Different U.S. organizations have accepted hypersonic flight as a common goal.
He meets engineers working on the propulsion systems and developing new materials specifically for hypersonic flight.
However, the vehicle's wings would have to be designed to withstand the dynamic and thermal stresses of both re-entry and hypersonic flight.
Finally, 135 re-entries taught us a lot about high attitude hypersonic flight, a must to enable complex vehicles to come back to earth, manned or unmanned.
Such a craft could dispense with lifting surfaces, but would still need heat-resistant skin for hypersonic flight in the atmosphere.
Supposedly, it was meant for trying out hypersonic flight, or speeds above 5 times the speed of sound.
He is capable of hypersonic flight, as evidenced in a flight from the United States to the Philippines that took 6.2 seconds.
Gareth Mitchell ask how near we are to achieving hypersonic flight.
It completed its first powered hypersonic flight on 26 May 2010.
Early spaceplanes were used to explore hypersonic flight (e.g. X-15).