The ability to fly at speeds greater than five times the speed of sound holds the promise of reaching to the antipodes in hours, it also makes possible deadly weapons that can penetrate any defenses now available. So what is hypersonic flight and does it pose a promise or a threat?
Continue Reading
The dream of a flight from London to Sydney in two to four hours came a step closer to reality after the latest iteration of the HiFIRE hypersonic vehicle made another successful experimental flight at the Woomera Test Range in South Australia.
Continue Reading
A team of scientists from Britain and China have developed a new type of ceramic carbide that can withstand the high temperatures of flying at over five times the speed of sound without the degradation experienced by similar materials.
Continue Reading
Giving artillery a speed boost, General Atomics test fired a hypersonic projectile using a three megajoule Blitzer railgun. Subjected to over 30,000 Gs and reaching a velocity in excess of Mach 5 (3,800 mph, 6,125 km/h), the supershell was equipped with a new Guidance Electronics Unit.
Continue Reading
The Australian Department of Defence has announced that the HIFiRE 5B hypersonic aircraft has reached a velocity of Mach 7.5 over the Woomera Test range.
Continue Reading
Aerospace 3D printing went Mach 5 this week, with Orbital ATK announcing that it has successfully tested a printed hypersonic engine combustor at NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia.
Continue Reading
Reaction Engines' single-stage-to-orbit Skylon spacecraft took a step closer to reality today as BAE Systems announced that it would buy a 20 percent stake in the company.
Continue Reading
When the last SR-71 Blackbird was grounded in 1998 it was a double blow. Not only did aviation lose one of the most advanced aircraft ever built, but also one of the most beautiful. Now, Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works has revealed that it is building a successor to the Blackbird: the SR-72.
Continue Reading
DARPA’s Experimental Spaceplane (XS-1) program hopes to develop a shuttle-like resuable launch system that can turn around from landing to relaunch in one day, and bring down the cost of launching by a factor of 10.
Continue Reading
The University of Queensland’s Scramspace project hopes to launch its unmanned scramjet vehicle from a test range in Norway early next week. We caught up with Professor Russell Boyce to talk about Scramspace, the test flight, and the future of scramjet technology.
Continue Reading
See the stories that matter in your inbox every morning