Pork is great in barbecue, but generally undesirable in Congressional budgets.
Fortunately for NASA’s scramjet project, members of Congress from Tennessee, where the X-43A scramjet testbed was built, have thrown some pork into the hypersonic research recipe: $25 million worth.
NASA had intended to scrap its hypersonic research after the second X-43A test, conducted in November at a phenomenal speed of Mach 10. The new funds will be used to continue work on the proposed X-43C follow-on, which is larger than the X-43A and burns hydrocarbon fuel instead of gaseous hydrogen, for much longer range.