If Boeing and the US Air Force succeed in getting its hypersonic aircraft to stay in flight for more than a few minutes, we will be one step closer to both commercial and military hypersonic flight.
On Tuesday, the unmanned X-51A WaveRider will take off from the Edwards Air Force base in Southern California's Mojave Desert. It will be attached to a B-52 bomber's wing, and once it is dropped from the wing, it is expected to fly at Mach 6, which is six times the speed of sound and over 3,600 miles per hour, as explained in the Air Force factsheet. The hypersonic speed is expected to last only 300 seconds, but that's twice as long as it's ever gone at that speed.
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