Launching the Fastest Plane of the Future

It's a sci-fi concept that's at the center of a 25-year exploratory project: building a hypersonic aircraft that takes off from the runway and doesn't need a rest, inspection or repair after it lands – unlike the space shuttle – but can zip back around the world within an hour of landing. University of Cincinnati researchers are developing the validation metrics that could help predict the success or failure of such a model before it is even built, as test data becomes available from component, to sub-system, to the completely assembled air vehicle.


"The very early stages of testing examine the concept of a plane that would fly as much as 10 times the speed of sound, with Mach 5 being the starting point," says Allemang. "In order to be ready to build that airplane, there is a lot of technology that will need to improve over the next 20 years, and there aren't the resources to do the prototype testing like what was done in the space race of the '50s and '60s. So, we need to improve analytical capabilities to better predict what could happen."
