In Russia, a reusable hypersonic aircraft is being developed, designed both for flying the atmosphere of a planet and in Earth orbit. Its main goal is to develop promising technologies in the air and in space.
At the moment, as noted by the developers, this project is still at the concept level. And an active monitoring of the market is being conducted: in which industry the features of the drone will be most useful. Basically, it is believed that the purpose of the hypersonic UAV is to develop promising technologies and materials. In particular, thermal protection, because at hypersonic speeds this issue is critical.
And since hypersonic technologies are in trend today, developers are full of commercial hopes for their offspring.
The new UAV will be equipped with its own propulsion system for acceleration to the required speeds and will use an aircraft carrier at the initial stage of the flight. This makes it reusable and makes it possible to repeat the tests and improve the quality of preliminary flight testing. The engine will get to the drone from the upper stage "Breeze-M" - 14D30. Use the device for percussion purposes is not planned.
It is assumed that the device will be able to fly at altitudes of up to 160 kilometers at speeds of 7 max or bring the spacecraft into orbit up to 500 kilometers. Each such drone is designed for at least 50 flights.
