So we have been studying and designing hypersonic aircraft/spacecraft

Possible does not mean profitable.

>>8837199
You would think then the government would have built at least one prototype, mot like they care about throwing money away *cough* F-35 *cough*

>>8837208
*not like

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>>8837208
Government interest for hypersonic planes waned as their place was taken by spy satellites. They only wanted a plane that was too fast to intercept.

>>8837208
Government already had hypersonic spy planes since the 1960s.

>>8837199
This. The answer to almost any question that starts with "Why don't they...." is "Money."

>>8837199
That's not even true either. Big business always chases low hanging fruit and short term profits. Given the choice between boosting profits 1000% 20 years from now and boosting them 1% 20 days from now, they'll always choose the latter.

>>8837494
So it is true, then, that the answer is that there is no immediate economic incentive to build such planes/craft.

People can get to where they need to get at a speed they are willing to pay for, and satellites fulfill any military need for them at lower cost.

>>8837501
There's incentive but the people who run our society are ineffective at their jobs.

>>8837505
No, you misunderstand what their jobs are.

>>8837505
People get to decide how much incentive is enough.

If business man A thinks it's not worth it to make a hypersonic plane then he's not obligated to do so.

If you have different priorities than make a hypersonic plane

>>8837505
>I don't understand market economics so everybody must just be incompetent

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>>8837505
Time is a part of the economic equation -- investing to maybe make money years after you leave the company, and half your stockholders die, is a bad way to run a company.

>>8837501
Ignoring whatever's going on below you, the answer is yes.

But eventually some new invention or innovation will get discovered that'll make it profitable, and that will happen because we live in a society that incentives growth

>>8837433
Oh really? Please give an example.

Government restrictions on hypersonic planes.

I remember this thread from a few weeks ago where someone said businessmen would pay anything for high speed transport, but then it turns out that is provably false because there isn't any because the only ones that existed weren't economically feasible.

>>8837406
Fucking insane plane. Fuel literally dripped out of it until the friction of flight heated the skin, expanding the panels it was made from to seal them up.

>>8837533
Not hi, and it wasn't a spy plane, but iirc the X-15 was a hypersonic aircraft.

>>8837553
Well there is a difference between absolute demand and effectual demand.

A poor person might want a yacht with all his heart but if he can't bring the capital to bear it makes no difference to the yacht industry.

The people that could mak hypersonic travel profutable are not altogether that inconvenienced by the current state of affairs

>>8837196
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1QEj09Pe6k

Learn something today.

>>8837568
>The people that could mak hypersonic travel profutable

I'd correct that slightly -- it is not just the inconvenience of the rich businessmen, it is whether it would be profitable for them to pay for what hypersonic travel would cost. It would not: they gain insufficient economic advantage from travel at that speed to be worth the cost of doing it.

With instant communication available to almost everywhere, the incentive for getting there super-fast diminished further over time, making it even less likely that a hypersonic transport will be needed.

>>8837583
>With instant communication available to almost everywhere, the incentive for getting there super-fast diminished further over time, making it even less likely that a hypersonic transport will be needed.
This. The various business-class versions of facetime have absolutely shit on the idea of business travel.

>>8837583
That's exactly my point. The people with the resources to pay for the added cost of hypersonic travel are not yet in a position where such an option is desirable enough to motivate a surge in demand.

The hypothetical cost of such travel would have to be low enough to attract scores of other demographics

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>>8837578

>>8837566
Yes, it absolutely was. But it was an experimental aircraft, a technology demonstrator.
>>8837433 stated that we had hypersonic spyplanes in service.
Unless there was some black project that the government actually managed to keep under wraps, that statement is fase.

>>8837533
Dont bother. He probably things that it was little grey men that anally probed him and not his uncle in overalls.

>>8837196

We do have functional examples, see the X-51 program (which is also likely related to the X-33/38/41/42 programs). However, all this is kept secret because they're all black projects. The SR-71 project is another notable example but with supersonic stealth flight, as it was completely developed (and often deployed) in secret.

>>8838420
"muh secret miltary darpa alien tech"

>>8837196
>why the hell don't we have even one functioning example yet?
What is the Concorde?

>>8838817
Please stop.

We've already invented everything there is to invent.

>>8838785
what a phenomenally unintelligent post

>>8839150
????

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>>8837560
It's cool, I didn't know that about the fuel.

>>8837494
1% profit every 20 days is 3700% profit in 20 years, which is more than 1000%.

>>8837196
Mass fraction isnt good enough with conventional engines.

Look up LAPCAT and associated problems

>>8839560
Concorde was supersonic, not hypersonic.

>>8837560
What a lewd of aerospace machinery.

>>8837578
Planes replaced by vacuum tunnels when?

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>>8837208
>You would think then the government would have built at least one prototype
They did

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>>8837560
Only because Skunk Works engineers were painfully short-sighted.
>Hey guise CIA want us to make them a long-range mach 3 recon jet
>Wing skins will get pretty hot going mach 3 for hours on end... thermal expansion will be an issue
>No big deal, we'll design expansion joints into the skins
>It also takes shitloads of fuel to fly supersonic for hours on end, so let's use wet wings
>Wait... can the wing skins hold fuel with expansion joints going through them?
>Whatever, that's Ops' problem
>Oh shit, JP-4 in direct contact with hot wing skins will boil inside the tanks, that's not good
>Well okay we'll just use a special-snowflake high-temperature, low-viscosity fuel formula that leaks even worse
>It'll be a pain in the ass logistically but that's Ops' problem lol
>Oh yeah, forgot to mention that it can't do a balanced-field takeoff with full fuel
>So they'll need a fleet of special tankers filled with the special-snowflake fuel to fill it up after takeoff
>Whatever, NOT OUR PROBLEM LOL
All this shit could've been avoided if they just dropped the wet wings and insulated the fuel tanks, like the XB-70 or Concorde did.

And yet people worship Kelly Johnson as some kind of genius because he was able to "solve" all these ridiculous engineering problems he created for himself...

>>8840992
>it can't do a balanced-field takeoff with full fuel
Wasn't this more due to low-speed performance (high stall speed) rather than anything to do with the fuel etc?

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>>8841146
That and atrocious single-engine performance on account of the engines being so far apart, yeah. It wasn't a direct consequence of the fuel tank arrangement but I added it because it serves to highlight even more what a clusterfuck they created by pressing on with hot JP-7 in wet wing tanks instead of solving the problem at its root.

Though I guess ditching the wet wings for Concorde-style internal fuel cells probably would have yielded a somewhat larger airframe with lower wing loading, which would in turn INDIRECTLY help with balanced-field performance... probably not enough but there's a chance.

>>8837199
Ayyyyy, seriously money makes the disk spin

>>8837578
This pretty much
Was looking for this video being posted

>>8837560
That's amazing. She's a beauty. But honestly the whole aircraft = look at this shiny car, thing has advanced us to this point in travel. Cough* cough*

>>8837196
Because some problems are really really fucking difficult to solve. Laws of physics and all that.

>>8837196
I think our fastest aircraft was a bit above 3 mach (supposedly hypersonic is equal to or greater than 5 mach). It was a military craft and kind of useless. We really don't need things that fast, they lower safety and aren't profitable (so don't get developed).

>>8838785

It's more real than you think. DARPA itself has publicly announced the X-51 hypersonic ramjet and XS-1 reusable spaceplane booster projects:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-51

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XS-1_(spacecraft)

Coupled with a lifting body, we'll probably see an SSTO within our lifetimes. The nuke modernization program is part of this, as the X-51 is designed to be a reentry vehicle (and thus is viable for use with nuclear weapons). This also makes intercontinental supersonic low-altitude missiles (ISLAMs) possible as well.

>>8841674

The military doesn't need a plane that fast, but they do need a missile that can go that fast while being launched from regular ships or trucks. This is why the X-51 exists.