What Mach 5 looks like

This week, the Air Force began testing a hypersonic aircraft which is meant to be capable of flying at five times the speed of sound according to a Boeing Press Release.

Boeing X-51 WaveRider. Image courtesy Boeing.com

We at AGI were curious to see what a Mach 5 aircraft looked like in flight, so we used our Systems Tool Kit (STK) to create a simulation of the X-51 traveling at Mach 5 next to simulated F-22 and 777 aircraft at their published cruise speeds.

This gave us something to compare to, and it is pretty amazing.

While not all of the test flights have been a complete success, this is still quite an impressive accomplishment. Check out our video below of the simulation.