(MSNBC.com) – Hoping to bridge the gap between airplanes and rocketships, the U.S. military is preparing to test an experimental aircraft that can fly more than six times faster than the speed of sound on ordinary jet fuel.

Officially, it’s known as the X-51, but folks like to call it the WaveRider because it stays airborne, in part, with lift generated by the shock waves of its own flight. The design stems from the goal of the program — to demonstrate an air-breathing, hypersonic, combustion ramjet engine, known as a scramjet.

“We built a vehicle around an engine,” said Joseph Vogel, the X-51 project manager with Boeing, which is building a series of four test planes under a $246.5-million program managed by the Air Force Research Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio.

Click Here for the rest of the article.

Most Popular on ECNmag.com:

• 100 MPG Electric Hummer a Reality 
• GM Plan Would Lead to Majority Government Ownership 
• World’s First Hard X-ray Laser Debuts 
• Rumors Fly Over New iPhones for Verizon 
• Backyard Refineries Increase Fire and Explosion Risk 
• Hollywood and RealNetworks Square Off on DVD Copying 
• NEC and Renesas to Integrate 
• NASA faces deadline for tough decisions on shuttle 
• Glowing Dogs Claimed Cloned 
• Scientists Fabricate Improved Organic Transistor