NASA Testing Supersonic X-51A Jet Tomorrow 214
First time accepted submitter littlesparkvt writes "The NASA and the Pentagon's experimental aircraft could go from NY to London in about an hour. With a cost of 140 million dollars USD. During the test the X51-A will reach speeds of 1700 meters a second and climb to an altitude of 70,000 feet."
huray for proofreading (Score:2, Insightful)
Pretty sure it won't go 1700 miles per second
Re:Cost (Score:5, Insightful)
Still costs less than a F22 Raptor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-22_Raptor [wikipedia.org]
That's probably because the F-22 is an operational aircraft capable of take-off/landing under its own power and houses a human pilot (among many other things).
Re:Cost (Score:4, Insightful)
It's really just a test bed for scramjet research. It's a long way to an actual manned version.
Re:Cost (Score:0, Insightful)
No, you're right, they're not. They're grounded because they're still unusable.