There is nothing quite like the military to push the boundaries of what is possible in the world of technology, and once again, there is a new air-breathing engine in town which could very well prove to be the baby step towards achieving Mach 20 planes – which would definitely allow it to fly beyond any suit that Tony Stark is capable of mustering. The ride in question that we are talking about is Boeing’s X-51A WaveRider, which happens to be a jet-fueled, air-breathing hypersonic rocket that was specially developed for who else, but the U.S. Air Force.
It recently went hypersonic during a recent test off the Southern California coast, where it managed to fly at over five times the speed of sound. This air-breathing engine managed to defy conventional wisdom as it smashed its previous time in flight record by remaining in the air at hypersonic speeds for three minutes, allowing it to travel coast to coast in under 40 minutes with the possibility of making deep-space exploration a possibility. Defense agency DARPA is definitely going to see how such technology can be further advanced in the coming years, with one of the goals being the capability to achieve global-range, maneuverable, hypersonic flight at Mach 20.
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