Hypersonic sled travels at 6,599 mph (Mach 8.6) at Holloman Air Force Base

Credit: Courtesy | Date Taken: 05/20/2019
Holloman Air Force Base is home to the High-Speed Test Track. This was a hypersonic test that traveled Mach 8.6, which is 6,599 mph which is over one mile a second.

[peterpetruzzi]

So the Air Force can send a sled to 8.6x the speed of sound, but their cameras only shoot 10 frames per second.

[spaghetti]

The test track is just short of 10 miles long. It's quite impressive they reached mach 8.6 in that distance. If this were done at high altitude I have no doubt mach 10 would have been easily reached.

[leokimvideo]

Santa's need for speed is looking great

[matejmazur]

Thanks for the quarter speed! It really made a difference!

[scatpack]

Even if my truck could go that fast I'd still be late for work.

[php]

They did go nearly twice this speed in 2001. They built a temporary helium filled polyethylene tunnel to reduce the air friction 22 miles long. The payload and objective were top secret despite hundreds of members of the media being there to film the event at night. Should be able to see it on another YouTube video. If they want to go faster, they have to build an underground vacuum tunnel meglev mass driver rail system.

[badeugenecops]

If you slow it down, you'll see that it's the "I'm just gonna send it" guy.

[michaelmichaelagnew]

Impressive that anything on a track can hit this speed.

[fonziebulldog]

Nearly faster than my car going home from work. 😄

[madrx]

"This is a new non chloric silicon based kitchen lubricant my companies been working on, It creates a surface 500 times more slippery than any cooking oil" - Clark Griswold 1989

[lucarinaldichini]

Interesting how the sound travels faster in denser media. You can actually hear the rail vibrate before the sled passes by, despite it being more than supersonic in air

[Uniblab]

I'm surprised they didn't shoot super high-speed video of the pass so that we could see the sled as it passed.

[marcelmarceau]

Crazy to think that the tiny asteroid that hit Akure, Nigeria in 2020 was travelling 8x faster than that.

[dundonrl]

The reason you can hear the sound is that it's coming down the steel test track at around 12, 000 mph! So even though the speed of sound in the atmosphere is only 740 mph, it's much MUCH faster going through the steel track!

[ORLY]

"Blink and you'll miss it" to its logical extreme

[MilanVVVVV]

This is truly one of the sleds of all time

[doodskie]

So this is why Santa can deliver all the gifts in one night

[charonsferryold]

Hypersonic while attached to a track is incredible. I bet those rails were as hot as stove tops from friction

[Lex]

And just think, the Space Shuttle re-entered the Earth's atmosphere travelling over two and a half times that the speed of an altitude of 50 miles.

[wwj]

Almost as fast as Clark W. Griswold's sled.