Falcon Hypersonic Plane

From DefenseTech:

A decade after the final retirement of Lockheed Martin’s Mach-3 SR-71 Blackbird spy plane, the Air Force is preparing to test a plane that flies more than three times as fast. Two Falcon Hypersonic Test Vehicles, built by Lockheed Martin with input from NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), will take to the air in 2008. The $100-million program aims to field a Mach-10 unmanned aircraft that can spy on foreign powers, drop bombs or even lob satellites into orbit.

Read the rest here!

This project, aimed at making a Mach 10 aircraft, will drive all sorts of R&D in the form of high temperature resistant, light weight materials, as wll as aerodynamic research and propulsion technology…which, or course, will one day make it’s way into all sorts of other markets to give us things we haven’t even conceived of yet.

That thing will fly so fast, they may not have to design a relief tube system for the aircrew.