On Tuesday, an Air Force B-52 bomber will take off from Edwards Air Force Base in California and fire off an experimental hypersonic missile. If all goes well for the military’s flight test, the missile will accelerate past Mach 5, rush more than 300 miles in less than five minutes, and usher in a new chapter in high-speed warfare. If it fails — and the last two tests of this X-51A Waverider have fallen short — then the Pentagon will have sent something on the order of $300 million to the bottom of the Pacific.
from Wired Top Stories