Unmanned US military hypersonic craft crashes

Artist rendering of U.S. Air Force's Scramjet Engine Demonstrator - WaveRider / AP Photo/PRNewsFoto/Pratt & Whitney Space Propulsion

(AP) LOS ANGELES - An unmanned experimental aircraft failed during an attempt to fly at six times the speed of sound in the latest setback for hypersonic flight.

The X-51A Waverider was designed to reach Mach 6, or 3,600 mph, after being dropped by a B-52 bomber off the Southern California coast on Tuesday. Engineers hoped it would sustain its top speed for five minutes, twice as long as an X-51A has gone before.

But the Air Force said Wednesday that a faulty control fin prevented it from starting its exotic scramjet engine and it was lost.

"It is unfortunate that a problem with this subsystem caused a termination before we could light the scramjet engine," Charlie Brink of the Air Force Research Laboratory at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, said in a statement.

The Waverider successfully detached from the B-52 and fired the rocket booster as planned. Then its scramjet engine was supposed to take over as it attempted to climb to Mach 6. But that never happened. Fifteen seconds after separating from the rocket booster, the Waverider lost control, preventing a test of the scramjet engine.

"All our data showed we had created the right conditions for engine ignition and we were very hopeful to meet our test objectives," Brink said.

The Pentagon has been testing hypersonic technologies in hopes of delivering strikes around the globe within minutes.

It was the latest failure for the Waverider program. A test flight last year ended prematurely with an X-15A trying to restart its engine until it plunged into the Pacific Ocean.

During the first flight of an X-51A in 2010, it reached near five times the speed of sound for three minutes.

There's only one X-51A vehicle left. The Air Force has not decided whether it will fly.

[ksmit2]

Hey, hypersonic planes? No problem, just use your own money please.
Did Bill Gates or Steve Jobs wait to get government funding before
developing new projects, did the corporate tax structure ever affect
their willingness to "do something great"? No, they figured out a way
to make great products anyway. To rehash a previous comment I made,
government financing and support of new product or technology research
generally produces more of a spike in Porsche sales more than anything else.

[chroniccomplainer]

Well.. we might as well put the last one in a museum so the taxpayers can see where their millions went.

[signseeker1717]

Oh, you'll see the results sooner or later. Our very first spacecraft launches crashed too, and the first semiconductor is now obsolete, but they mattered at the time. There are no successes without experiments and failures. And your tax dollars are at work all around you. You see them every time you drive down an interstate or visit a National park, and every day that does by that you DON'T die from mercury poisoning spilling into a public water source from a chemical plant.

[mav547166]

I would rather pay scientist to build something than throw it all away in benefits. That smart phone in your pocket can be traced back to the science used to put a man on the moon among other things.

[ksmit2]

Years of war reporting on Iraq and Afghanistan have demonstrated that
warfare has changed to the point that legitimate armed services of
any civilized country can only target bad guys, and said armed services
are considered "terrorists" themselves when innocent bystanders are
harmed or killed. How do we even remotely imagine that we will ever
deploy armaments of any kind that are capable of inflicting massive
casualties. While the technology exists, political correctness has
emasculated the political will to wage warfare on the infrastructure
of any known enemy ever again. Park the doomsday machines and stop
pretending that you will ever use them. Save us a few billion. We
might need it for healthcare or Social Security.

[ugleyme]

Write on...

[fredm6900]

I would fire all these engineers. So you spend my tax dollars and the thing doesn't fly for 5 minutes? How can? ...

[signseeker1717]

You expect an experiment of this magnitude to work right off the bat?

We're not talking about the Spruce Goose here, Freddy.

[robert1129]

Why on earth do we need a plane that travels at 3600 miles per hour?
As to defense - we have close to 1000 bases overseas. Could we not station drones there if need be?

[myopinionpal]

Now its time to start work on the Star Gate, go from Earth to Mars in five seconds now thats alot faster than hypersonic speed.

[goffredo29]

The same thing happened to me and I had to take my Waverider back to Toys-R-Us.

[audemus]

Hey....wait a minute....aren't the republicans telling us all that we're broke ? Where's the money coming for all this ?

[John782011]

They have been telling us that we need more defense spending. And as to why we "need" this, If we use a booster from say a Submarine Launched Ballistic Missile, coiuntries may think we launched a nuclear tipped missile and automatically retaliate. This allows a quick strike if of say a North Korean missile launcher if it is determined that it is loading fuel in preparation for a launch without needing a nuclear weapon or threat of a counter strike.

[canislupus16]

Hmm, wasn't the puff piece about this plane just in the news yesterday or the day before? About future commercial use enabling transcontinental flights of an hour?

This will give pause to those rich folks who had visions of traveling from here to Europe in an hour.

[unclebernies]

Next time get the parts from china.