Space Travel / NASA / Political Travel / Science Travel / Airplanes / Airplane News / → All Tags
A Rocket-Airplane Will Fly Mach 20 Today, But Won't Be Taking Passengers
August 10, 2011 at 8:56 AM | by JetSetCD | Comments (0)
The space race is way over, and sadly so is the entire NASA Space Shuttle program as well. But just because we aren't shipping astronauts up into orbit anymore doesn't mean the US isn't playing around still in outer space. Today actually marks the second test launch of a strange form of airplane-slash-rocket: the Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 (FTVH2). Capable of cruising at over 13,000mph (that's Mach 20 or 20x the speed of sound), the unmanned FTVH2 isn't a new travel or research toy, but a military one.
Around 7am PDT, an 8-story Minotaur IV rocket will shoot into the skies from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Inside of it waits the Falcon, until, as International Business Times reports:
The rocket will puncture the atmosphere and releases FTVH2. Then the super-fast weapon will glide over the Pacific Ocean at nearly 20 times the speed of sound. The test flight will last 30 minutes before the FHTV2 hit the water and sink near the Kwajalein Atoll, about 4,100 miles from the Vandenberg Air Force Base. If the aircraft can complete its 30 minute flight, the project will continue otherwise the project will be shelved indefinitely.
They've already tried this once, believe it or not. In April 2010 the US Air Force together with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) test-launched one of these babies, but lost contact with it almost immediately. So now, over a year later, they've built another and are giving it a second go.
We shudder to think of how much this project has cost, and how if today's flight fails then all of that government green will have been for naught. Of course there's no exact figures released on the $$$ behind the Falcon, but good old Wikipedia notes that "According to Henry F. Cooper, who was the Director of the Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars) under President Reagan, spaceplane projects swallowed $4 billion in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s (excluding the Space Shuttle)," and that the Falcon was "allocated a US$170 million for budget year 2008." Shudder! Sorry but we're not interested in any plane going Mach 20 unless there's the possibility of us getting to ride in it one day. Case closed.
Bookmarks