One Step Up and One Step Back
A scramjet prototype was successfully tested in Australia yesterday, The HyShot III was carried aloft on a Terrier-Orion rocket launched from the Woomera Rocket Range in the South Australian outback. The scramjet reached a maximum altitude of 315 kilometers. Speed was projected to be about 4,970mph. The HyShot program is developing the scramjet and plans another launch on March 28th. Future applications could be in hyper-sonic passenger craft that could travel from Australia to Great Britain in under two hours instead of the current 20 hours. The technology may also be useful for reaching orbit.
Meanwhile, in the US, or actually from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, the launch of the SpaceX Falcon I did not go well. While the initial launch went according to plan, the vehicle was lost. The company has not released details as of this writing. IT may have been a range safety destruct, but nobody is sure yet. The Falcon I is a "traditional" liquid fueled, multi-stage booster, but is privately owned rather than a government program.
So, we are at least one step closer to Heinlein’s predicted "semi-ballistics", but no closer to a successful private rocket company yet. Where’s D. D. Harriman when you need him?
By Mike's America, Saturday, 25 March , 2006 @ 12:24 pm
The History Channel keeps running these UFO programs. One of which described a jet contrail similar to a scramjet that was recorded by a sattelite streaking across the U.S.
The contention of some is that we already are developing this technology in secret.
By Gauis Arbo, Saturday, 25 March , 2006 @ 12:32 pm
That would be OK with me! But I really like the privatization of the space industry that appears to be developing. We’ve been badly under-funding NASA for many years now. They’re talking about getting a man back on the moon around 2018 - FIFTY YEARS after the first man. That’s a bit of a gap.