Something extraordinary is about to happen over the skies of the South Pacific today. The latest test flight of the X-51 WAVERIDER™ scramjet is taking place today, and could prove to be a milestone, kicking off an epic leap forward in jet propulsion which could revolutionize air travel on everything from to missiles, to manned aircraft. Business Insider broke the story yesterday, writing: “When DARPA, the Air Force, NASA, Boeing, and Pratt & Whitney combine talent and energy on a project you can be sure the outcome will be profound, ideally anyway. The five companies are hoping that’s the case in tomorrow’s test flight of the X-51 WAVERIDER™, an unmanned hypersonic scramjet that will tear through the sky at 4,000 miles per hour … W.J. Hennigan from ‘The Los Angeles Times‘ reports talking to Robert A. Mercier, deputy for technology in the high speed systems division at the Air Force Research Laboratory in Ohio who says: ‘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.’ Scramjet technology forces combustion to occur when airflow surpasses the speed of sound and hydrogen is injected into the flow, allowing for theoretical speeds of Mach 20.” For the full story be sure to CLICK HERE. For more exciting news from the world of defense be sure to visit BusinessInsider.com/defense, and to enter the mother (business) ship simply head over to BusinessInsider.com. For the very latest updates from the BI team you can follow them on Facebook and Twitter as well.
