Hypersonic Thunder: A Novel of the Jet Age (34 page)

A colorful chart popped up starting with 1940 at the base line and stretching out until 2010 on the right. Midway up the chart, a series of fifteen hypersonic test vehicles was listed, some hypothetical, some hardware, and ranging from the Sänger-Bredt through the X-15, and all the way out to some projected experimental projects that were just black asterisks, indicating they were classified.

Below the line of test vehicles were listed, in chronological order, aircraft that had gone supersonic or hypersonic, and ranging from Yeager’s X-1 through Lockheed’s X-7 to the XB-70 to the Space Shuttle.

Above the line of test vehicles were the hypersonic vehicles that had operated in space, from von Braun’s V-2 through the ICBMs through a whole series of experimental efforts, with the last of these being black asterisks. Two sweeping lines served to bring the hypersonic air and space efforts together.

“Hallion says that we’re at the point where we can integrate all the air and space experience of the past into a new series of vehicles that will give us global hypersonic flight.”

O’Malley studied the chart and said, “I’m familiar with most of these, but what is the Sänger-Bredt?”

“Eugen Sänger was married to Irene Bredt. Both were Austrians and both were fantastic mathematicians. They conceived of a plane they called the
Silbervogel
—Silverbird—in 1938, for Christ’s sake! They saw it as a space transport or as a global strike aircraft, launched from a monorail. Launched by a rocket, it would use its own rocket engine to gain enough speed to enter orbit. When its speed decayed, it would glide down and ‘bounce’ off the atmosphere, to gain altitude
again. They calculated a fifteen-thousand-mile range with an eight-thousand-pound bomb load.”

O’Malley whistled. “That’s just like the Dyna-Soar concept, the X-20!”

“Exactly; there was a lot of Sänger-Bredt inspiration in the Dyna-Soar, but not too many people picked up on it. I certainly didn’t. Too bad that neither one was ever built.”

Rodriquez went on through the slides, each one a bit more complex than the preceding one. He didn’t have to do much explaining, the slides spoke for themselves, and they said that hundreds of millions of dollars had been invested in developing hypersonic flight, and that on balance, many of the experiments had achieved remarkable success.

When he had finished he said, “Hallion told me that the very wealth of data gained in all these experiments is a double-edged sword. On the one hand it is invaluable to anybody researching hypersonic vehicles. On the other, the number of experiments has blunted enthusiasm, and led most people to think that there’s no point in pursuing hypersonic flight for the present. This is despite the fact that the Space Shuttle goes hypersonic every flight.”

Rodriquez pressed the advance button and another chart came up. It was titled “The Culture of Complacency” and showed a brief saying, “Hypersonics?? But there’s no customer demand! No requirement! No market need!”

Rodriquez said, “That’s what we are faced with, gents: a project that’s been through the mill for seventy years, if you go back to the Sänger-Bredt, and an unfavorable climate of opinion. Even among the military, there are only a few forward-thinking guys who want to spend money on hypersonic aircraft. From the financial side, that is perfectly understandable. From the scientific side, it is inexplicable!”

O’Malley had been uncharacteristically quiet, but now said, “That’s bullshit. Maybe that’s so now, in the United States, but do you think America is the only one interested? Do you have any idea what a hypersonic cruise missile, a stealthy hypersonic cruise missile, in the hands of a rogue state, would do to the Navy? It would move it out of littoral waters, and maybe right out of the ocean. We couldn’t even enter the Mediterranean! We’d have to back off from Taiwan and from North Korea. Just the threat of a hypersonic cruise missile
would destroy our credibility overseas. They aren’t dumb. They know a hypersonic cruise missile would do to us what the threat of stealth and precision guided munitions did to the Soviet Union—just dry up our military capability.”

He paused, breathing heavily, and said, “There’s no way we’ll get a program through Congress, not with all the staffers trying to parcel out jobs to their own constituents. And if it goes to the services, we’ll be dead in the water. The Navy won’t want to hear of it because it won’t want to spend the money on a defense system. The Army won’t be interested, period. And the Air Force, my beloved old Air Force, would hobby shop it for twenty years before it got the hardware delivered. This is something we’re going to have to do ourselves. We’ll have to present the government with a fait accompli, just do the design, test and manufacture, and hand them workable weapons, hypersonic UAVs and manned hypersonic strike aircraft. We can make it happen, no matter what the eggheads say about the prospects.”

“You are right, Steve, and it’s not all black. Hallion told me that in 1995, the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board said that in ten years we should have Mach 8 scramjet cruise missiles, and that by 2020, we should have scramjet orbital vehicles with a speed of up to Mach 18.”

O’Malley shook his head, saying, “That’s what they said, but that’s not what anybody’s paying to see happen. I don’t think we are one step closer to either of those goals today than we were in 1995. And that’s the beauty of it for us.”

The others looked at him, surprised.

“Look, guys, I take this as a statement of need, one that we can fill. Bob, how much of this massive data is available to us?”

“Practically all of it is in the public domain, except for the current classified stuff.”

“That means we can catch up, and with some insight, start where everybody else has left off. We just have to focus. We can talk about this later, but I see three projects that we need to develop. The first is a hypersonic cruise missile, and the second is a defense against it. The third is a manned rapid response tactical air vehicle, a scramjet cruiser with maybe a Mach 15 capability.”

“What sort of time frame, Steve? We’ve got a lot of money in the till, and the parent companies will keep generating funds if we can sell it to the stockholders. But this will eat it up fast. The government
couldn’t keep funding some of the projects, like the National Aerospace Plane.”

“Dennis, we’ll probably go flat broke on this, all of us, but it’s too damn challenging to turn down. Timetable? How the hell do I know? But what the hell, let me throw out a schedule for you. We’ll fly the first hypersonic cruise missile in 2005, fire the first antihypersonic cruise missile in 2006, and roll out the prototype—roll out, not fly—the hypersonic cruiser in 2007. That gives us ten years to do what everybody else has failed to do in eighty years. We cannot do this like NASA, and we cannot do it like Boeing or Lockheed Martin. We are going to have to out-Rutan Burt Rutan! We’ll take the Cirrus business model, pump it up with Rutan’s engineering techniques, and build this whole new technology right here in Mojave. If we can do it, the government will buy the product and we’ll recoup. If we don’t, we’ll all be looking for greeter jobs at Wal-Mart.”

Jenkins looked stunned, then suddenly brightened, saying, “Steve, I’d think you were nuts if we didn’t have Bob Rodriquez here to apply his genius. Look back at the past—precision guided munitions, GPS, AWACS, every damn thing imaginable. Bob, this can be your greatest achievement, after all you’ve done this will be the one they’ll remember. And we’ll be with you all the way.”

Rodriquez smiled and said simply, “We can do it.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

THE PASSING PARADE
: Pope John Paul II visits Cuba; White House scandal erupts, with President Clinton accused of relations with intern Monica Lewinsky; Italian ski cable cut by low-flying U.S. Marine aircraft; ethnic Albanians in Kosovo targeted by Serbs; FDA approves Viagra; Theodore Kaczynski sentenced to four life terms; atomic tests conducted by India in spite of worldwide furor; Terry Nichols gets life sentence for the Oklahoma City bombing; U.S. cruise missiles hit suspected terrorist bases in Sudan and Afghanistan; U.S. budget surplus largest in three decades; House impeaches President Clinton along party lines on two charges, perjury and obstruction of justice; Clinton orders air strikes on Iraq; George W. Bush elected President.

July 26, 1998
Mojave Airport, California

W
arren Bowers was feeling pretty full of himself, pontificating about the Rutans to a captive audience of Harry Shannon, Steve O’Malley, Bob Rodriquez, and Dennis Jenkins.

Bowers was for many years the chronicler of the Shannon family, and his two-volume biography of Vance Shannon,
The Frequent Friendly Flyer
, had received rave reviews and was on
The New York Times
’s Bestseller list for several weeks, hitting the number four spot before edging down. The book also strengthened Warren’s hold on the affection of the Shannon family. With sales almost as great as those of Chuck Yeager’s
biography, Warren was propelled from writing articles for obscure airplane magazines to being a well-respected literary figure.

Yet success had not changed him, for at the frequent meetings of the “Shannon gang” as they were referred to by industry insiders, he remained for the most part just the fly on the wall, recording what was going on for future books and articles.

Today, however, he was a central figure in the small gathering of RoboPlane officers at the Mojave Airport, and he let himself run large, dominating the conversation, and conveying more information and enthusiasm about the Rutans than anyone needed to know.

He was an expert on the subject. In the course of his writing he had often interviewed Burt Rutan, and the tall, friendly, articulate design genius enjoyed talking to him. Then he had engineered an unlikely business meeting for Dick Rutan, when the latter was raising funds for the projected global circumnavigation, nonstop and un-refueled, of the radical
Voyager
.

Warren had written extensively about the first round-the-world helicopter flight by Ross Perot, Jr., and Jay Coburn in 1982. He parlayed his friendship with Ross Jr. into a face-to-face interview with industry magnate Ross Perot for Dick Rutan and his fellow pilot Jeana Yeager. This put him further in the Rutans’ good graces, and he followed up by writing the best book thus far on the epic 1986 round-the-world trip of the
Voyager
. Bowers’s even-handed treatment of Dick and Jeana’s sometimes tumultuous relationship further established him as a family friend.

Thus when the Shannon gang expressed an interest in observing the first flight of Rutan’s fantastic new
Proteus
aircraft, they asked Warren to get them an invitation.

“Burt says he’s happy to have you here, and will be glad to talk to you as long as you want—on another day. He’s so wrapped up in the details of the first flight that he won’t have a chance to spend time with you. And he sends his respects to you all and, as he said, ‘particularly to the memory of your father, the great test pilot Vance Shannon.’ Those were his exact words.”

The group exchanged glances, but Warren was on a roll. Not talking often made him unstoppably loquacious when he did. As they listened, they watched the relatively small group of engineers and technicians moving methodically around the
Proteus
, the largest all-composite aircraft
any of them had ever seen. Like many Rutan designs, it featured tandem wings with dual tail booms and an exceptionally elegant long fuselage.

O’Malley said, “That’s either the ugliest airplane I’ve ever seen or the most beautiful. I can’t make up my mind. The fuselage is arched more than the Connie’s was. Has to be intended to carry big external loads.”

Jenkins added, “It looks like some prehistoric carnivore, but I vote for beautiful.”

Looking slightly miffed at the interruptions, Warren went on. “As you may or may not know, Burt started his firm, the Rutan Aircraft Factory, in 1974, but he had been building airplanes designed for the homebuilder for years. You know the line—VariViggen, VariEze, Long-EZ, and a whole bunch of one-offs, including the
Voyager
. He was so successful, and so much in demand for engineering consulting work, that he formed Scaled Composites in 1982.”

Beaming, convinced that he had their attention again, Warren took a pull on his water bottle, wiped his mouth, and said, “Scaled Composites has gone from one big project to another—the Beech Starship, the Predator agricultural airplane, the Pond Racer. But more than that even, he’s inspired competition, forward-looking engineers who venture into composite construction and radical configurations. Some big-time companies, Beech, of course, but giants like Airbus Industries, too, are placing more and more emphasis on composites.”

Warren checked the faces of his captive audience, happy to believe that they were still hanging on every word, but missing the dull cast their eyes were assuming. Being the focal point was unusual for him, and he made the most of it.

“But today, you are going to see one of Burt’s greatest advances in aerodynamic design. When you see the
Proteus
fly—”

Bob Rodriquez couldn’t stand any more and interrupted him. “I looked up ‘Proteus’ in my thesaurus. It can mean ‘Greek sea god’ or it’s the name of the second largest moon of Neptune or it’s a rodshaped bacterium you find in urinary tract infections. Which one was Burt thinking of?”

The sarcasm transformed into a blissful introduction as it sailed over Warren’s head. “Good question! You know, in 1989, the Voyager 2—the spacecraft, not Burt’s airplane—discovered the second largest
moon of Neptune, and it was named Proteus. That’s where Burt probably got the idea. But more . . .”

The sound of
Proteus
’s two Williams International FJ44-2E engines starting up caught even Warren’s attention, and he turned to watch.

“What do you think that thing weighs, Steve?”

“I don’t know—maybe twelve thousand pounds fully loaded. Those two Williams jets put out about twenty-three hundred pounds of thrust each. That and all the wing area—must be close to five hundred square feet—means it will have a real altitude capability, if not a blazing top speed.”