Hypersonic flight is flight through the atmosphere at speeds above about Mach 5.5, a speed where disassociation of air begins to become significant and high heat loads exist.
Hypersonic flight has been achieved by the Space Shuttle's orbiter, the Apollo command module, Buran and scramjets.
Read more about Hypersonic Flight: History, Proposed Hypersonic Aircraft, Cancelled Hypersonic Aircraft
Famous quotes containing the word flight:
“Fear of error which everything recalls to me at every moment of the flight of my ideas, this mania for control, makes men prefer reason’s imagination to the imagination of the senses. And yet it is always the imagination alone which is at work.”
—Louis Aragon (1897–1982)