In 2004 a twelve-foot unmanned NASA aircraft hit Mach 9.6 and set an air-breathing speed record that still stands today — then America cancelled the Mach 15 machine meant to come next and spent twenty years watching Russia and China field the hypersonic w

In 2004 a twelve-foot unmanned NASA aircraft hit Mach 9.6 and set an air-breathing speed record that still stands today — then America cancelled the Mach 15 machine meant to come next and spent twenty years watching Russia and China field the hypersonic w

Summary and Key Points: On November 16, 2004, a twelve-foot unmanned NASA aircraft lit a scramjet with no moving parts and rode it to Mach 9.6 — nearly ten times the speed of sound — a record still unbroken twenty years later. NASA had already mapped its Mach 15 successor, the X-43D. The X-43A was a small experimental research aircraft designed to flight-demonstrate the technology of airframe-integrated supersonic ramjet or “scramjet” propulsion…