Pentagon's $140M USD Hypersonic Missile Crashes and Burns

[IDemo]

Source: Daily Tech

Call it the #failmissile: America's dream of shooting missiles at hypersonic speeds around the globe at its enemies have been put on hold after a costly research program endured a second major malfunction.

The ballyhooed X-51A "WaveRider" plummeted unceremoniously into the cold outstretched arms of the Pacific Ocean on Wednesday, ending a much hyped test launch.

The third test for the project, went much like the last. The high-tech payload was carried aloft by a B-52 bomber from Edwards Air Force Base in southern California. Over the waters near Pugu State Park the missile was dropped, falling for four seconds before the booster lit.

About 15 seconds into the booster burn, the flight crew noticed something was going wrong -- a fin on the rocket had gone out of control just as the design was creeping up towards the speeds necessary to ignite the scramjet engine. Shortly thereafter control was lost.

Read more: http://www.dailytech.com/Pentagons+140M+USD+Hypersonic+Missile+Crashes+and+Burns/article25427.htm

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[randome]

1. And what enemies are we protecting ourselves against?

[Poll_Blind]

3. We're not. This is a first strike weapon.

And why we even need a new first strike weapon when we have nuclear submarines outfitted with cruise/ballistic missiles is beyond me.

PB

[Thor_MN]

16. We already paid for those.

[Poll_Blind]

18. Damned good point. Shaking my head and nodding at the same time on this end. nt

PB

[Thor_MN]

20. Ouch... That hurts my neck to think about.

Don't do that...

[xchrom]

12. +1

[Hugabear]

2. Nothing a few hundred million dollars more won't fix

Here in 'Murika, we spare no expense when it comes to coming up with new ways to kill people halfway around the world.

[arcane1]

6. Indeed, sometimes I think these things are meant to never work properly

just to keep the $$$ flowing in for R&D

[leveymg]

8. Particularly when they've already used them to impress the Chinese and Russians. Like this one:

&playnext=1&list=PL726D689B5CA4BB43&feature=results_main

[PD Turk]

21. I don't know how impressed the Russians would be

...since they built it. That's a Russian Soyuz-U on the way to the ISS

[leveymg]

22. Must've been the world's slowest, lowest rise to orbit. Launched on 06/30/10.

Last edited Wed Aug 15, 2012, 11:41 PM - Edit history (1)

Seems to have taken a week to reach Hangzhou, China from its launch in Kazakhstan - 2800 miles north-west. Even the time of day doesn't line up, no matter what the "debunking story" says here: http://www.documentingreality.com/forum/f181/ufo-over-chinese-airport-9th-july-2010-debunked-57104/

According to the Wiki the Soyuz launch was on 30 June 2010 at 3:35pm (15:35 UTC): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_M-06M

Progress M-06M, identified by NASA as Progress 38P, is a Russian Progress spacecraft which was launched in June 2010 to resupply the International Space Station. It was the 38th Progress to dock with the space station and the third of year 2010.
Contents

1 Launch
2 First docking attempt
3 Docking
4 ISS reboost
5 Undocking and deorbit
6 References

Launch

The Soyuz-U rocket used to launch the Progress M-06M spacecraft was delivered to the Baikonur Cosmodrome in early March 2010.[2] The rocket was manufactured by TsSKB-Progress at Samara.

The Progress was launched successfully on 30 June 2010 at 15:35 UTC.[

[PD Turk]

23. Here

http://forgetomori.com/2010/ufos/ufo-over-hangzhou-china-a-long-expos/

It's obviously a multi stage rocket, you can see stage separation in the video at about :033

[leveymg]

24. See above

[PD Turk]

25. don't know when the video was shot

But what is in the video is undoubtedly a multi-stage rocket

[leveymg]

26. Every source says July 7, and time of day (dusk) at that time of year is @ 8:05 pm, Hangzhou time.

Sorry. Kazakhstan is two time zones away.



Average Weather On July 7 For Hangzhou, China - WeatherSpark
https://weatherspark.com/.../7/7/Hangzhou-Zhejiang-China
Average Weather On July 7 For Hangzhou, China ... Nautical twilight begins and ends 60 minutes before sunrise and after sunset at 4:03am and 8:05pm, ...

[PD Turk]

27. still no proof of when or where that particular video was shot

even if it wasn't video of that particular launch described at the site I linked, the video IS undoubtedly of a multiple stage rocket headed to orbit. Stage separation is clear as it can be at about :33 in the video

[leveymg]

30. True. But, that video appeared on YouTube within 24 hours.

I never claimed that it wasn't some sort of aerospace vehicle. It just doesn't look like a typical staging to me, which has a clear separation and ignition of an upper stage. To me, it looks more like some sort of laminar separation or pulsing of the contrail.

Here's a more typical staging event: Minotaur launch at dusk, Vandenberg, AFB:

[PD Turk]

31. I've watched a lot of launches

Kind of a hobby of mine lol. I've noticed that the American rockets sem to have a longer pause before ignition of the next stage and the Russian rockets light em up a lot faster, sometimes i looks like they blow the previous stage off by firing up the next engines lol

[leveymg]

33. No recorded space launches anywhere in the world during period 6/30/10 - 7/10/10

Record is here: http://www.spacelaunchreport.com/log2010.html

2010 SPACE LAUNCH LOG


=========================================================================
SPACE LAUNCH REPORT

2010 ORBITAL/SUBORBITAL LAUNCH LOG
=========================================================================
by Ed Kyle as of December 29, 2010
=========================================================================

YEAR TO DATE ORBITAL SPACE LAUNCH LOG

DATE VEHICLE ID PAYLOAD MASS(t) SITE* ORBIT**
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SNIP
06/30/10 Soyuz U 1758 Progress M-06M (38P) 7.25 TB 1/5 LEO/ISS
07/10/10 Proton M/Briz M P358 Echostar 15 5.52 TB 200/39 GTO+
07/12/10 PSLV-CA C-15 Cartosat 2B/Altsat 2A 0.82 SR 1 LEO/S
07/31/10 CZ-3A CZ3A17 Beidou 2-5 XC 3 GTO/i
SNIP

[leveymg]

35. Of course, another possibility is that it was a Chinese suborbital launch vehicle.

There is reference to such a program: http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?212496-The-history-of-Chinese-Suborbital-launch-vehicle-plan

The history of Chinese Suborbital launch vehicle plan

The beginning of Chinese Suborbital launch vehicle plan is very earlier, much earlier than X-37B. It originted from a paper of Qian'xuesen(known as Tsien Hsue-shen, one founder of JPL, persecutd by McCarthyism). In this paper, he descirbed a boost-glide trajectory called Qian'xuesen trajectory. When he returned to China because of McCarthyism, he bulid a team to research aerocraft based on Qian'xuesen trajectory. Due to the weak Industrial Capacity at that time, the plan of Chinese Suborbital launch vehicle was very slow, but ererything changed since 1990s.

Nowday, there are two competitors for Chinese Suborbital launch vehicle plan, 611th institude of AVIC and 10th institude of CASC. The scheme of 10th institude is like CAV of Lockheed, a highly maneuverable warhead based on boost-glide trajectory. The scheme of 611th is more similar to a space plane based on boost-glide trajectory. Because of the experience of desining aerodynamic architecture, the scheme of 611th runs more smoothly, and there was a successful test several years ago.

[leveymg]

36. And, that's what it was over Hangzhou: Chinese military DF-31 or DF-21D maneuverable vehicle launch

Last edited Thu Aug 16, 2012, 02:47 PM - Edit history (2)

And, this new generation of steerable, highly-accurate missiles, along with the anti-ship DF-21D and Russian hypersonic cruise missile (bottom image) is why the aircraft carrier is now extinct.

Reported here: http://my.opera.com/mycpaiva/blog/missile-defense-frames-used-in-unclassified-presentations-american-institute-fo





Note: The date on the photos says 07/10/10, which doesn't line up. But, the still shots appear to nearly identical to the video. There's been some fudging around with the details, as well as the "UFO" cover story, probably by the PRC.

DF-21D Anti-ship Missile, Maneuverable warhead shown below. Bottom panel is a competing design by the Brahmos consortium (Russia-India aerospace) for a hypersonic air or ground launched cruise missile:

[postulater]

29. Wow! A UFO that comes with its' own soundtrack.

I wouldn't have expected that.

[tiny elvis]

4. anyone who puts a nuke on a missile is unsurpassably irresponsible

no matter what his reasons

[sarcasmo]

5. 140 million that could have been spent on education.

[onethatcares]

14. 140 million that could have been spent on medical care

I can't say much more than that.

[Ash_F]

34. Maybe if they spend 140 million on education...

the next one won't blow up.

[Posteritatis]

7. They've only got one more left, so that's probably it for that program. (nt)

[Lasher]

9. See, they shoulda launched it from an Osprey.

Betcha that woulda worked even better.

[bluedigger]

10. Drat!

[Incitatus]

11. But Obama set up a little brewery with his own money.

[lovuian]

13. this makes me sick

we can't keep spending our children's future on WAR

[Citizen Worker]

15. We've spent $140 million? Peanuts compared to the $7 billion each for three Zumwalt class

destroyers the navy says it doesn't need.

[IDemo]

19. A million here, a billion there,

pretty soon you're talking real money. Real misspent money.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

17. Don't get me started!

[Tommy_J]

28. This research has value besides weapons

If hypersonic scram jets can be developed space flight could become much cheaper. For that reason I hope we do more testing.

[Ter]

32. Funny how Project Aurora was faster and never crashed

And 20 years ago. Of course, that one was (is?) manned and never admitted to even exist.