NASA just lost two hypersonic test vehicles on an untested sounding rocket, built by ATK, the same company that is slated to build the paint shaker first stage for the Ares I. It's not clear whether it was destroyed by the range, or it if just blew up on its own.
Sigh...expendables, and particularly solid expendables. Gotta love the continuing notion of putting things into space on modified munitions.
>>>>They Never Learn
Not true, they learned that they have a couple of hypersonics experiments on the bottom of the Atlantic.
Von Braun wouldn't have dared send people up atop solid rockets, didn't trust something that can't be stopped or throttled. . He was eases out before Shuttle.