Rocket Lab wins military hypersonic suborbital launch contract
Rocket Lab has won a new contract with from the Pentagon’s military hypersonic test program to launch a suborbital test vehicle in 2025 using its suborbital version of its Electron rocket, dubbed HASTE.
The hypersonic test vehicle set to fly is called DART AE. It’s a 9.8-foot-long (3 meters), 660-pound (300 kilograms) scramjet-powered technology demonstrator that can reach speeds of up to Mach 7 (seven times the speed of sound; 5,320 mph, or 8,350 kph), according to the Hypersonix website. The mission will demonstrate HASTE’s ‘direct inject’ capability by deploying the Hypersonix payload during ascent, while still within Earth’s atmosphere, according to a Rocket Lab statement.
Rocket Lab has previously announced it has already has contracts to two HASTE launches in 2024, so this new contract is in addition to those. The deal also suggests that the company’s fast adaption of Electron for these suborbital test flights has grabbed this market from Stratolaunch, which had hoped the military would purchase its giant airplane Roc and its own test vehicles for such hypersonic testing.
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Rocket Lab has won a new contract with from the Pentagon’s military hypersonic test program to launch a suborbital test vehicle in 2025 using its suborbital version of its Electron rocket, dubbed HASTE.
The hypersonic test vehicle set to fly is called DART AE. It’s a 9.8-foot-long (3 meters), 660-pound (300 kilograms) scramjet-powered technology demonstrator that can reach speeds of up to Mach 7 (seven times the speed of sound; 5,320 mph, or 8,350 kph), according to the Hypersonix website. The mission will demonstrate HASTE’s ‘direct inject’ capability by deploying the Hypersonix payload during ascent, while still within Earth’s atmosphere, according to a Rocket Lab statement.
Rocket Lab has previously announced it has already has contracts to two HASTE launches in 2024, so this new contract is in addition to those. The deal also suggests that the company’s fast adaption of Electron for these suborbital test flights has grabbed this market from Stratolaunch, which had hoped the military would purchase its giant airplane Roc and its own test vehicles for such hypersonic testing.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
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