Australian Scramjet Launched

CaptainAlbert writes: "The University of Queensland, Australia is reporting the (possible) success of their "HyShot" scramjet test. The BBC have got this covered too. Apparently, they're now poring over the data loggers, trying to figure out if it actually flew under its own power." We had a story about these guys a while back.

Comments

Scramjets are the way forward.

[Anton Anatopopov]

Since they are cheaper than their competition, and more environmentally friendly.

My concern is whether there is actually a demand for supersonic flight, or whether the current conventional airliners represent the 'good enough' level of technology which means there is no incentive to replace them. The current state of the travel industry makes me think it will be a long time before we see a scramjet based airliner at JFK.

In the meantime, the Europeans seem to be about to revive the Concorde. Its a bit annoying that we don't have anything to beat that. Maybe these superjumbos will be as impressive, but they won't be supersonic

destructive testing

[Alien54]

I was at first suprised that the actual experiment took place just a few seconds before impact

But it makes sense since it was the point in the flight where there is the highest speed and best chance of engine ignition

but this also means the test engine is usually destroyed instead of being saved for the next test run