I’m just fascinated by this stuff According to a report today, DARPA plans to flight test two hypersonic demonstrator vehicles beginning in 2009.
There’s been a lot of talk about hypersonics and what the flight regime can and can’t do for civilian and military applications. And finally there’s going to be some proof in the putting. It’ll be interesting to see the dynamic effects of such speeds and whether the science is there to build hypersonic planes and missiles.
From Flight Daily News:
Details have emerged of the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) plans to test fly its two expendable dart-shaped Hypersonic Technology Vehicle (HTV)-2 demonstrators.
To be launched by Orbital Sciences Minotaur solid-fuel rockets from Vandenberg Air Force Base, HTV-2a will fly in May 2009 and HTV-2b will follow in the October of that year.
While the two flights have separate trajectories they will both impact near the Kwajalein Atoll test site in the Pacific Ocean. HTV-1 was a ground test demonstrator.
The first flight will demonstrate performance characteristics, and the second cross-range manoeuvring as well as thermal protection system performance.
The two HTVs will use inertial navigational measurement units and global positioning system (GPS) for guidance, while testing satellite communications and GPS reception through the plasma that will surround the vehicles during their flight.
“The HTV-2 will have a plasma probe onboard [to examine the hot gases] and we are expecting it to have good lift-over-drag performance,” said DARPA’s tactical technology office deputy director Steve Walker, speaking at the 15th AIAA International space planes, hypersonic systems and technologies conference in Dayton, Ohio on 28 April.
The article also mentions another flight demonstrator that will demonstrate some radical flight characteristics:
The next flight demonstrator after HTV-2 will be Blackswift. Lockheed Martin and Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne were working on a waverider type vehicle called the HTV-3 but there are no plans to build this and the concept has been designated HTV-3X.
Blackswift is a reusable hypersonic demonstrator and the prime contractor for its construction and flight test is yet to be selected.
Should be an exciting year for exotic flight regimes.
(Gouge: NC)
– Christian
I enjoy the reading, but I’m feeling a bit picky today, sorry.
”…there’s going to be some proof in the putting.” should be, oddly enough, “proof in the pudding” (yes, food, please see: http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-pro1.htm)
Although “putting” does sort of work, in the “We’re putting it out there and we’ll see how it goes.” sense.
At those speeds pretty much everything is a dynamic effect, really. Either it will fly, fall, or spread itself all over the sky (very dynamic).
I think the science is more than good enough. How’s the technology, though (fly, fall, or frag)?
I guess I’m picky too. “The proof of the pudding is in the eating” would fit in that the eating or tasting would be the final step as is the testing of the vehicles.
Love your website
We’ve had hypersonic, stealth spyplanes for the nearly the last 20 years and the U.S. Air Force is stealthily running its own space program — a two stage craft with a piloted “mothership” releasing a smaller piloted space-craft operating in LEO.
You don’t need to be in a foreign intelligence service to deduce the aforementioned.
Any hyperconic proof-of-concept demo is an effort to justify a large, publicly-acknowledgable congressional appropriation for a hypersonic program. It certainly isn’t an effort to merely justify the funding of investigations to see if hypersonic craft are possible
I think the hypersonics will be a + feature. Imagine google versus yahoo or msn, or aol. It is like day and night when we are talking hypersonic speeds. It will be like this, “firing” … “target hit!“
The … dots represent a millisecond pause while the dart locks on and fires. I am curoius to see if sams or rader will be even able to detect it. If not, we have a newer force to be reckoned with that can smite any location at the push of a button with precision if fins are added in right areas. Or we could use the tri-blended metal to bend the frame in midflight. If plasma stages occur on the outer frame we would definitely have enogh thermal energies to bend the metal frame if necesary. Toss out hydroulics or cables for guidance. What does that mean, it is lighter weight! Send me some pics when it clsoer to up and running.
don’t forget the stardust. Toss out the ceramics innards! Also the HHo fuel additive for higher heat verses acelyte. Also if the micro holes do not work in the stardust innards, use the nanotubes.
Isn’t this an accuracy MaRV rather than a self-propelled hypersonic vehicle? Doubtless good for prompt global nonnuclear strike.
chris, if you’re referring to the SR-71 (mach 3+), it has been around since the 60’s. You also seem to be sure that the Air Force has its own space program that has a multi-stage vehicle capable of LEO, which I’m guessing is similar to Scaled Composite’s Spaceship 1 & 2? I could only hope such a thing were true, seeing as what an utter failure both NASA and the Air Force have been in developing space technologies and assets as well as hypersonic capabilities, though research is being done, it seems like after the 70s we became complacent with the aerospace capabilities we had, which is very disappointing.
Dont forget the A2 H2 SST from Reaction engines UK–
Yes a Hydrogen fuelled SST.
Add this to the HST mix alone.
BUT Get em Built.
Hate those 15 hour flights to Sydney at subsonic speeds. Boring.
Nick, the U.S. Air Force has you and everybody else covered. Were just not supposed to know about it yet.
As an engineering student with not just a passionate, vested interest but a career interest, in fact goal, I truly hope there is much more going on than has been exposed since the 70s, I remember reading about Air Force programs, in the 80s I believe it was, to develop a two stage LEO space craft, it was claimed at the time though that the technological capabilities did not exist, a story I’ve had trouble believing ever since we made it to the moon in the 9 years in the 60s. There are always whispers here and there of amazing things going on in the deserts of the southwest, I hope there is more going on than we are aware of. It always seemed odd we never tried to go faster than the SR-71, I really hope we have, though I’m not sure it’s possible with out ram/scramjet engines, which are still experiencing hiccups today. chris, I hope you’re right or know something we don’t, otherwise my lack of faith in the AF and NASA is well founded.
Kind of odd that all the stories on the program show only HTV-1, which was cancelled, and not HTV-2 even though that is what is going to fly.