Hypersonic Falcon HTV-2 Disappears

Somewhere in the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean, a $300-million military toy is waiting to be recovered.

The U.S. military's hypersonic unmanned aircraft experiment has ended in unmitigated failure, with the $300 million Falcon HTV-2 crashing somewhere in the Pacific. Just nine minutes after the Falcon took off aboard a rocket from a California air force base, trackers lost contact with the prototype, which had exceeded speeds of 27,000 kilometres an hour near the outer limits of our atmosphere. They believe the aircraft, which could travel from London to Sydney in under an hour, crashed somewhere in the Pacific, which is really narrowing it down, although we prefer to believe that that's a cover for the Falcon becoming self-aware and flying off to Saturn. The Falcon project was undertaken by military's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which also invented the Internet, so we're willing to overlook their expensive mishap this one time.