Waverider Breaks Apart About A Half-Minute Into Test Flight

Perhaps the Air Force could 'fly' the craft in a hypersonic wind tunnel first before releasing it into the wild? You know, to test the control surfaces? Just sayin'

Worked several times before in actual test flights. We can only guess as to the true nature of the fault, but you can't just assume it is a design fault.

Didn't assume a thing. Nothing like a final checkout to make sure everything's working.

At some point the training wheels have to come off.

In this case it was also a fin. :)

When my kid's training wheels came off there were a few crashes.

I am hoping you weren't the pilot in command. :)

Actually, the crashes were minor (1 each per child). They both did rather well. In my daughter's case, she crashed after I stopped running next to her (exhausted). My son's crash was similar although I didn't have to run next to him. He sort of took off on his own (till he found the light pole).

That's funny!

in risk managment, those are exceptable.

True. No one was hurt and no one lost a fin either.

You should have put it in one more wind tunnel test, before releasing it to your kid.

They were tired of the testing.....wanted to get out and hit the road.

That's called "Process Commissioning" or "Site Acceptance Testing".