

Superfast military plane hit Mach 20 before crash - danberger
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44208437/ns/technology_and_science-space/t/superfast-military-plane-hit-mach-crash/

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stcredzero
This is exciting, because it opens the door for space elevators that don't
rendezvous with a stationary point on the ground, but with hypersonic planes.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-
rocket_spacelaunch#Hyperson...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-
rocket_spacelaunch#Hypersonic_bolus_.28HASTOL.29)

[http://www.enotes.com/topic/Tether_propulsion#HASTOL_.E2.80....](http://www.enotes.com/topic/Tether_propulsion#HASTOL_.E2.80.94_Earth_launch_assist_rotovator)

This puts the tensile strength necessary into the realm of existing high-
strength polymer cables.

If we could build a robust fully-reusable space plane that can go Mach 15, and
we could also find a way to rendezvous it with a rotating tether, we could
free ourselves from the nastiness of the rocket equation and achieve
inexpensive space access.

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makmanalp
Would you care to talk about why anyone would ever want a space elevator? (as
opposed to just rockets)

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patio11
It's wish fulfillment for sci-fi geeks, a deus ex machine made out of
unobtanium which purports to answer the question "Is there any reason to go to
space other than fulfilling the fantasies of sic-fi geeks given that getting
to space is so fantastically expensive as to swamp all benefit of commercial
activity other than artificial communications satellites?"

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metachris
It's not quite that expensive -- NASA's budget from 1958 to 2011 was about
$800 billion. To put it into perspective, the US has a yearly military budget
of about $660 billion.

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onemoreact
US military budget is well over 660 billion. You only get that low by
separating things like military pensions and healthcare costs.

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jasonwatkinspdx
The most significant difference between this prototype and existing ICBM
technology is that the reentry vehicle has more lift and less drag.

It's counterintuitive, but re-entry vehicles are typically bluntly shaped
because it reduces the heat load on the nose cone by pushing the bow shock
further out in front of the craft. The downside of this is higher drag and
less lift, so ICBM warheads fall more than they glide.

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blackguardx
I think this is why they are called "ballistic missiles." They fall to earth
as if they were an artillery round.

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dredmorbius
That and the fact that most of the flight is in an unpowered, "ballistic"
mode, rather than powered for the full duration.

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vl
>The HTV-2 is part of an advanced weapons program called Conventional Prompt
Global Strike, which is working to develop systems to reach an enemy target
anywhere in the world within one hour.

Wait, but don't ICBMs have like 40 min strike time for any target in the world
since, like, sixties? (Ok, in the sixties they couldn't aim this fast).

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icarus_drowning
Yes, but launching an ICBM has the rather unfortunately consequence of
telegraphing the message that you are about to nuke someone. Hence the program
is a non-ballistic one that seeks an alternative means of delivering a payload
as quickly. As a bonus, I gather that the HTV program promises to be more
accurate.

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burgerbrain
It's my impression that the rocket used to launch this thing would likely
still set off early warning launch detection systems.

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dkarl
It seems like that sinks the entire idea. A weapon that is suitable for a
nuclear first strike doesn't seem like a weapon that is suitable for much
else, unless we're on unimaginably good terms with all the other nuclear
powers. The fact that we must consider the possibility of military conflict
with China makes it especially troubling to consider building a weapon like
that and developing a defense strategy that depends on it. Can you imagine
getting in a war with China and suddenly launching a dozen ICBMs with
conventional weapons on them? Of course we would never do that. It would be
insane to do anything that looked like a first strike during a conflict with
China. Or Russia, for that matter. Hell, it would probably be insane to do it
even if we weren't at war with Russia or China. The mere fact that this plane
could deliver a nuclear weapon to Moscow or Beijing in under an hour means
that it would be unwise to use it for anything else.

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arethuza
Why "must" the US consider a conflict with their main overseas creditor?

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dkarl
The US already has interests all over the world, and China is barely emerging
as a world power. They will consider it fair for their influence to grow, and
we will see it growing at the expense of ours. China's interests in Africa,
its win/win deals with African nations that need industrial know-how and have
raw materials to feed Chinese growth, already made the news here in the U.S.,
if only for a little while. Chinese culture and American culture are
different, and as we come into competition for international influence, clever
xenophobes on each side will attempt to frame the competition as a showdown
between good and evil. Add to that the machinations of people and corporations
whose financial interests are at stake, and you have powerful forces pushing
for war. It seems naive to think that we won't go to war with China, to hope
that we are the first generation that can avoid war under these circumstances.

Then again, it is each generation's duty to hope to rise above the last. I
hope that friendly attitudes and cosmopolitan cynicism can combine to keep
conflict from flaring up, and to snuff out any little conflagrations that
spring up instead of escalating them out of pride and fear. But inevitably we
must plan for the opposite contingency. At the very least we must plan for
mistrust and tension, and therefore, at the very least we cannot depend on a
weapon that is indistinguishable from a first strike. The only reason to
develop it is for research purposes.

P.S. Oh, man, isn't it a tempting idea to snuff out your main creditor? Nobody
in the Congress has a more realistic plan for getting rid of the national
debt.

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vl
You make an interesting point, but it seems that current way of thinking is
that mutually assured destruction of the nuclear war will prevent the war
between US and China.

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prawn
I know they're very different beasts and in completely different situations,
but it's still interesting to remember that Voyager 1, using 30+ yo
technology, is currently going about three times as fast as this plane.

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dredmorbius
30 year old technology... and a few gravity assists.

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prawn
Even older 'technology'...

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JoeAltmaier
SO the worlds highest-bandwidth network protocol just went from a 747 full of
thumb drives, to this scramjet full of thumb drives!

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sliverstorm
This scramjet is not particularly large. A 747 on the other hand, while
traveling 20-40x slower, could fit petabytes of data.

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Groxx
Given that, I'd bet a decent-sized freight train, or tanker, would be able to
vastly out-do a 747. With worse ping time, but for sheer bandwidth...

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adrianwaj
That plane will render anti-ballistic missiles useless and make possible long-
range targeted assassinations.

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Groxx
ICBMs have been going roughly this speed for a while now, so anti-ballistic
missiles either have been useless for a while, or will continue to work. The
shuttle goes a good deal faster (mach 25) on re-entry. And as soon as you
strip away the need to land and be re-used (the hallmarks of an "airplane"),
your anti-super-fast-airplane missiles become much cheaper and faster than the
plane, so even a small success rate serves as an effective deterrent in many
cases.

This is a tech experiment. It may lead to advances in airplanes, but I highly
doubt it is cost-effective compared to an equivalent _missile_ that just slams
home.

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cleaver
ICBM's fly outside of the atmosphere and they don't turn... IE. they're
ballistic. I could see that something designed to hit the predictable path of
a ballistic missile at mach 20 would fail to hit an aircraft which can turn at
mach 20. (How well this thing can actually turn is another question.)

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niels_olson
see my comment below: radius of an 8g turn at mach 20 (330 m/s * 20) is 555
km. I choose 8 g because that's roughly what we think a sunburn (ss-n-22) can
do, and that thing is built like brick shit-house.

now, to add to that: the radius of a 1 g turn at mach 20 is 4444 km. The
radius of the earth is 6378 km. They've got to at least consider orbital
mechanics just to hold altitude constant. Able to maneuver and highly
maneuverable are two different things. The Titantic was able to maneuver. Just
couldn't move fast enough.

Now, let's think about some other fun stuff, everybody join in.

Here's one: at mach 20, you need something along the lines of the shuttle's
thermal protection system. We're talking plasma hot. Wrap this thing up in 3
inches of glass and I'll bet you've lost significant payload volume.

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adrianwaj
In terms of payload, and as someone asked below, "ordinance and yield" Would
it actually need any? Smashing mach 20 into a target would yield tremendous
kinetic force without explosives.

Same principle as a <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railgun> where projectiles
travel at 5,400 mph, and the gun can be situated on an aircraft carrier.

On that note, the article above mentions railguns as way to launch spacecraft
into orbit: applicable for this Mach 20 plane.

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wbhart
Some months ago I observed an object crossing the sky at night from Coventry
UK. It crossed the entire extent of the sky in about 2 seconds. It was very
high up and had a red glow like that of a jet afterburner. It didn't fade out
or change brightness as you might expect of a meteor and wasn't white as you'd
expect of a satellite. I wondered at the time if someone was testing a very
fast military vehicle. It would be interesting to know what various nations
are working on.

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andrewcooke
does anyone know if they had telemetry to the thing (which is difficult
because of the plasma, but used to be possible at least at shuttle speeds from
the tail)? or are they hoping some kind of black box survived? and if they had
no telemetry is this report inferred from observations of the flight (only)?

[related - does the telemetry problem mean that if something like this ever
went into production, it would be largely autonomous?]

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toyg
The reports I've seensay they had a live datalink (I guess one-way only) which
lasted nine minutes. They said they're happy with the data anyway, even though
they don't know where it crashed (technically they don't even know it crashed,
only that it stopped sending data), so they're clearly not relying on a black-
box.

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jchrisa
It looks like the spaceship from Flight of the Navigator.

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bluesmoon
Wait. 3 minutes at Mach 20 will get you from SFO to PDX easily, though I
suppose it will take longer than that to take off and land.

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edge17
I thought they couldn't find the plane after it was lost? Did they find where
it came down?

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runjake
Telemetry data was logged during the flight. They don't need to recover the
aircraft for telemetry.

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molecule
What ordinance and yield is it designed to deliver?

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iwwr
Surveillance camera, faster and less predictable than a satellite (and faster
than the SR-71). Nothing can fly as fast inside the atmosphere, no way to lob
a missile or artillery at it.

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troels
_Nothing can fly as fast inside the atmosphere, no way to lob a missile or
artillery at it._

Assuming it's going in a straight line (Which wouldn't be unreasonable at that
speed), you just need to send something up to block its path.

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pointyhat
We already have the technology to shoot it down and have done for years:

<http://www.raytheon.com/capabilities/products/ekv/>

Inevitably, someone else probably has it too.

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arethuza
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-400_%28SAM%29>

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InclinedPlane
Keep in mind that this vehicle was just for collecting data, a conventional
rocket did the work to accelerate it to mach 20. There's nothing the HTV-2 can
do other than decelerate and maneuver.

