Hermeus Rapidly Iterating Through Hypersonic Test Prototypes

Hermeus has completed testing of its first fully-integrated vehicle, Quarterhorse Mk 0. This non-flying prototype acted as a ‘dynamic iron bird’ for the company by validating all major aircraft subsystems in a real-world environment. Hermeus’ first flight vehicle, Quarterhorse Mk 1, is actively being built and scheduled to fly in 2024.

Mk 0 is the first of four aircraft in the Quarterhorse program, which will culminate in a vehicle capable of surpassing the all-time airspeed record held by the SR-71. Each aircraft will progressively increase in complexity allowing Hermeus to distribute program risk across multiple vehicles and accelerate learning.

The impressive speed at which Quarterhorse Mk 0 came together is noteworthy. The vehicle was designed and constructed within six months, and all test objectives were completed in just 37 days of deployed testing.

Among the objectives completed were:

Demonstrating remote command and control taxiing

Evaluating radio frequency (RF) latency and ground handling qualities of the integrated systems

Demonstrating proper state of vehicle and Flight Deck during lost link

Demonstrating human factor evaluations and pilot-in-the-loop steering & controls

Hermeus aims to develop hypersonic aircraft quickly and cost-effectively by integrating hardware-rich, iterative development with modern computing and autonomy. This approach has been validated through design, build, and test of the company’s first combined turbojet-ramjet engine and is now being scaled through its first flight vehicle program, Quarterhorse. Hermeus is also developing Darkhorse — an uncrewed hypersonic aircraft designed to deliver unique asymmetric capabilities to the warfighter.

Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.

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