Back on May 26, 2010 the X-51A WaveRider, an unmanned aerial vehicle (didn’t we used to called them planes?) ran for more than three minutes at full throttle, or five times the speed of sound over the Pacific Ocean. The secret to this record setting flight? A Scramjet engine. Think of a Scramjet as ram air to the millionth power. 

We’re certainly not rocket scientists but we know a teeny bit about these bad ass machines.

Unlike a turbine engine a Scramjet is a rocket engine with very few moving parts. There are no fans, or turbine stages, etc. Instead there is a rocket engine designed to essentially make increasingly more power the faster it goes. Using the speed of the vehicle itself to compress the air in the rocket nozzle, the engines are designed to run at supersonic speeds. The tricky part of Scramjet engines is the fact that they need to be accelerated to their operating speed in order to work.

In the test of the WaveRider, the vehicle was launched off the wing of a B-52 and initially accelerated by a solid rocket booster taken off a tactical missile. Once it hit Mach 4.5, the engine lit off and ran on a mix of ethylene and JP-7 jet fuel to start before running on straight JP-7 for the remainder of the flight. 

The test was a rousing success and set a record for scramjet performance with it’s Mach 5 top end charge. Take that Bugatti Veyron!

This project is joint effort between private companies Boeing Phanton Works and Pratt&Whitney Rocketdyne. We’d have to believe that the people working on this project are pretty stoked with these results. Stories like this warm out hearts. We still make some kick ass stuff in this country.

Haul ass scramjet rockets included.

Here’s the full release about the test flight:

In its first flight, an X-51A WaveRider successfully completed the longest supersonic combustion ramjet-powered flight in history on May 26 — nearly three and a half minutes at a top speed of Mach 5. The unmanned aerial vehicle, built by the Boeing Co. in St. Louis, Mo., was released at an altitude of 50,000 ft (15,240m) from a U.S. Air Force B-52H bomber off the southern California coast and flew autonomously, powered by its Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne supersonic combustion ramjet (scramjet) motor, as it transmitted telemetry data to ground stations. The vehicle lost acceleration and plunged into the Pacific Ocean, as planned.

“The technology proven today is something The Boeing Co. has worked on for the past seven years,” says Alex Lopez, vice president of the Advanced Network & Space Systems division of Boeing Phantom Works, which is a division of Boeing Defense, Space & Security. He contends that the X-51A program will pave the way to future access to space: ”The leap in engine technology will be the equivalent to the post-World War II leap from propellers to jet engines.”

Joe Vogel, Boeing’s director of hypersonics and the X-51A program manager, noted that the flight was a new world record and sets the foundation for several hypersonic applications, including access to space, reconnaissance, strike, global reach and even commercial transportation.

After release from the B-52H’s wing, a solid rocket booster from a U.S. Army tactical missile accelerated the X-51A to about Mach 4.5 before it and a connecting interstage were jettisoned. The X-51A’s engine ignited on a mix of ethylene and JP-7 jet fuel. After a short period, the X-51A ran exclusively on JP-7 jet fuel. The flight reached top speed an altitude of about 70,000 ft (21,336m). According to Vogel, carbon/carbon composites protect the leading edges of the craft’s fins and cowls, while the majority of the top surfaces are protected by a Boeing-developed silica-based thermal protection system: “We also use a modified variant of space shuttle tile, called Boeing Reusable Insulation (BRI) tiles, on the ramp and several areas on the lower surfaces of the X-51.”

The team will review the test data before scheduling additional flights for three remaining test vehicles. Boeing Phantom Works performed the design, assembly and testing for the X-51A’s components. The program is a collaborative effort of the Air Force Research Laboratory (Wright-Paterson AFB, Ohio) and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, with industry partners Boeing and Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne.