The Pentagon's hypersonic plane failure at 31 seconds of being launched

I was going to be revolutionary a hypersonic aircraft would travel at five times the speed of sound. A group of engineers from the U.S. Air Force had joined the prototype in a hangar at Edwards Military Base in the Mojave Desert in California. They were going to launch over the Pacific Ocean, which would fly at 5,790 mph. Could he, in short, to travel the journey from Madrid to New York in just under an hour. The dream lasted exactly 15 seconds. On Tuesday, after 15 seconds of flight, the prototype, dubbed X-51A WaveRider, crashed into the ocean, because of mechanical failure of the parties, the control fin. He had been released from Mugunu Point, a promontory under military control in southern California, north of Los Angeles. It was manned. Was expected to fly at least five minutes, which could have traveled 300 kilometers, given the supposed power of their engines. The plane used as a launch military bomber B-52 Stratofortress. Was attached to his right wing. They flew together for 16 seconds. The X-51A WaveRider successfully separated, and the main engine started properly, and then collapsed, because of technical failure of the flap, after 15 seconds alone. Now lies at the bottom of the Pacific. "Unfortunately, a problem with a subsystem caused the termination [of flight] before we could turn on [another driver] Scramjet model," he said in a statement Charlie Brink , director of the research project at the Laboratory of Aera Force Research . "All our information indicated that we had created the conditions for engine start and we hoped to achieve the objectives of our test." This was the third flight of the prototype. The first, in 2010, met its modest goals: a journey of 143 seconds, at 5,600 kilometers per hour.The second trip was more rugged. It happened in 2011. The plane was launched from a height of 1.5 kilometers, also from Point Mugunu. As part of his shuttle, the X-51A Wave Rider fell into the water like a bomb.He was only nine seconds in the air, all falling at breakneck speed. At the Air Force are already limited resources. C available uatro that prototype models , which helped the aerospace company Boeing and engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney rocket Rocketdyne. Three are already on the seafloor. The cost of the program, has revealed the website specializing in military affairs Globalsecurity.org is 140 million dollars (113 million euros). The Pentagon still has not decided whether that fourth plane will fly in the near future. In the prototype Force have worked so Aera as the Agency for Advanced Research Projects of Defense (DARPA, for its acronym in English). The latter is a real hotbed of ideas and prototypes military then find remarkable applications in civilian life. In their offices was designed and created a prototype Internet. For the three injured shoots X-51A WaveRider told the armed forces, also in cooperation with NASA.