Hypersonic flight

Hypersonic flight is flight through the atmosphere below about 90km at speeds above Mach 5, a speed where dissociation of air begins to become significant and high heat loads exist.The first manufactured object to achieve hypersonic flight was the two-stage Bumper rocket, consisting of a WAC Corporal second stage set on top of a V-2 first stage. On February 1949, at White Sands, the rocket reached a speed of 5,150 miles per hour/8,288.12 km/h, or approximately Mach 6.7. The vehicle, however, burned on atmospheric re-entry, and only charred remnants were found. In April 1961, Russian Major Yuri Gagarin became the first human to travel at hypersonic speed, during the world's first piloted orbital flight. Soon after, in May 1961, Alan Shepard became the first American and second person to achieve hypersonic flight when his capsule reentered the atmosphere at a speed above Mach 5 at the end of his suborbital flight over the Atlantic Ocean. The stagnation point of air flowing around a body is a point where its local velocity is zero. At this point the air flows around this location. A shock wave forms, which deflects the air from the stagnation point and insulates the flight body from the atmosphere. This can affect the lifting ability of a flight surface to counteract its drag and subsequent free fall. Ning describes a method for interrelating Reynolds number with Mach number.In the last year, China has tested more hypersonic weapons than we have in a decade. We've got to fix that.Hypersonic weapons, by definition, travel five or more times the speed of sound. Hypersonic cruise missiles which are powered by scramjet are restricted below 100,000 feet; hypersonic glide vehicles can travel higher. Compared to a ballistic (parabolic) trajectory, a hypersonic vehicle would be capable of large-angle deviations from a parabolic trajectory. According to CNBC, Russia and China lead in hypersonic weapon development, trailed by the United States. France, India, and Australia may also be pursuing the technology.