Hypersonic Thunder: A Novel of the Jet Age

by Boyne, Walter J.

  “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

  Warren 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 Pr
oteus 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.”

  With the rest of the crowd, they lapsed into silence as the Proteus taxied out to the runway, seemed to hesitate for just a few seconds, and then almost hopped into the air after an incredibly short takeoff run. Then like a gleaming white and very streamlined pterodactyl, it turned out of the pattern for its test hop. The “Shannon gang”—minus Warren, who had gone off to talk to some of his friends at Scaled Composite—squatted under the well-worn wing of a DC-3 parked on the apron.

  Rodriquez spoke. “It’s funny, the Proteus doesn’t look anything like Paul MacCready’s designs, but both companies are working from the same premise: using composites and lightweight construction to get high altitude, long duration missions.”

  Jenkins said, “We won’t go wrong if we draw on both teams for ideas for UAVs, but I don’t see much in either one yet on hypersonics.”

  O’Malley added, “Talking about UAVs—the Proteus could be used as a UAV with no problems. There’s a world of room for equipment on board, and you could store another ton, maybe more, underneath.”

  Harry Shannon was quiet, obviously troubled as the temperature rose rapidly toward the hundred-degree mark.

  “This has been good, but I’ve got to get back to the car and turn the air conditioner on. The one thing that troubles me is not what we’ve seen, but what we didn’t see. If we are interested in hypersonic flight, it’s a damn sure thing that Burt is, too. If he’s not, somebody, NASA or industry, will be tasking him to get interested. I’d like to find some way to work with him, but we don’t have enough to offer him yet. Plenty of money, yes, but we’ve got to get some definition to our projects, and then maybe go to him.”

  He nodded to Steve who immediately left with him toward the Mercedes, already idling, air conditioner on, in anticipation.

  Rodriquez said, “I worry about Harry. You know how Tom went; I’d hate to see Harry do the same thing.”

  Jenkins said, “Me, too. I think he’s worried about having led us all into some kind of dead end, between the UAVs and the hypersonic research. Coming out to see the Proteus sounded like a good idea, but I’m not so sure now. I think Harry sees Rutan as too advanced for us to compete with.”

  “Maybe so, Dennis, but I get the opposite feeling. As a kid I used to come out to Mojave here and just bum around. Over the years I watched as it turned into this center of research. Dan Sabovich, a really good guy, took over a closed-down Marine base and nurtured it into this premier civilian flight test facility. It’s had more crazy airplanes and more old warbirds than you can imagine. Then Sean Roberts established the National Test Pilot School! Talk about balls. Sean had a lot of flying time in a lot of airplanes, maybe fifteen to sixteen thousand hours, but he didn’t graduate from a test pilot school himself. Now it’s the only civilian test pilot school in the world, and has the respect of even the great centers like Edwards. Then there was Bob Laidlaw and Flight Systems, and the Rutans—they’ve all helped to make this place great.”

  Jenkins took this in, absorbed by the lore and by Rodriquez’s intensity. He said, “And your point is?”

  “All these guys succeeded and they started out with far less than we have. They had nowhere near the money—we’ve got practically inexhaustible funds if we are prudent. And look at the baseline of information we have to draw on. It’s endless, monumental. The problem will be sifting through it and getting the relevant data. And as much as I admire Burt, and Paul MacCready, and some of the other giants, I think we have as much talent available to us.”

  “You’re right, of course, Bob. I think the first thing for us to do is get back in the car with Harry and pump him up a bit, then go have another skull session on laying out a schedule for our first scramjet engines. We’ve got the UAV line pretty well in hand, as far as we can go with it. We just needed to cut some metal and burn some kerosene in a scramjet. We don’t care if a few of them blow up on the way—Frank Whittle used to laugh about standing in the lab, with his jet engine about ready to come apart. He’s probably looking down now, thinking what a bunch of wusses we are.”

  “Frank would never have said ‘wusses.’ ‘Namby-pambys’ maybe, but never wusses.”

  October 5, 1998

  Cape Canaveral, Florida

  DENNIS JENKINS LET himself into the small condo he maintained in Cape Canaveral, put the small stack of groceries away in the cabinets and the refrigerator, and heaved himself into his one major luxury, a massaging recliner that he’d bought on impulse from a Sharper Image catalog, and never regretted.

  As the programmed massage began to ease the muscles knotted from driving too far and too long in his Corvette, Jenkins contemplated the two manuscripts that loomed in great stacks. One, on his desk, was a scholarly history of the Space Shuttle program, grand achievements, warts and all. The other, on modern aircraft and the advent of genuine foreign competition, rested in part on a card table and part spread over the floor.

  Looking at it, he estimated he was about a year behind on the Space Shuttle, and two, perhaps three years behind on the modern aircraft book.

  “And worse, I’m putting myself farther behind. Every time we advance at RoboPlanes, with either UAVs or hypersonic vehicles, my book gets more out-of-date.”

  He considered the Space Shuttle book first. Three of the four remaining space shuttles—Endeavour, Columbia, and Discovery—had flown in 1998, making a total of five flights. It was far short of the optimistic planning of the early years, but it was still adequate for the current missions. In June, the Discovery had docked with the Russian Mir Space Station, offloaded almost five thousand pounds of supplies, and for the first time in history updated its navigation data with data from the Global Positioning Satellite system. It took Andrew Thomas from the Mir, after he had spent a record-setting 130 days in its cramped confines. This was the sort of thing he had to record, in detail, so that it wouldn’t be lost to history.

  The Discovery flew again in October, deploying and retrieving the Spartan-201-05 free-flyer, and doing test work in preparation for servicing the Hubble Space Telescope. These difficult and important experiments were largely overshadowed by the return to space—after more than thirty-six years—of Senator John Glenn.

  Who knows, he thought, maybe they’ll be selling tickets to rich tourists next.

  Much more had been done, not least the long overdue selection of Eileen Collins to command a Space Shuttle flight in 1999. An Air Force lieutenant colonel, Collins had earned her right to command the hard way, through work, skill, and lots of flying time. But of course the press ran away with the idea of her being a woman, instead of her being the best for the job. A woman as space shuttle commander, a senator returning to his astronaut days—that’s what sold papers.

  It was understandable. But that was why his book had to be different, a meticulous, day by day, minute by minute, problem by problem, success by success, failure by failure account of an incredible program of which the wo
rld had no real idea. The Space Shuttle itself with its launch system, controls, stringent training, and unbelievable human factor requirements were all so amazingly complex that they were simply outside the ken of a layman. They were difficult to comprehend, and there was no need for the average person to know about them.

  Sadly, the days when the first seven astronauts had won the hearts of the American public were long over. Now astronauts were doing far more difficult tasks under equally dangerous circumstances, and the public registered little or no interest. They watched the liftoff and the landings, and pretended to be grateful if there was no accident, when, Jenkins suspected, for many, disappointment was the real emotion.

  The other book was perhaps an even greater challenge. Airbus had emerged as a formidable competitor to Boeing, a story in itself. But there were other factors now. Based in Brazil, Embraer was turning itself into one of the world’s leading aircraft manufacturers simply by creating one efficient, salable product after another. Canada’s Bombardier was doing the same thing, building aircraft that American businesses and airlines bought with pleasure because they were tailored to the new operating modes. In Europe, Dassault was continuing its dazzling series of designs, and four nations were combining their talents to produce the Eurofighter. Even tiny Israel was competing, and it looked like Russia was coming back with new designs.

  Then there was China, doing now exactly what Japan had done after World War I. It was absorbing foreign designs, participating in their manufacture, and learning every day. Within months, the first Chinese-built McDonnell Douglas MD 90 would fly. There was no beating the Chinese combination of brains, energy, and low labor costs. They were going to be a player, perhaps the biggest player besides the United States, maybe even bigger than the U.S. In ten years, maybe twenty, at the outside, there would be Chinese designed and built airliners operating all over the world. They already had a good handle on fighter planes.