatures of almost 2,000C, hotter than the melting point of steel.
At 3pm BST on Thursday , the US Defence Advance Research Projects Agency will launch the Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 on the back of a rocket from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. If all goes to plan, engineers will launch the Falcon HTV-2 to the edge of space, before detaching the plane and guiding it on a hypersonic flight that will reach speeds of 13,000mph (about 20 times the speed of sound) on its return to Earth.
The Falcon started life in 2003, part of a US military research project to build a plane that could reach (and potentially deliver bombs to) any part of the world in less than an hour.
The plane has been tested in computer models and wind tunnels, but they can only simulate speeds up to Mach 15 (11,400mph). A real test is the only way to determine if the plane will remain flying at high speeds.
Thursday's flight will also test the carbon composite materials designed to withstand the extreme temperatures the plane will experience on its skin and also the navigation systems that will control its trajectory as it moves at almost four miles per second.
The design and flight pattern of the plane has been tweaked since an aborted test flight in April last year. Nine minutes into that mission, which succeeded in flying for 139 seconds at Mach 22 (16,700mph), the onboard computer detected an anomaly and ordered the plane to ditch into the ocean for safety reasons.
Unlike most other rocket launches, this one will not be shown live online, though it will be possible to follow the plane's progress via tweets from @DARPA_News.
Re: US military to launch fastest-ever plane
Yeah just read about that as well. Bummer.
The US military has lost contact with an experimental hypersonic plane after it was launched yesterday on only its second test flight.
The unmanned Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle [HTV2], designed as a global bomber prototype, is capable of travelling at 20 times the speed of sound and was launched successfully from Vandenberg Air Force base in California aboard a Minotaur IV rocket.
But after the plane separated from the rocket in the upper reaches of the atmosphere for its "glide" phase, contact was lost, according to the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency [DARPA].
"Range assets have lost telemetry with HTV2," DARPA wrote in a Twitter post after the launch.
The agency provided no other details about the flight or how long it had been separated from the rocket.
Last year, scientists lost contact with the HTV2 after nine minutes in its inaugural flight.
The hypersonic plane, which is supposed to travel at Mach 20 (21,000 kilometres per hour), could potentially provide the US military with a platform for striking targets anywhere on the planet within minutes using conventional weapons.
The weapon which is still in development, is part of what the US Air Force has dubbed "prompt global strike" capability.
"The ultimate goal is a capability that can reach anywhere in the world in less than an hour," DARPA said on its website.
In theory, the Falcon could travel between New York City and Los Angeles, a distance of 4,500 kilometres, in less than 12 minutes.
Unlike a ballistic missile, a hypersonic vehicle could manoeuvre and avoid flying along a predictable path which means it would not be mistaken for a nuclear missile.
But Mr Loren Thompson, an analyst at Lexington Institute with links to the defence industry says there was still much work to be done before the hypersonic bomber becomes a reality.
"The military has a long way to go before hypersonic vehicles are ready for deployment," Mr Thompson said.
The test flight plan called for the Falcon to eventually roll and dive into the Pacific Ocean.
- monkeychow
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Re: US military to launch fastest-ever plane
Makes you think huh.
Like i read back to 1788 and stories of australia's founding and so on and read about how it looks months by ship to get here.
I was always like "Months?" thinking how these days I can get on a plane and be in london in around 22 hours or something.
But you can bet our great grandkids or something will look back at us and be like "hours? It's 20 minutes from london to australia"
Re: US military to launch fastest-ever plane
I guarantee you that'll happen.
Even now new kids look at us, even in our 20's as "old" because used to we'd WRITE our friends. Depending on where they were in the world, sometimes it took a couple weeks for them to get the letter.
Even e-mail has been surpassed at this point. Now shit is done in seconds on Facebook/Twitter.
Re: US military to launch fastest-ever plane
DARPA releases video of HTV-2 hypersonic glider flight
An unmanned glider streaks over the Pacific Ocean at 20 times the speed of sound in a video released Thursday by a U.S. defense research agency experimenting with technology that could give the military the ability to strike any part of the globe within an hour.
The Aug. 11 test ended early when a problem caused the craft's safety system to force it down into the ocean but the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency said valuable data was collected in the nearly three minutes of free flight at the hypersonic speed of Mach 20 - about 13,000 mph.
The Falcon Hypersonic Test Vehicle-2 was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., atop a Minotaur 4 rocket that carried it to the edge of space, performed what DARPA described as a series of aggressive banks and turns, and then released the glider.
This video depicts a speed comparison between DARPA's HTV-2, a C-5 and an F-18.
The video taken by a crewmember on a tracking ship shows the rocket and vehicle together as a fast-moving contrail and then the HTV-2 as a faint dot zipping away on its own.
"It gives us a visceral feel for what it means to fly at Mach 20," DARPA Director Regina Dugan said in a statement.
Hypersonic is the term for speeds greater than Mach 5. Various hypersonic programs have typically produced brief flights - measured in seconds or minutes.
This month's test was the second of two missions in DARPA's HTV-2 program, which is aimed at learning how to fly at such speeds and advancing the technologies needed for long-duration hypersonic flight.
The HTV-2's dimensions are among details kept secret by the agency, which seeks to provide technology breakthroughs for the Defense Department.
The first HTV-2 was launched on April 22, 2010. It returned nine minutes of data, including 139 seconds of aerodynamic data at speeds between 17 and 22 times the speed of sound, DARPA said. That craft detected an anomaly, aborted its flight and plunged into the ocean, the agency said.
DARPA said preliminary analysis of this month's flight showed that the Minotaur rocket placed the HTV-2 at the planned release point and at the proper velocity and orientation, and the separation from the booster was clean.
In a statement, Air Force Maj. Chris Schulz, the HTV-2 program manager, likened the rocket's performance to making "a three-point shot from the California coastline into a basket between California and Hawaii."
The test also returned more than nine minutes of data. Dugan said that included approximately three minutes of "stable aerodynamically controlled Mach 20 hypersonic flight."
When the problem occurred, the HTV-2's flight safety system autonomously guided it in a controlled descent to splashdown along the planned trajectory, DARPA said.
After the first flight, changes were made to the second HTV-2 and its flight problem was not believed to be related to the previous one, DARPA said.
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