How fast?

[blobrana]

The X-43A test was almost delayed by gusty winds and B52 fuel issues...
But, Nasa successfully flew its experimental X-43A research vehicle. The flight is part of the Hyper-X programme.
To test the concept of a scramjet engine, a 10-second firing sent it to the edge of space.

Initial indications are that the craft appeared to meet its milestone of propelling itself to Mach 7 , (seven times the speed of sound), on paper it has a top speed of 10,000 km/h!

 The craft began gliding and conducting a series of high-speed maneuvers before CRASHING into the sea at the Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division Sea Range , off the coast of southern California. Because of the expense of recovery, there are no plans to retrieve the X-43A...

On  Nasa tv right now...
Cool!http://www.nasa.gov/ram/35037main_portal.ram

[FluffyMcDeath]

Oh nuts. I missed it.
Can't find any video of the test on the nasa site.
Anyone got a link?

But Mach 7 is pretty sweet, even if it's only 10 seconds.

[QuikSanz]

@blobrana,

This is as good as they come. I've been following this one for a long time. Glad to see this one worked. Now maybe with a little persaverance we can make this work full scale, Yea. Great work NASA.

Chris

PS @ Fluffy, You might find something later at the "Dryden Research" site.

[Quixote]

:-? That's weird.  I seem to recall that the SR71 Blackbird aircraft was supposed to go that fast when it was de-classified in the late seventies / early eighties.  Am I the only one who remembers that?

[QuikSanz]

@Quixote,

The SR-71 tops out at a "Hare" arr, over Mach 3.

Chris

[Crumpster]

Mach 7 for 10 seconds!

That (very) roughly works out at about 4900 miles per hour which in turn means that it travelled about 13 miles in 10 seconds!!

That's pretty damn impressive in my book.
London to Sydney is 10562 miles (I just looked it up) so that'll be less than 3 hours to get to the other side of the planet!

If anyone wants to work it out more accurately, please do! :-)

Cheers,
Graham C