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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.
I am going out on a limb here, but I think they have to use remote sensing because of the aerodynamics involved.
Any useful window has to have a large area projected to a plane perpendicular to the direction of travel. This would mean an extremely large window because of the wedge angle at the front of the plane. And this angle is required to be very small to keep the losses associated with the bow shock from becoming astronomical. The faster you are going (relative to the speed of sound) the smaller that angle must be to keep the shock attached and oblique.
The really interesting stuff on this craft is the engine inlets, the entire plane is designed to minimize engine inlet losses, due to shocks. Cool stuff
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If I want to visit the IIS, I'll just go into the computer room, thank you. Oh, you mean the ISS...
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The flying tube really hasn't had much design change for the past 50 years. Oh, I forgot, "Winglets, yay!"
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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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At those speeds, wings are a hindrance. One finds that the leading surfaces must be made of unobtanium.
One of the ways around this is to use plasma. If you generate plasma ahead of an aircraft with a welding-torch type of thing, you can reduce the drag by as much as 30%. The Russians are using plasma in their next generation of MiGs. (BTW, plasma also absorbs radar)
Another thing is to use carbon-carbon composites. C-C's are very expensive but can withstand many thousands of degrees. They are used in rocket nozzles.
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These craft will be piloted only by navigators, members of the Space Guild, who, due to their heavy use of spice melange, can perceive the present and future without windows, and can fold space.
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Your numbers are a bit off BTW. The cost to launch a man is generally reckoned to be about $10,000 per kg. The russians charge less than $20 million, basically because they can. Their whole rocket costs about $5 million. There's a big difference between cost and price...
The real cost goes into the salaries of the employees. There's about 10,000 or more involved with the Space Shuttle. But don't get the impression that the Russian rockets are cheaper just because the Russians are paid a lot less- they are, that's a big factor, but the way they put their rockets together is more efficient as well. NASA don't seem to care about low cost in quite the same way.
Please don't mention the external tank... it gives me a headache just thinking about that much waste.
SLI? Hah!
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