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back to article Hypersonic flight test hits Mach 7.5

Australia's venerable Woomera rocket range last week hosted a successful hypersonic test in which the experimental HiFiRE rocket hit Mach 7.5 and an apogee of 278 km. The data-gathering experiment wasn't testing a hypersonic motor – sorry “Sydney to London in two hours” fans – but rather carried instruments to observe the …

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  1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
    Pint

    Wow!

    We get to see so many "slow" launches of big rockets, usually from a distance so reducing the perception of speed even more, I'd almost forgotten just how amazingly fast a rocket can actually go! That one went off like shit off of shovel! I wonder what the max G force was?

    Drinks all round for all involved.

    17 0 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      Watching the plume shadow race across the landscape is quite something

      And it's yet another perspective that cheap quadcopters have brought us, close-up aerial views of rocket launches. Once you remove both the cost of a helicopter and the risk to the life of its pilot there's no end to the interesting things to peer at.

      11 0 Reply
      1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: Watching the plume shadow race across the landscape is quite something

        Quote

        no end to the interesting things to peer at.

        Yes there are lost of interesting things to peer at not all of them legal.

        Any voyeur flying one of these things should be strapped to one of these rockets for the next launch or put naked into the stocks for a week.See how they like that.

        Just saying..

        1 7 Reply
        1. lglethal Silver badge
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          Paris Hilton

          Completely off topic...

          Completely off topic but I have never understood the saying "Like shit off a shovel". Having spent a ridiculously large amount of time in my youth picking up dog shit with a shovel (owning multiple dogs does have its drawbacks - at least if you like being able to walk around your backyard). I can testify that shit does not travel quickly off a shovel. Often it requires multiple hits of the shovel against the side of the bin to get the bloody stuff off. Maybe the saying refers to some other type of shit, but dog shit is most certainly not a fast mover...

          Oh and rockets, yeah!

          13 0 Reply
          1. BurnT'offering
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            Re: Completely off topic...

            It does go quite quickly if you give the shovel a fulcrum and stamp on one end, to fling the shit, Roman-catapult style, over next-door's fence

            1 0 Reply
          2. geeksandlies
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            Re: Completely off topic...

            Grease your shovel sir!

            3 0 Reply
            1. Anonymous Coward
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              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Completely off topic...

              I recommend giving the shovel a quick spray of WD-40

              1 0 Reply
          3. Solmyr ibn Wali Barad
            Reply Icon

            Re: Completely off topic...

            You just need more of it. Try large amounts of bovine. With a sufficient thrust it'll fly just fine.

            Yes, I grew up doing just that - shovelling around tons and tons of bovine excrement. Little did I know that it'll be the most useful skill for a modern $workplace. Metaphorically speaking of course.

            1 0 Reply
          4. MotionCompensation
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            Re: Completely off topic...

            Try dog shit that has been baking in the tropical sun for a day. Hard as stone and fast as a rocket.

            1 0 Reply
          5. x 7
            Reply Icon

            Re: Completely off topic...

            "Maybe the saying refers to some other type of shit"

            bullshit

            probably.........

            0 0 Reply
    2. JeffyPoooh
      Reply Icon
      Pint

      Re: Wow!

      Part of it is the 'Big Airplanes Look Slow' effect.

      But most of it would be F=mA.

      2 0 Reply
    3. Adam 1
      Reply Icon

      Re: Wow!

      > I'd almost forgotten just how amazingly fast a rocket can actually go

      Particularly those that have just seen an Australian spider.

      7 0 Reply
    4. MotionCompensation
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      Re: Wow!

      Thank you! I shovel dog shit every morning (don't ask). After today, it will never be the same, I'll think of rockets every time!

      1 0 Reply
  2. ecofeco Silver badge

    Congratulations

    Good job. Well done.

    1 0 Reply
  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Does that mean...

    ...we've got to change the end of the world to a 2 minute warning?

    0 1 Reply
  4. Andy The Hat Silver badge

    Is this news?

    It seems to me that the collaborative team have launched a two stage rocket. Hell, loads of amateurs do that every week around the world.

    If there was a scramjet ignition or other test then that would be news but, at the moment, "A small, high speed sounding rocket was launched by the Aussies" is about as far as it goes ...

    2 1 Reply
    1. theOtherJT Silver badge
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      Re: Is this news?

      Not sure either. I thought that high mach speeds were pretty much what rockets did - orbital velocity being somewhere around mach 20 IIRC. I guess if we had more details on what they were testing there might be something interesting or special in there?

      2 0 Reply
      1. bugalugs
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        opens in new tab

        By the looks of page 3 of the pdf at the link provided in the article the research is into nose-cone shape at hypersonic velocities.

        0 0 Reply
  5. Dr Fidget

    They reckoned with Concorde it took more time to get on and off the plane than it took to cross the Atlantic. With this sort of system it's going to take more time to get on and off the plane than to fly round the world.

    Spot the bottleneck here?

    Being told to get to the airport ages before the flight is due to depart, queueing up for ages to hand over hold baggage, queueing up again for airport security which is completely inconsistent (on one flight to Crete I went through 3 sets of airport security and got different results from each)

    Sod faster aeroplanes, I'd rather not spend most of my trip stuck in the "hurry up and wait" system for boarding and leaving and I'd definitely prefer more comfortable seats, a bit of leg room, larger windows and not having the flight crew keep waking me up to see if I've changed my mind about buying a blow up model of the plane.

    0 0 Reply
    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
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      "I'd rather not spend most of my trip stuck in the "hurry up and wait" system for boarding and leaving and I'd definitely prefer more comfortable seats, a bit of leg room, larger windows and not having the flight crew keep waking me up to see if I've changed my mind about buying a blow up model of the plane."

      There's a few options. One is to be a rich celebrity who arrives and whisked through to Frist Class. Another is to be stinking rich and use your own plane.

      0 0 Reply

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