Why the Interest in a Canceled 50 Year Old Tech. Boost Glide.... The Bell x-20 Dyna-Soar

How many of you have ever heard of  the Boeing X-20 Dyna-Soar?  How about "boost-glide"? Not ringing to many bells or prompting too many memories huh?

Well this is a subject that was put to me today which was look up boost glide and as close as I could come was a long canceled project that involved Boeing and a some what shuttle looking lifting body called the  X-20 Dyna-Soar. (Check it out HERE)  Though it never flew, it did however have some impressive  performance goals, one of which was the ability to be anywhere on the Earth's surface in an hour.  The X-20 could attain these hyper velocities by being boosted by a rocket and then gliding at many times the speed of sound to its target.  As you can see  Boost  Glide. 

But this project was canceled more than 50 years ago after sucking up 660 million (that's about 5 billion in today's dollars) Why get excited about that?   According to this 2011 Space News Article

• Currently, the Department of Defense has no plans to replace nuclear weapons on ICBMs or submarine-launched ballistic missiles with conventional weapons that fly ballistic trajectories,

Now consider that in 2011 there seemed to be no interest in boost glide weapons and technology when in fact the former Bush administration seems to have been VERY interested.   Check out this NPR audio file HERE

X-51A Aircraft Test Flight Ends in Failure

Xnewsman sends in an article from the LA Times concerning the experimental hyper-sonic test bed X-51a, where the plane's most recent flight ended in failure.

According to the article:

• The unmanned X-51A was launched over the Pacific Tuesday from above the Point Mugu Naval Air Test Range to fine-tune its hypersonic scramjet engine.

In this most recent test the plane was supposed to accelerate to mach 6 and fly for a five minute window.  However the "scram" engine never fired.   Fifteen seconds after it was released from its' cradle, under the wing of a B-52, a fault was discovered in the control surfaces that would prevent straight and level flight causing the craft to lose control.  

That leaves the X-51a fleet with only one remaining plane and officials doubt that it will fly anytime soon, if ever.  

Scientists on the project said that research into hypersonic flight is crucial to the next generation of missiles, military aircraft, spacecraft -- and even passenger planes.