BOSTON -- On May 4 Charles R. McClinton, technology manager for the Hyper-X Program at NASA's Langley Research Center will talk on breaking the hypersonic barrier.

The Nepcon East/Electro and Assembly East events take place May 4 and 5 at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. 

Last November, NASA's X-43 research vehicle made aviation history with the second successful flight of a scramjet-powered airplane at hypersonic speeds, which are speeds of nearly Mach 10 -ten times the speed of sound. Compared to a rocket-powered vehicle like the Space Shuttle, scramjet (supersonic combustion ramjet) powered vehicles promise more airplane-like operations for increased affordability, flexibility and safety for ultra high-speed flights within the atmosphere and into Earth orbit. Because they do not have to carry their own oxidizer, as rockets must, vehicles powered by air-breathing scramjets can be smaller and lighter - or be the same size and carry more payload. Over the past four years, McClinton has been instrumental in various planning capacities for hypersonic air breathing technology development programs.

McClinton has been technology manager for the Hyper-X program since 1996. Prior to that, he formed and led the Numerical Applications Office, of the National Aero-Space Plane Office, to provide flow field details using the state-of-the-art Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) methods.

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