speed record set by scramjet - fair?

Jay Honeck wrote:

On a deeper level, I find the enthusiasm about this scramjet flight to be,
in many ways, pathetic.

I mean, c'mon -- we're talking about an unmanned, rocket-assisted, 10 second
flight here -- which is somehow trumped up to be some sort of a huge success
for NASA? Worse, they're claming that they've "beaten the speed record set
by the X-15 some 40 years ago..."


I have to agree, I think this is really only a notch or 2 above a wind
tunnel experiment that went well.

--
Chris W

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"Chris W" wrote

I have to agree, I think this is really only a notch or 2 above a wind
tunnel experiment that went well.

--
Chris W

Bingo! That is exactly what it is intended to be. We don't have wind
tunnels that can do Mach 9, or they would have done this test, and many
more, in the wind tunnel.

Point is, they have an engine that does function with internal supersonic
flow. Now they can think about scaling it up to make it useful.
--
Jim in NC


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