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Tuesday, July 10, 2012

DARPA aiming for Mach-20 hypersonic rocketplane 'by 2016'


Pentagon wild-card warboffin agency DARPA has plunged back into the hypersonics fray with a vengeance, announcing plans to build a "recoverable" rocket plane capable of Mach 20 speeds within four years.

The new project appears under the banner "Integrated Hypersonics", acknowledging that several new technologies will be needed to get aeroplanes flying at twenty times the speed of sound.

Ramjet and scramjet fans will be disappointed, however. DARPA seems to have accepted that there's no realistic prospect of using air-breathing engines at these speeds, and instead the agency envisages a plane which will be powered up to flying speed by a disposable rocket stack or "launch vehicle" and then enter a hypersonic glide.

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