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Jewish World Review August 15, 2011 / 15 Menachem-Av, 5771 World's fastest plane disappears even faster By Dale McFeatters
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is the part of the Pentagon that does really cool stuff. It gave us the prototype for the Internet, for example.
Now it is building and testing the world's fastest aircraft, the Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2. It seems counterintuitive that an aircraft capable of going more than 20 times the speed of sound should be a glider, but the HTV-2 is.
The spearhead-shaped craft is launched to the very edge of space by a booster rocket and then unleashed to reach tremendously high speeds on its trajectory to the target.
The idea is to give the military the capability to deliver a large conventional payload -- the Pentagon is adamant we will not go nuclear -- anywhere in the world in under an hour. North Korea, Iran and anyone else contemplating nuclear blackmail take note.
There is one small problem: After about nine minutes, the Air Force loses contact with the HTV-2 and thus the ability to control it.
That happened Thursday when an HTV-2 transmitted nine minutes of what is described as very valuable data before it lost contact and ultimately crashed into the Pacific.
This happened once before in April 2010 when an HTV-2 traveling at between 17 and 22 times the speed of sound lost contact after nine minutes and crashed.
Explained the project manager, Air Force Maj. Chris Shultz, "We know how to boost the aircraft to near space. We know how to insert the aircraft into atmospheric hypersonic flight. We do not yet know how to achieve the desired control during the aerodynamic phase of flight. It's vexing. I'm confident there's a solution. We have to find it."
We would say being unable to control a massive bomb flying at 22,000 mph is the very definition of a "problem." But a defense analyst put it in this perspective for the Associated Press, "At this early stage of if they did not experience failures, it's because they're not trying very hard."
As the expression goes, if at first you don't succeed, try, try again -- but watch were you aim that thing.
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