Could we fly from London to New York in an hour? NASA scientists test 4,500mph hypersonic jet

* Scramjet engine can accelerate craft to over Mach 6
* Could dramatically slash journey times by travelling at five times the speed of sound

By Daily Mail Reporter

It looks like something you’d expect to see launch from Tracy Island.

But this Thunderbirds-style aircraft could be the future of long-haul flights.

The hypersonic X-51A WaveRider belongs to the US military and uses a revolutionary ‘scramjet’ engine to reach 4,500mph within seconds.

Arduous journeys for holidaymakers could be a thing of the past if the technology takes off. A trip across the Atlantic from London to New York would take the plane just one hour, travelling at five times the speed of sound.

Today the cutting-edge craft will be dropped from a B52 bomber over the Pacific Ocean in its latest test.

It will be flown from Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert in California, attached to the bomber’s wing.

The jet will then be dropped from almost 50,000ft near the Point Mugu promontory. A rocket booster will ignite and speed it up to about Mach 4.5 and, if all goes well, the aircraft’s engine will take over from there, pushing the speed to more than Mach 6 and lifting the craft to 70,000ft.

The mission will last 300 seconds – the longest the craft has ever flown to date. After the historic test, the plane will crash into the sea, and there are no plans to recover it.

Hypersonic flight – which relates to speeds of more than five times the speed of sound – is seen as the next step for aircraft. ‘Attaining sustained hypersonic flight is like going from propeller-driven aircraft to jet aircraft,’ Robert Mercier, deputy for technology in the high speed systems division at the Air Force Research Laboratory in Ohio told the Los Angeles Times.

‘Since the Wright brothers, we have examined how to make aircraft better and faster. Hypersonic flight is one of those areas that is a potential frontier for aeronautics. I believe we’re standing in the door waiting to go into that arena.’

The project is being funded by Nasa and the Pentagon, which hope it can be used for military stealth aircraft and new weapons.

The WaveRider programme is estimated to cost £89million, according to Globalsecurity.org, a website for military policy research. It has had a mixed history, with previous tests being aborted after the engine stalled.

Currently the fastest passenger plane in the world is the Cessna Citation X, which has a top speed of 700mph or Mach 0.9, although it takes only seven passengers.

In its wake is the Falcon 7X at 685mph and the Gulfstream G550, which is capable of 675mph

The experimental craft will be tested strapped to the wing of a B-52 bomber. Once released, it's radical scramjet engines will be fired, hopefully accelerating the craft up to Mach 6, over 2,000 metres per second.

The X-51A Waverider on the wing of a B-52 Stratofortress. A previous test was the longest supersonic combustion ramjet-powered hypersonic flight to date.

Mach is a measure of the ratio of the velocity of an object, in this case a plane, to the velocity of sound, which equals Mach 1, or 761.2 miles per hour.

Any plane that flies past the speed of sound creates a sonic boom, which often results in a major noise disturbance over close-by areas. Before its 2003 retirement, Concorde was long the shuttle of choice for executives eager to spend as little time as possible in the air and unafraid to shell out thousands for a 3.5-hour transatlantic flight.

An attempt to launch a hypersonic flight in August last year failed when the soaring heat caused the craft’s surface to peel and the experiment ended prematurely.

The Pentagon’s research arm calls hypersonic flight ‘the new stealth’ for its promise of evading and outrunning enemy fire. The effort to develop hypersonic engines is necessary because they can propel vehicles at a velocity that cannot be achieved from traditional turbine-powered jet engines.

Experts believe hypersonic missiles are the best way to hit a target in an hour or less. The only vehicle that the military currently has in its inventory with that kind of capability is the massive, nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile.

The scramjet engine is designed to ride on its own shockwave, and should see the test craft accelerate to about Mach 6.

A triangular 'passenger plane of future' unveiled by NASA

Washington: A new triangular 'passenger plane' of the future is ready and has already undergone test flights.

The super plane so far only codenamed 'X-48C' is the brainchild of the US space agency NASA which is developing it in collaboration with aviation major Boeing.

NASA said it has successfully demonstrated a working prototype and took a scale replica for a 'test-fly', the agency said in a statement.

But the aircraft which NASA hopes will become a dominant design within the next 20 years, may come as disappointment for travellers who insist on window seats.

The triangular plane sacrifices window seats for increased capacity and higher fuel efficiency.

NASA engineers said that test flights on the aircraft built in UK would continue throughout 2012.

The new X-48C is a 'hybrid-winged body' plane which offers more internal volume for passengers and cargo and the triangle shaped plane is reminiscent of spy planes, which cuts through the air more efficiently.

NASA conceits that the plane could be developed in the next 15-20 years for potentially consumer flights as well as for military applications.

The X-48C retains most dimensions of the earlier models, with a wingspan just longer than 20 feet, and a weight of about 500 pounds (227 kilogramme). The aircraft has an estimated top speed of about 140 mph (225 kph), and a maximum altitude of 10,000 feet.

Next American woman heads for space -- on this Russian rocket

By ANDREW MALCOLM

Now, here's some real Obama outsourcing.

This morning, Kazakhstan time, the next mission to the International Space Station successfully blasted off carrying the usual trio -- a Russian commander, an astronaut from the international community and an American in a seat rented by NASA since the retirement of the last U.S. space shuttle a year ago this month.

The Soyuz spacecraft, Expedition 32, shown above being moved by rail to the launchpad on Thursday, had Yuri Malenchenko as the commander, Flight Engineer Sunita Williams of NASA and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency Flight Engineer Akihiko Hoshide. When they dock with the space station Tuesday, they will bring the ISS crew back up to its usual complement of six.

The trio there is scheduled to end its tour and return to Earth on Sept. 17, while the newest three will orbit the earth until just before American Thanksgiving.

NASA-TV will carry live coverage of the Tuesday docking starting about 12:15 a.m. ET and the hatch opening approximately three hours later.

Secret U.S. space plane prepares to land

VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif., June 15 (UPI) - A U.S. Air Force space plane in orbit for more than a year will come back to Earth this weekend, say officials who remained mum on the mission's purpose.

The robotic X-37B, after 15 months in space, is set to land Saturday at California's Vandenberg Air Force Base, although weather and other factors could change that, officials said.

"We continue to monitor weather and technical conditions day by day to ensure conditions are safe for landing," Vandenberg spokesman Jeremy Eggers told SPACE.com. "At this time, the next available opportunity is Saturday, dependent upon weather and technical conditions. The landing window extends through June 18."

The unmanned X-37B looks like a much-shrunken version of NASA's now-retired space shuttle; two X-37Bs could fit into the payload bay of one of the shuttles now on their way to museums.

The space plane, by comparison, has a payload bay the size of a pickup truck bed.

The Boeing-built X-37B, powered by a solar array that lets it remain in orbit for long periods, is designed to land itself on a runway without the aid of a human controller.

Private Dragon Spacecraft Is 'Golden Spike' of Final Frontier, Astronaut Says

by Robert Z. Pearlman, collectSPACE.com Editor

HOUSTON — The arrival of the first commercial spacecraft at the International Space Station this week is tantamount to the golden spike that completed the first railroad to span the United States 143 years ago this month, an astronaut on the orbiting lab said Saturday (May 26).

"We all remember the completion of the transcontinental railroad, which opened up the western frontier of the United States and it was celebrated by pounding in a golden spike," NASA astronaut Don Pettit radioed from inside the privately-built Dragon spacecraft. "This is sort of the equivalent of the golden spike."

The robotic Dragon space capsule, which was designed by Hawthorne, Calif.-based Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) was captured via robotic arm by Pettit and attached to the space station on Friday (May 25). Today, Pettit opened the hatch to the cargo craft and was the first to go inside.

"One other interesting detail, nobody remembers who pounded that golden spike in. The important thing to remember was that the railroad was completed and was now open for use to help settle the western frontier," Pettit added.

This test flight, conducted under NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation (COTS) program, is paving the way for a change in how the space agency launches cargo and, eventually, astronauts to the space station. SpaceX, headed by PayPal co-founder Elon Musk, has a $1.6 billion contract with NASA to provide 12 Dragon cargo ship flights to the station, not counting this test flight.