"That's Not A Knife"

Australia's Hypersonix built DART AE to test one key question: whether a vehicle airframe entirely 3D-printed from high-temperature alloys can survive hypersonic flight and still run its scramjet. HASTE boosted the vehicle to speed, the SPARTAN engine - also printed, fueled by gaseous hydrogen - ignited, and DART AE reached Mach 8 before splashing down in the Atlantic roughly 1,000 km from the launch site. It was DART AE's maiden flight, flown under the Defense Innovation Unit's HyCAT program, which funds commercial hypersonic test flights for the Pentagon.