Smart Bombs: Military, Defense and National Security
Synopsis: The X-43D was a program that could have seen Mach 15, but it never occurred. NASA’s Hyper-X program proved air-breathing hypersonic flight was...
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Synopsis: The X-43D was a program that could have seen Mach 15, but it never occurred. NASA’s Hyper-X program proved air-breathing hypersonic flight was...
Synopsis: NASA’s unmanned X-43A Hyper-X proved that an air-breathing scramjet could fly at hypersonic speed, riding a B-52 launch and a booster rocket before...
Key Points and Summary – NASA’s Hyper-X program, which ran for eight years and cost $230 million, produced the X-43A—the “fastest air-breathing vehicle ever...
Key Points and Summary – NASA’s Hyper-X program proved hydrogen-fueled scramjet flight with the X-43A at Mach 7–10, but its planned follow-on, the Mach...
Key Points and Summary – NASA’s X-43A was a tiny unmanned testbed that did something huge: it pushed air-breathing flight to nearly Mach 10....
Article Summary – NASA’s X-43A scramjet set a stunning air-breathing speed record in 2004, hitting Mach 9.6 after a B-52/Pegasus launch—but the engine only...
In the past few months, I’ve written about the (most likely apocryphal) SR-91 Aurora spy plane, which supposedly could hit speeds of Mach 5,...
Mach 9.6 seems like a movie magic moment, like something out of the new Top Gun: Maverick flick in theaters. And yet, the X-43...