An important step: More economical access to space – that’s one possible outcome from the May 26 first flight of the X-51A Waverider.
This super-slick unpiloted vehicle made the longest ever supersonic combustion ramjet-powered hypersonic flight off the Southern California coast. The more than 200-second burn by the X-51’s Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne-built air breathing scramjet engine accelerated the vehicle to Mach 5. The previous longest scramjet burn in a flight test was 12 seconds in a NASA X-43.
The X-51 departed from Edwards Air Force Base, carried aloft under the left wing of an Air Force Flight Test Center B-52H Stratofortress aircraft. Then, flying at 50,000 feet over the Point Mugu Naval Air Warfare Center Sea Range, the Waverider was released.
Four X-51A cruisers have been built for the Air Force and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) by industry partners Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne and Boeing. The Air Force intends to fly the three remaining X-51A flight test vehicles this fall.
The scramjet motor’s great advantage is the ability to capture and burn oxygen in the thin atmosphere, rather than having to carry it in a large tank like the space shuttle or other rockets. Not having to carry the oxidizer needed for combustion means more payload capability.
This first flight was the culmination of a six-year effort under the auspices of the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, DARPA, and industry development team.
“We are ecstatic to have accomplished the most significant of our test points on the X-51A’s very first hypersonic mission,” said Charlie Brink, X-51A program manager with the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. “We equate this leap in engine technology as equivalent to the post-World War II jump from propeller-driven aircraft to jet engines.”
Brink said he believes the X-51A program will provide knowledge required to develop the game-changing technologies needed for future access to space.
By LD/CSE