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NASA 'Hyper-X' Series Scramjets
swight1701 writes "Sciencedaily.com is reporting that NASA has revealed its plans for developing Hypersonic aircraft within 2 decades. These plans include planes that could routinely go Mach 5+ and capable of taking off from an airport and visiting the IIS, or for you earthbound folk, from one airport to any other within 2 hours. And you thought your luggage gets lost NOW.:)" NASA's release includes some graphics showing what the test vehicles look like.
Has anyone else noticed the lack of windows (as in glass) for the pilots?
Perhaps since they are developing hypersonic aircraft, they will scrap the X-4000 Launch Aparatus. I hope they have better luck with these these aircraft than they do with Mars probes.
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havent they had these for years out at area 51 and are just now deciding to 'unvail' them. next thing you know they will decide to call them the Aurora series aircraft.... but then again i could be just a wee bit paranoid
This is how you know you're a geek the power goes out and you are unemployed and unemployable. Yes I know I can't spell
If I want to visit the IIS, I'll just go into the computer room, thank you. Oh, you mean the ISS...
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
My GOD! That thing is HUGE! In that first picture, you can see the artist's concept of the thing about to swallow a B-52!
...how on of those can travel to the space station IIS and back when it's using an air breathing engine?
If I recall correctly, the last time they tried to test a prototype, they blew it up. They seem to be awfully good at that.
At those speeds, wings are a hindrance. One finds that the leading surfaces must be made of unobtanium.
The correct model for spacecraft is to take off and land on a tail of fire, as God and Robert Heinlein intended. The DC/X proved that; 11 successful test flights, including an 11-degree 'walking tilt', before NASA took over that program and (deliberately?) crashed the prototype on their first try with it.
2) How do you intercept one that has been hijacked?
The flying tube really hasn't had much design change for the past 50 years. Oh, I forgot, "Winglets, yay!"
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
How is this going to affect the ozone layer in the future, if hundreds of these things are flying through it every day?
- use a turbojet to get to mach 2 or so, then turn on a ramjet to get to mach 5 or so and then light up your scramjet. This plane will never fly carrying two engines which are dead weight at any point in its flight.
- Launch it off of a rocket. Well, then we are back to a 2 stage to orbit vehicle which defeats the purpose of developing such a craft.
- Crazier options: Catapult launches and all sorts of other crazy stuff.
IMO NASA is wasting your tax payer dollars again.how do you visit a buggy piece of software called IIS using an aeroplane?
Just some ideas.
ALSO: How come we don't see postings on Nasa websites with "what we've considered and why it didn't work" so outside engineers can solve their problems for them...
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So they want to build a plane that files in atmostphere at mach 5+?
Lets think about the plane that closest fit the bill, the SR-71.
It was capable of mach 3+ and flew at an altitude of ~120,000 ft.
It was made completely out of titanium and the body of the plane got so hot that the pilot had to wear a space suit and couldn't touch the cockpit glass. The plane leaked fuel on the tarmac because it had to be designed with gaps that would close once the frame expanded from the extreme heat. In order to maintain mach 3, it had to run at full afterburners, burning a special fuel that had a super high temperature of ignition. And this was so it could carry 2 guys and a camera.
See the problems I have with this? Now granted, I'm not an airanotical engineer by any stretch of the imagination (or literate for that matter, based on my inability to spell...)
It was hard enough to get a moderately large plane going mach 3, now imagine what kind of energy you'd have to exert to get something the size of a 737 going?
Just my thoughts...
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
This looks like an even grander attempt than the X-33 and the now-defunct Venturestar project. Venturestar was cancelled because it was too ambitious, wasn't it? Looks like some NASA vaporware...er vaporplane.
The trouble with most of these combined cycle rocket based engines is the same. If you want to take in air from outside at speeds ranging from supersonic to hypersonic you need to not only change the shape of the inlet, but also the shape of the combustion chamber. At hypersonic speed, if you slow the air down to sub-sonic speed your thrust to drag ratio will become less than 1. (Hence the need for a scramjet). Engineers are currently unable to get rocket nozzles to morph to the correct shape for optimal efficiency at every altitude.(Hence the need for linear aerospike engines.) How are they possibly going to get a combustion chamber to reshape itself for supersonic airflow inside it?
The impression I get from NASA's website (And it is only an impression because their unscientific propaganda babble is not very clear...) is that they are looking at designing an engine which will only "breath" at one particular speed range, eg: hypersonic. Thus for lower speeds it functions purely as a rocket and likewise for beyond hypersonic speeds. I have not done any calculations to see what the benefits of this might be over other more conventional methods of getting into space, but I would be very surprised if this idea provided any significant improvement.
Once again, NASA is wasting your taxpayer dollars
Thank god for you, anonymous. I bet those engineers at nasa are happy as well that you could point out that their idea is completly useless, with no good information on the very nature of their idea.
Sig removed because it was obnoxious
Similarly, why bother with all this expense when an Ariane 5 can carry heavy loads to the ISS if needed - or even a heavy Delta - and the venerable Soyuz still work for a fraction of the price? Perhaps the money would be better spent man-rating a heavy ELV.
If the claims are to be believed (and they are rather extravagant), the Chinese will be on the moon before the US hacks past Mach 5 often. Maybe there should be a serious question about the direction of US space policy.
- Bernard
- SSTO vehicles powered by burning stuff is a borderline affair with current technology. Every NASA engineer should know this. You can make it to space on a single stage, but only just.
- A VTOHL craft like the venture star is going to be heavier than a VTOVL craft for the following reasons:
- Needs extra strengthening because of its funny shape.
- Has to have bidirectional extra strength. I mean, it needs to be able to fly like an aeroplane, needing lateral bracing and needs to fly like a rocket, requiring longitudinal bracing.
- These problems with the venturestar are trivially obvious, yet NASA opted for it over the much more practical Macdonell-Douglas DCX design.
I can hazard a guess why this happenned. Its the same reason the US pursues a missile defense shield which does not work and is based on faked data, but perhaps you have some deeper insights on the issue?Damn, I am sorry I was away to respond quickly to a fairly interesting post. Contracters. Pork. (pr0k?) Politics. We must do something about campaign financing, and quickly, because corruption is becoming a very serious problem in america. Missle defense is cleary 100% defense contractor hand outs, which is so shockly obvious it disturbs me that everyone doesn't notice. NASA also exists largly to hand out money to contractors, but if we have to hand them money, I would rather we did it exploring space instead of devising new and inventive ways to kill people.
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I looked at those pictures on the NASA website and it doesn't look like those things have a very big gas tank to run off of. Especially if it were to use the amount of gas to get it to mach5, then keeping all that deadweight gas going that fast.
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