I was happy to see the second successful flight of the X-43a technology demonstrator aircraft yesterday. SCRAMJETs are inherently cool and I hope the technology becomes useful someday. It is a shame that the massive restructuring at NASA has basically killed the budget for any additional flights. But I feel that there is something odd about their hanging on to this notion of having set a speed record at Mach 10.

Yes, it is the fastest air-breathing aircraft ever. And it is certainly the fastest any vehicle with no moving engine parts has ever traveled. But... does that really mean much? It's still less than half the escape velocity of the earth, so we've certainly done better in the overall competition with other spacecraft...

I think this is analogous to Chuck Yeager and pals during the 1960s when they were still trying to push the airspeed record in jet aircraft while the Mercury astronauts were busy orbiting the Earth with about 18 times the speed. After awhile, the glamour of pushing the envelope for a particular technology paled when competing technologies could achieve so much more.

In the case of the SCRAMJET, we've introduced a new technology and set a record for that technology... but it's not really all that much of a speed record. They should focus their PR on the elegant aspects of the technology, not on the speed.