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Fair enough. I was not aware of that.ASALM was a liquid fuel ramjet that had an integral solid booster. Any idea why SLAT failed where the ASALM-PTV had (apparently) done so well? Was it from trying to shoehorn an engine optimized for high altitude flight (up to 80k by some accounts) into flying at sea-level? What I've been able to find is a bit vague. From Andreas' site:"15 YAQM-127A test vehicles were built with the first flight occurring on 20 November 1987. Six launches were conducted from November 1987 to January 1989; only one was considered to be successful. A stand down lasting 22 months was then imposed by the Navy in order to restructure the program and correct technical deficiencies. A second flight test effort was then attempted with launches in November 1990 and May 1991; both flights were unsuccessful. In the midst of efforts to restructure the program once again, Congressional action in mid-1991 terminated the program. Test failures, schedule slippage and massive program cost growth were major factors in the cancellation."What is interesting is that despite being intended for air-launch SLAT used a larger, separate booster, rather than the integral booster of ASALM. Stored examples of those boosters were used for the HyFly flights.
Fair enough. I was not aware of that.
ASALM was a liquid fuel ramjet that had an integral solid booster.
Any idea why SLAT failed where the ASALM-PTV had (apparently) done so well? Was it from trying to shoehorn an engine optimized for high altitude flight (up to 80k by some accounts) into flying at sea-level? What I've been able to find is a bit vague. From Andreas' site:
"15 YAQM-127A test vehicles were built with the first flight occurring on 20 November 1987. Six launches were conducted from November 1987 to January 1989; only one was considered to be successful. A stand down lasting 22 months was then imposed by the Navy in order to restructure the program and correct technical deficiencies. A second flight test effort was then attempted with launches in November 1990 and May 1991; both flights were unsuccessful. In the midst of efforts to restructure the program once again, Congressional action in mid-1991 terminated the program. Test failures, schedule slippage and massive program cost growth were major factors in the cancellation."
What is interesting is that despite being intended for air-launch SLAT used a larger, separate booster, rather than the integral booster of ASALM. Stored examples of those boosters were used for the HyFly flights.
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