Pentagon releases results of 13,000-mph test flight over Pacific

http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-darpa-hypersonic-missile-20120420,0,4564567.story

by sunsu • 14 years ago

61 48 14 years ago

latimes.com

markdrago• 14 years ago

Here's a TED talk by Regina Dugan that discusses these flights as well:

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/regina_dugan_from_mach_20_g...

jonnycowboy2• 14 years ago

Great talk, thanks for the link.

0003• 14 years ago

The juxtaposition of toddlers and the "DARPA" logo is not jarring, given the benefits DARPA has produced for humanity due in part to its unleashed creativity, but certainly 'weird' given the context of its mission statement.

draggnar• 14 years ago

In the video it looks lik the htv is controlled by two flaps on the bottom. Even if this program is in fact finished the research will be useful at some point when rockets are cheaper. A 12 minute flight coast to coast would be nice.

rollypolly• 14 years ago

When the technology does start to work, could this have civilian applications one day?

untog• 14 years ago

In theory, yes. But the fastest civilian plane, the Concorde, was shut down years ago. There's cost/benefit ratio that needs to be met.

andymoe• 14 years ago

Let's not forget the concord was shut down mostly because one of them ran over a 17 inch bit of titanium that sent pounds of debris flying at the plan at 500mph rupturing a fuel tank and causing it to blow up. The next year some a-holes flew into buildings in NY and the pentagon and put the airline industry and economy into a tailspin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_4590

raverbashing• 14 years ago

Of course. Concorde was shut down for economic reasons.

But it was also the first interaction of the concept, and built with very inefficient technology. The Space Shuttle flew for the first time 5 years after Concorde began commercial service.

How many improvements have we seen in commercial aviation technology: better engines, better aerodynamics (and CFD), lighter materials, fly-by-wire

If a new SST is ever designed it will probably sill be inefficient, but ahead of the original Concorde. You probably wouldn't need it to go Mach 2 for example, maybe Mach 1.5 saves enough time on a trip to justify it.

Not to mention the issue that Concorde had Economy class seats with First class price.

icegreentea• 14 years ago

There is also the related problem of reducing the sonic boom. One of the reasons why the Concorde was so expensive was because there are so few routes that it actually makes sense to use the Concorde on. Even today, we can add a few more routes that makes sense (thanks to China's growth), but even then, the limited route options would mean a relatively low demand for airframes, thus an inability to take advantage of economies of scales (which are super important in aviation, since R&D costs so goddamn much).

bdunbar3• 14 years ago

It's possible that Concorde was given a mission, for political reasons, that made no sense.

Cut the flight time NYC > London in half. Big deal: it's only seven hours. Three or seven the day is pretty much spent in travel.

Where they - my opinion - should have aimed Concorde was the Pacific.

LA to Sydney is a 14 and 1/2 hour flight. Cut that to seven? Put another shrimp on the barbie.

Granted, the actual Concorde we got did not have the range. I wonder if the designers could have done something about that.

bradleyland• 14 years ago

Accelerating the human body to mach 20 has its own set of problems. Namely, the g-force involved. A mach number is dependent upon altitude, but they mention 13,000 MPH in the article. This is a little bit slower than the orbital velocity of the Space Shuttle (around 18,000 mph), but at these speeds, rocket launches are the neighborhood we're operating in.

Wikipedia says Shuttle astronauts experience around 3 Gs. This isn't intolerable, but g-force tolerance is heavily related to time spent at a specific level. Astronauts are screened for tolerance to g-forces as part of their selection criteria. It is unlikely that the general public would ever ride in aircraft that subject passengers to the forces commonly felt during the launch of an orbital vehicle.

hencq• 14 years ago

The stated goal is apparently to be able to strike anywhere on earth within an hour. What's the advantage of something like this above an ICBM? I can imagine one advantage would be that the target can't be easily inferred from the flight path? Also an ICBM launch is immediately associated with a nuclear attack, while this might not be? Although I could imagine an enemy detecting multiple of these hypersonic vehicles heading towards it, wouldn't want to wait to find out.

melling2• 14 years ago

I thought the goal was to evevtually build a plane that could be anywhere in the world within an hour. There are many more uses for this, of course. Next generation SR71 Blackbird, fire missiles on enemy vehicle, sink pirate ship, etc.

jballanc2• 14 years ago

Yeah, but consider: the SR-71 was intended to replace the U-2. Which one was retired? Which one is still in active use?

jballanc2• 14 years ago

With multiple kill vehicles that are capable of repositioning themselves in flight (like the ones shown here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9mNNA2gEF8), I don't even think you can call that an advantage.

The only advantage I can think of is the possibility of a return flight, but that only matters if reuse is economical vs an expendable vehicle (probably not), or if the cargo is "precious", i.e. a human. Given the prevalence of drone aircraft (including some that can stay airborne indefinitely), increasing capability of satellite optics, and literally decades of refinement on ICBMs, I'd have to say that this pursuit is more likely purely for research. (Of course, as a researcher you always have to "sell" your experiments to the decision makers with lines like "strike anywhere in under an hour".)

jonnycowboy2• 14 years ago

Nuclear weapon use is no longer warranted and big nation/states like the US, Russia and China will definately not be using them for any kind of attacks. This Mach-20 glider is for a more targeted attack. A similar concept is presented in "The Gold Coast" by Robinson, where a hypersonic glider tracks and destroys target using only kinetic energy (no explosives). This also allows you to hit targets in high-density (ie. urban) environments without affecting the surrounding area.

lwat• 14 years ago

Mutually Assured Destruction is alive and well and many countries still maintain a good stock of nuclear weapons for this purpose.

nickgully• 14 years ago

A vehicle like this can be controlled for more of it's flight phase, giving more flexibility in targeting moving objects, or strikes of opportunity. Also, as you said, this is less likely to start World War III.

andrewpi• 14 years ago

> Also an ICBM launch is immediately associated with a nuclear attack

You got it. An ICBM would set off early warning alerts about a nuclear attack, prompting a possible counter-attack.

iwwr• 14 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minotaur_IV

The lifter rocket costs $50mil, so there are few targets in the world worth throwing this hardware at.

drzaiusapelord4• 14 years ago

Have you looked at the US's defense budget? When you have money like this you don't need to worry too much about practical uses. Imagine if this money went unspent, Americans would get a tax break or heaven forbid better healthcare or something.

Seriously, a good chunk of what the US researches is done strictly because we don't question the defense budget and the contractors and bureaucrats know how to game the system and create jobs/fortunes for the defense industry.

As far as the whole "herp derp its not an icbm," well something tells me that if the Chinese had this and hit our carrier groups with it(1), we'd respond with nuclear strikes instantly. If we send 10 of these towards downtown Beijing, its nuclear war as usual fellas. I think the subtleties between kinetic and nuclear will be lost on the generals and leaders who make retaliatory strike decisions.

(1) The PRC is playing with all manner of kinetic kill vehicles and probably have a carrier killer mounted on several warships and subs, so this isn't purely conjecture

lchengify4• 14 years ago

Lets not get too carried away here. At least in the US, the defense department, specifically DARPA, invests a lot in research that doesn't have immediate value but has a proven track record for being invaluable years or decades later.

50 years ago someone might have made an argument that investing 380m in health care would be more useful than some crazy thing called 'ARPANET', but i think in the end it turned out better for everyone. Add GPS and self-driving cars to that list too.

darklajid• 14 years ago

The technological feat seems amazing! But .. my English parser crashes here:

“The initial shock wave disturbances experienced during second flight, from which the vehicle was able to recover and continue controlled flight, exceeded by more than 100 times what the vehicle was designed to withstand,” DARPA Acting Director Kaigham J. Gabriel said in a statement. “That’s a major validation that we’re advancing our understanding of aerodynamic control for hypersonic flight.”

Is he saying that (my understanding) the shock wave disturbances exceeded the designed/expected maximum by a factor of 100? And claims that this is supporting the idea of understanding hypersonic flight so much better?

I _think_ he wants to say 'In spite of these troubles we were able to recover, due to our good understanding of the underlying principles' but I parse it as 'The outcome of the experiment showed that we greatly underestimated the forces involved and this clearly validates our understanding'.

Can some native speaker point out were I stumbled?

ryanmolden• 14 years ago

I believe he is trying to say their ability to recover from such a large variation from their initial expectation is proof that they truly understand/are advancing in their knowledge of hypersonic flight. That said, since there is a break between the two quotes the second could have come 10 sentences later and the writer could have unknowingly dropped context/information in some omitted statements. It is a bit of a hard to parse statement, but that is what you get from people, rarely do people speak in memorable, concise sound bites 'off the cuff'.

greeneggs• 14 years ago

He didn't say that it validates our understanding, he said it validates that "we're advancing our understanding." It sounds like they learned quite a lot from this experiment, including some big surprises.

losvedir• 14 years ago

Native speaker here. I think you're correct that it's somewhat contradictory. Gabriel says two things: 1) They were off by a factor of 100 in predicting the shock wave disturbances, and 2) The vehicle was able to recover.

I think his comment about advancing understanding is more referring to (2) than (1), although now that you point it out, it's hard to say you understand something well if you're off by two orders of magnitude...

evoxed2• 14 years ago

I still can't even fathom a 12-minute separation between Los Angeles and New York.

rorrr• 14 years ago

Plus two hours getting to and waiting at the airport.

evoxed2• 14 years ago

Maybe that'll be solved by the time I can afford a hypersonic flight between NY and LA.

adestefan2• 14 years ago

Don't forget about the time sitting on the tarmac.

anrope• 14 years ago

That would be amazing. I'd imagine it would be something like the difference between transatlantic travel by sailboat and today's jets.

schnaars• 14 years ago

The technologist in me says that is pretty awesome.

The cynic looks at $320M price tag and wonders why I don't have better schools for my kids and DARPA doesn't have a better video of this thing.

Nrsolis• 14 years ago

What makes you think they don't?

wdr1• 14 years ago

Would $320M make much of a difference? The city of LA just spent $500M on a single school building.

I wager had the money gone towards education, we would either have a $820M school building or a second one worth $320M.

Pentagon releases results of 13,000-mph test flight over Pacific

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