NASA Testing Supersonic X-51A Jet Tomorrow

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."

Cost

[Hydrated Wombat]

Still costs less than a F22 Raptor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-22_Raptor [wikipedia.org]

1700 miles a *second* ???

[gaspar ilom]

> 1700 miles a second

This is obviously a mis-print, right?

Re:Cost

[bolthole]

UNLIKE the f22- raptor, though, this is basically an "unmanned vehicle". The title implies "jet aircraft" )ie: passenger vehicle) to most people, but in reality, this is not much more than "an oversized, air-launched missile".

Which makes it sadly way less interesting

Re:Cost

[__aaltlg1547]

Foam at the mouth like this much? Maybe some Xanex or something would help. I wouldn't call the F-22 a piece of shit but it looks like the cost of maintenance will be astronomical. I'd just call it overpriced and underwhelming.

Cost of maintenance astronomical == piece of shit.

Re:Cost

[jamstar7]

Sounds to me like they could use a few dozen Russian engineers.

The way the Russkis used to do things was, design and build a prototype with all the bells and whistles and kitchen sink. Get it working. Then re-engineer it back to something a goat herder in Kazikstan could use with 5 minutes' training. Case in point? The MiG-23. They could crank them out for a cost of about 3.3 mil per, when the nearest Western equivilent was the Kfir C2 coming in at 4.5 mil and the F16 at 14. They used aircraft grade aluminum and stainless steel where Western aircraft were using titanium. They couldn't engage as many targets, but you could have 90%+ of them available to fly at a moment's notice where maintanance cycles grounded up to 2/3rds of the F16s at a time.

Re:Cost

[ozmanjusri]

Or you could compare it to something similar:

The original University of Queensland's HyShot hypersonic tests were done for less than $2 million. Even better well-funded followup flights were around $4.5 million.

http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2004/s1127540.htm [abc.net.au]