Powered by a scramjet engine, the X-51A Waverider is aiming to reach Mach 6 when it undergoes another test next Tuesday. Unfortunately, “during the last test, the Waverider managed to achieve Mach 5, but it took longer to get there than engineers had hoped, and the test flight was terminated a minute and a half early.” Video after the break.
Data from that flight revealed that the vehicle gets so hot from friction with the air that the engine actually grows in size by nearly an inch, and this (plus other factors) may have caused a seal to fail. The X-51A Waverider uses a scramjet engine, which uses no moving parts at all but can achieve speeds anywhere from Mach 12 to Mach 24.
[via Dvice]
