$300m Hypersonic Aircraft Goes Missing

August 12th, 2011 - Up, up... and away! $300m hypersonic aircraft goes MISSING after ground officials lose contact just minutes after its launch. Aircraft would take 12 minutes to fly from New York to Los Angeles. It promises to revolutionise air travel, slashing the flying time from London to Sydney to just an hour. Yesterday the 13,000mph aircraft of the future took off for a crucial test flight. Within hours however, the Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 appeared to have failed the test. It was launched from a Californian rocket pad to the edge of space and was due to glide back down to Earth at roughly four miles per second. But all contact was lost and the craft was thought to have crashed. It was a cruel anti-climax after all the hype, and a case of back to the drawing board for its developers at the Pentagon. The project is being run in conjunction with America's Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency as part of research into a new generation of weapons. But while the Pentagon is more interested in it as a weapon with the potential to strike rogue states anywhere on Earth in under 60 minutes, its scope for commercial travel could be immense. Read more about it here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2024954/Hypersonic-aircr…