As usual, here we are with the broad statements: The Hyper-X, as it is called, could also give rise to commercial planes that zip passengers between London and New York in less than two hours.
However: But dreams of civilian spin-offs are at least 20 years away, said NASA officials, who are betting the program will first lead to a more durable, cheaper workhorse for the space fleet.
Oh, and btw I think it was Lephron who didn't agree when I had this multiengine concept in mind Pity only the press agrees with me: In theory, such engines will push crafts beyond Mach 10 and, with the help of chemical rockets, escape Earth's gravitational pull and achieve orbit. That kind of craft would probably employ multiple propulsion systems including a turbo-jet to reach supersonic speeds, scramjets to take the vessel to the edge of the atmosphere and then chemical rockets to enter the void of space.
Hope it goes well. I don't know about you, but I'm tired of having a speed limit over the pond, and would like to do the 1 hour LHR-JFL hop before I'm 90.
Of course, even with a 1 hour flight, A.nutters would just be complaining about the lack of PTV
[Edited 2004-03-26 09:24:42]
[Edited 2004-03-26 09:27:54]
Tact Is For People Who Aren't Witty Enough To Be Sarcastic
QantasA332 From Australia, joined Dec 2003, 1500 posts, RR: 46 Reply 1, posted (5 years 3 months 2 weeks 2 days 11 hours ago) and read 938 times:
After the University of Queensland's sucessful launch/operation of the scramjet "Hyshot", I wonder if NASA spoke to them (i.e. the Hyshot team) about it, seeing as NASA's project failed the first time...just curious.
Canoecarrier From United States, joined Feb 2004, 648 posts, RR: 2 Reply 2, posted (5 years 3 months 2 weeks 1 day 12 hours ago) and read 840 times:
Leave it to the media to exagerate. I did see something today on research the US did on scramjets in the 60's. Fascinating, what the media seems to leave out is that if the UK or US make some breakthrough I doubt that the NY Times is going to be the first person they ring on the telephone.
Prebennorholm From Denmark, joined Mar 2000, 4975 posts, RR: 57 Reply 3, posted (5 years 3 months 1 week 5 days 20 hours ago) and read 734 times:
I think that it is hard to draw any conclusion on this flight.
A good old Pegasus rocket launcher boost the X-43 to extreme altitude and 3700 mph. A scramjet takes over and accelerates the thing to 5000 mph in a 10 seconds burn. After which the thing makes a 5 minutes glide into the ocean.
I totally fail to relate that to any form of passenger flight.
A scramjet is an air breather. How will they solve kinetic heating during a one hour flight? How will they hold fuel (hydrogen) for a one or two hours flight? It will need a fuel load many times the weight of the plane and payload for sustained hour long flights at Mach 7. The alternative would be acceleration to a ballistic flight into space, but that would require an entirely different speed, something like Mach 20.
The scramjet might become one propulsion stage in a future space launching system. And there may be military applications which are hard to imagine for the uninformed. But I fail to see how it can ever become a long range hypersonic transport plane engine.
On the more funny side: I saw the same details reported in two different Danish newspapers today. They both told that the B-52 had dropped the vehicle at 100,000 feet altitude! Sure that B-52 was pushed to the limits...
I just wonder how much information is equally inaccurate.
My guess is that this was a very basic engine test. Testing an engine which is hard to find an application for.
I could imagine that the scramjet might find an application in the anti missile defense program.
What else?
Happy landing, Preben Norholm
Always keep your number of landings equal to your number of take-offs, Preben Norholm
Lehpron From United States, joined exactly 8 years ago today! , 7027 posts, RR: 27 Reply 4, posted (5 years 3 months 1 week 5 days 20 hours ago) and read 719 times:
The media is dumb and most folks are too busy to correct them. They called the Hyper-X a ROCKET, can you believe that? It's a scramJET, as in an air-breather, ignorant dumbfuck.
"Oh, and btw I think it was Lephron who didn't agree when I had this multiengine concept in mind Pity only the press agrees with me:"
Why do people always spell my name wrong, it's like right there on top...are you folks pronouncing it wrong too?
What you mentioned was not what I disagreed with. Using normal rotating compressors in tandem with ramjets-ish engines is WAY too complex and heavy and not worth it past M5, i.e. I've known people who have talked to Blackbird pilots and they claim they've been able to approach M4 (not get to it), but by then they risked loosing the plane to structural failure. An airturboramjet was a great way to get wher they wanted to go and fast -- but their not effeicent enough for an airliner, not yet at least. Which is why my disagreements are temporary.
I think it would be best to use a PDE-variant for the low speed and ramjet for the next jump to M8. (my bias is that I have a design for PDE at home, IMO jets are for low-sonic not hi-sonic; besides there is no real technical difference between a ramjet and a PDE, they are similar in terms of maintaining - they are not as complex as jets!) If the mission required faster flight, a scamjet from M8 to M20 is most useful. Knowing full well that past M20, the fiction heating on the plane's surface begins to break oxygen down, I thought ot something:
When it breaks down, it is ionic, O+, so why not use a magnetic solenoid to 1) catch whatever does break down and force it into a channel (inside-out) to an external combustion chamber at the back of the plane which should force those affected molecules to recombine and 2) reduce overall dynamic air pressure by syphoning the ionic oxygen out of the way leaving the nitrogen and any remaining molecules behind. Basically the drag drops a bit allowing for an incrase in speed in addition to the very slight increase in thrust. M22 or M23. Either way, it would be nice to ellminate the need to the rocket to orbital, rather get up to M25, shutdown scramjet and glide-cruise into orbit.
Like I said, it's just a thought.
I assume this type of plane flys in the ionosphere, where there is very little oxygen but it is also still in diatomic form. Moving at 6000 m/s should bring in enough O2 even at FL1500, provided they recombined. Otherwise, it's 5km/s.
The meaning of life is curiosity; we were put on this planet to explore opportunities.
Canoecarrier From United States, joined Feb 2004, 648 posts, RR: 2 Reply 5, posted (5 years 3 months 1 week 5 days 18 hours ago) and read 697 times:
The US Military, among others, has been researching this type of technology for some time since the 60's. The rumored Aurora spy plane was/is powered by some derivative of the engine type.
In the future it has many kinds of civil applications. The application of this type of technology is decades away, but we can't discount it considering the advances in engine design we've seen over the past 3 or 4 decades.
Starlionblue From Greenland, joined Feb 2004, 13369 posts, RR: 65 Reply 6, posted (5 years 3 months 1 week 5 days 11 hours ago) and read 663 times:
Lehpron, sorry I spelled your name wrong.
As for the doubters, I don't know if the future holds a X-43 type propulsion system for airliners. But I will remind you that people saying something technical is impossible tend to be proven wrong sooner or later.
See you at Mach 8!
Tact Is For People Who Aren't Witty Enough To Be Sarcastic
Ha763 From United States, joined Jan 2003, 2745 posts, RR: 7 Reply 7, posted (5 years 3 months 1 week 5 days 10 hours ago) and read 653 times:
QantasA332,
The first try by NASA failed due to the Pegasus rocket malfunction soon after release causing it to go off course making it necessary for NASA to destroy the rocket. The X-43 never got close to starting on that try.
Prebennorholm From Denmark, joined Mar 2000, 4975 posts, RR: 57 Reply 9, posted (5 years 3 months 1 week 4 days 20 hours ago) and read 577 times:
See you at Mach 8....
Huh. My father collected a popular technical magazine with an article about future passenger flight. The article predicted that within ten years passenger planes would fly four times faster. Cruise speed would be around 1400 km/h (870 mph).
That magazine was printed in 1929.
There was a picture of such a future airliner. It had a huge piston engine up front and a four bladed propeller with a diameter greater than the wing span. It was of course a biplane.
35 years ago the B-747 was designed with a huge forward cargo door. Why? At that time nobody believed that ten years later any passenger would fly long haul at less than Mach 2. So to save the huge investment, they could be rebuilt as cargo haulers.
Today the B-747 is probably the fastest airliner in the world, and supersonic travel is either history or further out in the future than ever before.
Believe me: We will all be stuck at Mach 0.8 to the end of our life.
The immense progress we have made was on a different scale. We have made Mach 0.8 travel available and affordable to every single individual in the developed world. That is really fantastic.
Those people who might be able to justify the cost of fast travel, they don't have the time to move their stupid body around, not even at Mach 8. They move their business at lightning speed (185,000 miles per second) just like we do here at a.net.
Video conferences, email, corporate data networks and file sharing, it has all made supersonic air travel obsolete.
The needs of the businessmen created the airline industry marketplace. That market is fading now. The great future of the airline industry is laisure for the masses.
Happy landing, Preben Norholm
Always keep your number of landings equal to your number of take-offs, Preben Norholm
Lehpron From United States, joined exactly 8 years ago today! , 7027 posts, RR: 27 Reply 12, posted (5 years 3 months 1 week 3 days 23 hours ago) and read 520 times:
The only complaint I have always had on future prediction or on forecasting was what they were talking about and how they made the claim. Like that 1929 prediction of a 870mph biplane or the issue with the jumbo jet, etc. I don't know what to say to that, other than how were they supposed to know that the world was going to change. Why people make this assumption is beyond me and every time I tackle it, I get in trouble; it's not what they say, it's what they do. I don't like to believe in a stand-still of anykind. I understand how business operate and what their goals are. I understand that in addition to firing people, cost cutting helps a company (for good or for bad) survive, especially if it means re-engineering the same damn product over and over again.
And now I'm reaching an asymtote of thought. Hold up a second...K I'm back.
I swear to freakin God, I see a limit approaching and I get the feeling everyday (especially in the Civ Forum) that no one is even remotely concerned about what may happen before, during or after it becomes obvious; as if the world will never change, or shouldn't. That frightens me cold. Like you're in a room and someone else is shadow boxing and you assume because they can't see you they'll never (or shouldn't) hit you.
How can anyone convince tens of millions they are equivalently driving [fast] at night without their headlight on during a New Moon?
We need sonics now, by the time they get into the market, it will be there just in the nick of time, as opposed to a crippling economy if we waited until it was needed.
The meaning of life is curiosity; we were put on this planet to explore opportunities.
Starlionblue From Greenland, joined Feb 2004, 13369 posts, RR: 65 Reply 13, posted (5 years 3 months 1 week 3 days 22 hours ago) and read 506 times:
Lephron, have you read "Firestar" by Michael Flynn? You should. (Shameless plug of my review: http://www.rosboch.net/fm_books_Andreas_Book_Picks_100.htm Scroll down a bit.) It's a great story about how fanatic willingness can make something happen. In this case commercial SSTO. Just look at Branson. He's the kind of guy who can actually make this sort of thing happen.
I agree with you about that horrible limit. But I'm more optimistic. Look at the fall of the Roman Empire. We came back, and went further!
Tact Is For People Who Aren't Witty Enough To Be Sarcastic
Sponsor Message: 
From Greenland, joined Feb 2004, 13369 posts, 
Pity only the press agrees with me:
From Australia, joined Dec 2003, 1500 posts, 
From United States, joined Feb 2004, 648 posts, 
From Denmark, joined Mar 2000, 4975 posts, 
, 7027 posts, 
Using normal rotating compressors in tandem with ramjets-ish engines is WAY too complex and heavy and not worth it past M5, i.e. I've known people who have talked to Blackbird pilots and they claim they've been able to approach M4 (not get to it), but by then they risked loosing the plane to structural failure. An airturboramjet was a great way to get wher they wanted to go and fast -- but their not effeicent enough for an airliner, not yet at least. Which is why my disagreements are temporary.
From United Kingdom, joined Feb 2004, 166 posts, 
Printer friendly format
