The US Air Force has been developing an aircraft that employs an air-breathing scramjet engine, and hopes to run test flights in the fall of 2009. Officials hope the X-51 “Waverider” aircraft will provide high speed aircraft for reconnaissance or strike missions, and eventually the engines will be used for rockets to deploy satellites in space.
“The long-range goal of this for the Air Force is access to space,” said Charlie Brink, an Air Force Research Laboratory propulsion directorate official who manages the X-51 program from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.The first test flight of the X-51 will be on Oct. 27, 2009, launched from a B-52 aircraft with a missile booster to at least Mach 4.5, the minimum speed at which the air-breathing scramjet engine operates, before the scramjet kicks in and accelerates the vehicle to at least Mach 6 — six times the speed of sound.
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