Don’t blink! Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 flies at Mach 20
We learn from our mistakes.
At least MOST of us in the U.S. outside of Wall Street and Washington, D.C. do…. 
The flight of the Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 that was launched on August 11 at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, was technically a failure. Today, DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency; you remember them – along with Al Gore and others, they invented the Internet) issued a release (How smart can they be? The “.aspx” suffix says that they are running Windows! ) which said that over 20 air, land, sea, and space data collection systems were operational during the 3-minute flight! The Pentagon released a video of the test flight of the unmanned experimental vehicle zipping through the air at 13,000 miles/hour above the Pacific Ocean. The flight from Vandenberg started aboard an eight-story Minotaur IV rocket made by Orbital Sciences Corporation.
After reaching an undisclosed suborbital altitude, the Falcon jettisoned its protective cover and then dived back to earth. The PLANNED flight was for the Falcon to fly westward for 30 minutes and then dive into the ocean near Kwajalein Atoll, about 4,000 miles from Vandenberg.
This was the last flight of the Falcon. Both flights failed their objectives and cost taxpayers about $320 million.
But you can believe that this is NOT the last time we will hear about hypersonic flight….
-Bill at
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