Message posted by Peter Merlin on August 13, 2011 at 15:38:47 PST:
This is a general response to posts from a variety of people: Obviously, you don't have to have failure to learn, but you can certainly learn from failure. You can't have flight test without some risk of failure. The more unconventional the technology, the greater the likelihood of a mishap. Comparing conventional fighter development (such as the F-15 and F-16) to the cutting edge hypersonic experiments (such as the X-43A and HTV-2) is a matter of apples and oranges. There has been some discussion about whether there is an application for this technology or whether the idea of a hypersonic weapon is absurd. A lot of people in the field seem to think that prompt global strike would be a useful arrow to have in out national quiver, so to speak. Of course, there have always been plenty of weapon concepts that were overly complex, expensive, or impractical. I, myself, have always scoffed at the airborne laser employment concept for defense against ballistic missiles during the boost phase. Technical hurdles aside, how practical would it be to keep a fleet of 747s airborne at all times in the vicinity of countries that may, or may not, choose to fire a missile in hostility. As to the current crop of hypersonic programs (X-51, Falcon, etc.), they may have military applications but they are more interesting as pure research. Data on hypersonic aerodynamics, phenomena, and thermal protection systems will be useful in the development of space vehicles that have to operate within an atmosphere at some point in their respective missions, including reentry from interplanetary expeditions (think about a crew returning from Mars, for example). Here are a few comments about the HTV-2 results: DARPA HTV-2 program manager Maj. Chris Schulz said of the recent attempt, “As today’s flight indicates, high-Mach flight in the atmosphere is virtually uncharted territory.”
“In the April 2010 test, we obtained four times the amount of data previously available at these speeds,” said DARPA Director Regina Dugan. They may not have achieved all of the planned goals, but they apparently made significant advances in this challenging field.
In Reply to: Re: DARPA - we have a problem ... posted by RickB on August 13, 2011 at 13:03:27 PST:
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