Test jet sets new air speed record

[hah]

The X-51A Waverider was released from a US Air Force B-52 Stratofortress off California on Wednesday.
Its scramjet engine accelerated it to Mach 6, and it flew under its own power for 200 seconds before losing acceleration. At that point the test was ended.
The Air Force said the previous record for a hypersonic scramjet burn was 12 seconds.
Unlike ordinary ramjets, which use air passing through at subsonic speeds to operate, the X-51 uses a supersonic internal airflow - giving rise to the name scramjet, short for supersonic combustion ramjet.
"We are ecstatic to have accomplished many of the X-51A test points during its first hypersonic mission," said an Air Force Research Lab spokesman.
"We equate this leap in engine technology as equivalent to the post-World War II jump from propeller-driven aircraft to jet engines."
The Waverider was built by Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne and Boeing.
Joe Vogel, Boeing's director of hypersonics, said, "This is a new world record and sets the foundation for several hypersonic applications, including access to space, reconnaissance, strike, global reach and commercial transportation."
Four X-51A cruisers have been built for the Air Force, and the remaining three will be tested this autumn.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20100527...d-e1d36ba.html

Pretty Impressive

[Kieran]

And it's not the plane before anyone thinks it is
It's the little white rocket shape you can see under the wing.

[xxMATTGxx]

Nice one US Air Force! Pretty impressive stuff.

[AlexOC]

Oh haha! I thought it was the big grey plane.

How fast is Mach 6, i'm guessing with a cool name like that its pretty damn fast.

[Kieran]

Oh haha! I thought it was the big grey plane.

How fast is Mach 6, i'm guessing with a cool name like that its pretty damn fast.

It all depends on the temperature they are flying at.... I'll give you an example though.
If they were flying at 50,000 ft like I read then the outside temperature is likely to be somewhere in the region of -60 degrees. At this temperature, it would be travelling at 3410Kts which is about 6300kmph or around 4000MPH

I'd LOVE to see the big plane hit that speed without breaking up

[BeanEgg]

Wow LOL

Don't mess with them now. ;P

Mach 6 is basically 6 times faster than the speed of sound. - So quite bloody fast!

[cocaine]

mach 6, jesus christtt thats fast

[hah]

mach 6 = 2 041.74 m / s

google said that, do does that mean 2014 meters per second lol? omg

[Kieran]

mach 6 = 2 041.74 m / s

google said that, do does that mean 2014 meters per second lol? omg

At what temperature? Mach speed is dependent on the temperature that the aircraft is flying through. I worked out a rough estimate based on the international standards for temperature and it came out around 1750 meters per second.

[xxMATTGxx]

Another way you could look at it is: