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LIVE streaming vid of hypersonic plane on nasa.gov RIGHT NOW!

i played the march 27 video, but....
i read first the b52 drops the vehicle, a pegasus rocket takes it to
mach 7, and then the scramjet starts up, so if so, this only shows the pegasus going, not the scramjet. right?
 
Well, the whole powered flight only lasted 11 seconds...

I suppose you are seeing only the rocket.

Another weird thing is that the scramjet is only capable of operating at speeds greater then mach 5.

The actual airplane itself was the first 12 feet of that rocket that took off. The rocket and the jet seperated at 3500 mph.

The cool thing is that a scramjet is like half of a liquid-fueled powered rocket. The actual jet itself has no moving parts, it's just a carefully designed tube. In a liquid fueled rocket you have oxygen combining with hydrogen to get the power needed, in the scamjet it scoops up enough of the thin air and is going so fast that it compresses it into a usable form then the hydrogen is added to the mixture and thus you get your power.

So it's like a rocket, but it collects most the fuel it needs as it flies.
 
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