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[Joe Vogel Director of Hypersonics, Boeing Defense, Space & Security]
What is the world going to look like in 20 years if you can get on an airplane
and get from one end of the country to the other in less than an hour?
That would be pretty cool.
I think this technology offers that to people
at some point in the future if this is the warp drive of today.
A scramjet is a new type of engine.
The scramjet engine functions by compressing the air with the shock wave
as you move through the atmosphere.
And so as it's compressing the air, it's compressing the fuel in the air,
and then it ignites it releasing heat and energy,
which is then expanded out the back end through a nozzle,
and then we light the scarmjet engine, and we are flying at about Mach 4.5.
It's akin to lighting a match in a hurricane and keeping it lit.
At Mach 5 you are traveling about a mile a second.
So if you fly 160 seconds, you've managed to fly
160 miles in that rough period of time.
The access to space, it's another piece of that growth path.
It's the golden ring in space access and transportation.
I think X-51 is one of those type of technologies.
It's a turning point in technology.
You will look back in the history books, I would suspect,
and this will be one of the technologies that will
make that transition to a new world of travel.
I am told on a regular basis that you can't do this.
That's actually a challenge that I like to take.
We don't believe in impossible.
We believe that anything is achievable if you set your mind to it.
It's back to doing something nobody has ever done before.
[Boeing]