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Military Aircraft Hit Mach 20 Before Ocean Crash, DARPA Says
- jvzr 14y agoRecent follow-up to the parent's old article: http://www.space.com/15388-darpa-hypersonic-glider-demise-explained.html http://www.space.com/15388-darpa-hypersonic-glider-demise-ex...
- unwind 14y agoMore recent, but still 11 months old. It's pretty cool to look at the trajectory maps while remembering that the flight lasted 9 minutes Mach 20 (around 7000 m/s) is fast. :)
- tocomment 14y agoWhen is the next test?
- sabertoothed 14y agoWhy does it not have a mane?
- quarterto 14y agoDarpa Maintains Control of Unmaned Aircraft at Mach 20 ...for three whole minutes!
- elliottkember 14y agoDon't forget, it traveled 650 miles in the process.
- StavrosK 14y agoor 1200 km.
- melling 14y agoSounds like a lot to me. For the first DARPA Grand Challenge, for example, no car finished the race. The farthest went 7 miles. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge_(2004) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge_(2004) The next year 5 vehicles completed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge_(2005) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge_(2005) Also, consider all of the rocket failures in the 1960's and we still made it to the moon by the end of the decade.
- sukuriant 14y agoat Mach 20, in our atmosphere with all the things it can collide into, and the latency that it experiences between itself and the ground... that's an incredible feat.
- zeteo 14y ago>HTV-2 is part of an advanced weapons program called Conventional Prompt Global Strike, which is working to develop systems to reach an enemy target anywhere in the world within one hour They're getting really close. Mach 20 is about an hour and a half to the opposite point on Earth.
- carbocation 14y agoStation a few of these in different locations and they're already there.
- lifeisstillgood 14y agoI read this too, but my first thought was "if this had been Iran we would have invaded at midnight". Its cool tech, yes, but really...
- rayiner 14y agoOf course and that would've been the sensible thing to do. As Americans, we want a world where the U.S. is the one that has this technology, not countries who aren't the U.S. Our standard of living (1/4 of the world's resources for 5% of the world's population) literally depends on that state of affairs.
- danielweber 14y agoThe US doesn't need military dominance to have 1/4 of the world's consumption. It needs to be able to pay people who have 1/4 of the world's production enough that they sell it to us. And about 80% of that latter group are Americans anyway.
- rayiner 14y agoThat works until the country that does have military dominance decides to conquer you and take that production for itself. The market is meaningless when force can be used to take what you can't purchase in the market. It is possible to be a wealthy nation that doesn't have military dominance (Switzerland, etc). The key is to be overall small enough that you can consume a lot per capita but still fly under the radar of the big boys. A country as big as the U.S. doesn't really have that choice.
- 51Cards 14y agoAugust 18th, 2011? Possibly a few tests after this have already happened? Edit: Looks like no third flight yet. Found this followup: http://www.darpa.mil/threeColumn.aspx?pageid=2147485247 http://www.darpa.mil/threeColumn.aspx?pageid=2147485247 Also found this paragraph to be interesting: “The initial shockwave disturbances experienced during second flight, from which the vehicle was able to recover and continue controlled flight, exceeded by more than 100 times what the vehicle was designed to withstand,” said DARPA Acting Director, Kaigham J. Gabriel.
- akavel 14y agoAnd this: "[G]radual wearing away of the vehicle’s skin as it reached stress tolerance limits was expected. However, larger than anticipated portions of the vehicle’s skin peeled from the aerostructure." And, dated: April 20, 2012
- iandh 14y agoThe "gradual wearing of the vehicle's skin" is called is called ablation. Its a standard way both hyper sonic and reentry vehicles manage heat. Basically the skin boils off creating a pressure wave that the vehicle flights behind. Wikipedia has a good description of it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_reentry#Ablative http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_reentry#Ablative
- Retric 14y agoDepending on what kind of impact angle they can achieve they may not need to add high explosives to this. Mach 20 is 400 times the kinetic energy of mach 1 and 40,000x the kinetic energy of a 76mph collision. So, even a 100lb craft = 1,000 times the impact energy of a 4,000lb truck at highway speeds.
- saosebastiao 14y agoInteresting perspective...I hadnt even thought of the possibility.
- kingkawn 14y agometeors!
- bane 14y agohttp://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2004-06/rods-god http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2004-06/rods-god
- AUmrysh 14y agoKinetic Bombardment has been a sci-fi concept for decades, and it's interesting to see a real, possibly cost effective, technology that could make it real. At those speeds, you don't need explosives, just a lot of mass to slam into something.
- Zarathust 14y agoAccording to project Thor, it would not be that cost efficient. The wikipedia page states that the rods would need to be at around 8 tons. A ton of tungsten is around 50k$ so 8 tons is rather negligible. What is very expensive is to get 8 tons of material to space. During the space shuttles era, bringing a kilogram of matter to space would cost around 20k$. A ton is 907 kilograms. 8 x 907 x 20 000 = 145M$ per payload. I don't have the exact numbers for the cost of an ICMB with a nuclear warhead but I'm pretty sure that it is less than that. We also didn't factor in the cost of maintaining an orbital launcher, possibly manning that thing and other costs which being in space incur. Maybe with newer launch methods bringing goods to space will be cheaper, but I don't think we'll see this kind of tech unless costs decrease to around 2000$/kg to space (1/10th of what it is now). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment
- colinshark 14y agoIf the US is going to field these weapons, we need to be cool with Russia and China tossing around non-nuclear ICBMs- because that is what this is.
- Thrymr 14y ago> non-nuclear ICBMs- because that is what this is. Well, no, it's not. It's not a missile, it's not ballistic, and I don't know if the range is truly intercontinental. Not that the Russians and Chinese won't be concerned, but it is a rather different thing (and a much harder engineering problem).
- EwanToo 14y agoYou're right it's not a ballistic missile, but it's end goal is in many ways the same: "Prompt Global Strike (PGS) is a United States military effort to develop a system that can deliver a precision conventional weapon strike anywhere in the world within one hour, in a similar manner to a nuclear ICBM" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prompt_Global_Strike http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prompt_Global_Strike
- rayiner 14y agoWhy do we need to be cool with it? The best-case scenario for the U.S. is having these weapons, and using its de-facto subsidization of Europe's defense to get U.K., France, etc, to push, via the U.N., Russia and China not to have these weapons. Unlikely to succeed, because after all who the hell cares what the U.K. and France have to say, but that should be the end-goal.
- justin66 14y agoYou do know that Russia and China are both permanent security council members, so what you describe - bullying Russia and China into taking a position on this they do not want to take - is not possible? Maybe this is cold war style thinking on my part but if I were China I would think to myself "yes, United States, please keep building that phenomenally expensive conventional weapon that would be really dangerous against the kind of surface fleet you have but we don't. That's a really... great... strategy you've got there." While publicly protesting against it, of course.
- ry0ohki 14y agoIt did the equivalent of Boston to North Carolina in 3 minutes. Crazy testing something that covers so much distance so fast.
- cadetzero 14y agoI found it really interesting to read about the underlying tech, scramjets: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scramjet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scramjet
- hencq 14y agoI don't think the HTV-2 uses (or used rather, since this was in 2011) a scramjet though, but uses a rocket engine. The HTV-3X was supposed to use a scramjet it seems, but that was cancelled. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Falcon_Project http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Falcon_Project
- cadetzero 14y agoAs I understand, you can't hit those speeds with just a rocket engine. The HTV-2 is considered a rocket glider - it needs a rocket to propel it to altitudes and speeds where the SCRAMJET can kick in (as the scramjet itself has no moving parts).
- ballooney 14y agoYou can hit those speeds and beyond with a rocket engine. They don't really have a speed limit, they'll keep accelerating something (provided their force is greater than the drag and any other retarding forces) until you turn them off. Eg, a payload into earth orbit, which would be about Mach 25 if there was some atmosphere. Or significantly faster if you're putting a probe on an escape velocity, for example the Pluto probe New Horizons, which was launched with a solar escape velocity that would be equivalent to about Mach 50 (all sea level). The advantage of the scramjet over a rocket is that you don't have to carry the oxidiser in a tank with you (like a conventional rocket). You get it from the atmosphere. But being inside an atmosphere making thermal management a big challenge, as the article describes.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- baby 14y agomach 20 = 24 500.88 kmh (~6800m/s) This is incredibly fast. Distance New York to Paris : 5851km[1] it would take 14 minutes for this plane to do the distance. [1] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=paris+to+new+york http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=paris+to+new+york
- pkfrank 14y agoWhy do we even reasonably need something this fast? Wouldn't it be much more cost-effective to merely link up with strategic partners in other countries (Germany / Israel; Philippines; etc.) to give us the distribution we need for "conventional" missiles that would hit in the same timeframe?
- mpyne 14y agoMissiles can be shot down by state actors, non-state actors can hide deep in areas which are out of range of the U.S. or its allies. But launching anything on an ICBM makes it almost impossible for other nations to distinguish from a nuclear missile launch. Of course, if Prompt Global Strike is capable of carrying cargo with it then maybe countries like Russia or China would suspect it can also carry a small nuclear warhead, so it may be that concern doesn't completely go away.
- duaneb 14y agoI don't think it's in any country's interest to do a nuclear attack with anything but a blow that would cripple response, a small nuclear warhead seems like an invitation to go from tolerated and accepted to hated.
- run4yourlives 14y agoPretty sure this is 'old tech' because of the successful test of the Advanced Hypersonic Weapon. The Prompt Global Strike program seems to have moved on to other options. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prompt_Global_Strike http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prompt_Global_Strike
- will_brown 14y agoI am almost positive I have video of this aircraft. I took night video (1/13/13) of an aircraft near the Everglades, the aircraft moves so fast it appears that I am moving, but I was stationary. When I get home I will upload the video and add a link here to see if people agree.
- thedufer 14y agoThis article is from 2011, and there are no known tests since then.
- iandh 14y agoThere as yet to be a third flight. DARPA is surprisingly open about the Falcon HTV-2 test flights. The releases have included more info that I would have expected. DARPA was actually live tweeting the 2nd flight.
- will_brown 14y agoHere is the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3VqiPhsnMM&feature=youtu.be http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3VqiPhsnMM&feature=youtu... As "open" as DARPA is they are subject to confidentiality and are only allowed to disclose what the DoD allows them to disclose. I am no conspiracy theorist but compare the shape/light of the aircraft in my video to the artist night time rendition from the OP article. Even if the aircraft in my video is different, I can tell you I have never seen anything anywhere near as fast as the aircraft in my video including F-15's, F-16's, F-18's or the space shuttle when it lands (which breaks the sound barrier at very low altitude).
- axus 14y agoWatching that video feels like something out of Kerbel Space Program: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWBgUnL_ya4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWBgUnL_ya4
- will_brown 14y agoI commented earlier that I thought I recorded this aircraft at night on (1/13/13), people already bashed me saying this aircraft has only flown 2 times blah, blah, blah... (ever hear of military testing? They don't tell the public) Here is the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3VqiPhsnMM&feature=youtu.be http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3VqiPhsnMM&feature=youtu... Why do I think it is same aircraft? When reading the OP article I immediately identified the artists night time rendering as the same aircraft I recorded in the video (video quality does not do it justice, but in person I can verify it looked identical to the artist rendering). Separately, the aircraft I recorded is by far the fastest thing I have ever seen, not in some UFO conspiracy way, but that I fly aircraft, attend airshows (F-14, F-15, F-16, F-18), saw Space Shuttles land (breaks sound barrier at low altitude) and I can saw I have never seen anything move as fast as the aircraft in my video.