To Infinity and beyond! Boeing’s new Waverider X-51 experimental aircraft
Posted by Matt Kelly | Filed under concept, flight
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s….the new Waverider X-51, an experimental aircraft that can fly more than six times faster than the speed of sound on ordinary jet fuel!
Bridging the gap between airplanes and rocketships, the Boeing-built , X-51 is a high-speed jet that stays airborne, in part, with lift generated by the shock waves of its own flight.
The goal? To demonstrate an air-breathing, hypersonic, combustion ramjet engine, known as a scramjet.
Scramjets use the forward motion of an engine to compress air for fuel combustion. It’s similar to a ramjet engine, but at supersonic speeds.
NASA tested the concept in 2004, breaking the record for a jet-powered aircraft with a speed of Mach 9.6, or nearly 7,000 mph. But the vehicle, known as X-43, only flew for a few seconds and its copper-based engine was not designed to survive the flight.
The X-51 engine is made from a standard nickel alloy and is cooled during flight by its own fuel. The program’s goal is to fly for about five minutes.
The military has its eye on high-speed cruise missiles as well as space vehicles that wouldn’t need carry-on oxidizers. The space shuttle, for example, carries both liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen, to power its main engines.
The WaveRider’s first flight is scheduled for October over the Pacific Ocean. It will be carried into the air by a B-52 bomber, then released at an altitude of about 50,000 feet. A solid-rocket booster will ignite and speed it up to about Mach 4.8 and if all goes well, the aircraft’s engine will take over from there, boosting the speed to more than Mach 6.
Ahh if only Orville and Wilbur Wright were alive today.
Tags: aircraft, Boeing, concept, cool, fly, hypersonic, jet, mach, NASA, plane, ramjet, rocket, rocketship, scramjet, speed, supersonic, Waverider, X-43, X-51