Once again, a B-52 from Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., is to carry the Waverider aloft under a wing and release the aircraft at about 50,000 feet over the Pacific Ocean. A solid rocket booster will then accelerate the Waverider before its air-breathing scramjet (short for supersonic combustion ramjet) engine kicks in for what the Air Force hopes will be a four-minute flight reaching the speed of Mach 6, six times the speed of sound.
The 14-foot-long aircraft is called the Waverider because it rides its own shockwave.
The initial May 2010 flight had to be terminated after slightly more than two minutes, when the Waverider had reached Mach 5, on the way to a hoped-for Mach 6. The military controller intentionally sent the Waverider crashing into the Pacific after controllers lost contact with the high-speed vehicle, Brink said.
A failed seal at a nozzle caused hot gases to build up inside the Waverider, rather than go out the back of the nozzle, Brink said. Engineers have made improvements they hope will avoid a repeat, he said.
It is the second of four test flights for the $246.5 million Waverider program, begun in December 2003. It is being done to demonstrate technology the Air Force hopes can eventually be used for more efficient transport of payloads into orbit.
The flights are all to end with crashing the Waveriders into the Pacific. The Air Force determined that, at the speed they fly, the Waveriders would sink before ships could get to where the aircraft hit the water, Brink said.
“Of the existing X-51s, there is no plan to modify them to be recoverable,” he said.
Boeing Co. built the aircraft. Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne built the scramjet engine.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2242 or jnolan@DaytonDailyNews.com.
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