The Medium Frontier

Here we have the X-51 mounted on a hard point on the wing of a B-52. Since the days of the X-15 cutting edge flights have been launched this way.

This bird is a Scramjet, a descendant of the ramjets that powered the V-1 "Buzz-bombs" of WWII. In those days the engine swallowed air to be mixed in the combustion chamber with fuel to produce a continuous series of explosions, the jet's speed forcing the air down her throat. (You can see a V-1 attack in Jimmy Stewart's The Glenn Miller Story.)

The Scramjet is similar in that her fuel, hydrogen, is mixed with air driven down her throat at very high speed. She's expected to max out at Mach 7, about 5000+ MPH., at 70,000 ft.. A very high stepper indeed.

God's speed X-51.

JimG33

Back in the day.

In the early 60's a decision had to be made, ICBMs or long range high speed bombers, which would end civilization as we know it. The Convair B-58 Hustler tried to answer one half of that question. The pod under her chin carries an unknown, to me, amount of warheads. Her complexity killed her. But she still flies at her Mach 2 plus velocity in our hearts.