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Brits To Crash Test a Scramjet
hywel_ap_ieuan writes "The BBC is reporting that a the "Hyshot consortium" will be testing a scramjet called Hyshot III in Australia on Friday. The fun part: "If everything goes to plan, the experiment will begin at a height of 35 km. As the engine continues its downward path the fuel in the scramjet is expected to automatically ignite. The scientists will then have just six seconds to monitor its performance before the £1m engine eventually crashes into the ground.""
ScramJet is the work of Australians Ray Stalker and Allan Paull who achieved the phenomenon with a budget of tins cans, string and glue whilst Nasa failed with a team of hundreds and a 9 figure budget.
This has been done before, at Woomera test range. The University of Queensland launched HyShot in 2002, and had a major success.
. htm
http://www.abc.net.au/science/slab/hyshot/default
At the speed the craft is traveling, crashing into a body of water isn't that different from crashing into a concrete wall. To allow the craft to survive, it has to decelerate first.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
However scramjets do not begin to work until they reach five times the speed of sound.
All scramjets, including this one, use rockets to get the engine up to speed - scramjets don't work at subsonic speeds.
They're trying to test an engine design here. Would you rather have them spend 200M building a whole craft to test an engine that's likely to be used only once? They're a long way from an anything that could actually be used for something practical, so cheapest is best as long as it moves the ball forward.
Wow. I don't know where to begin. Oh, I know- how about the fact that NASA DID NOT FAIL(article is from 2004, by the way- and they hit Mach 10).
before the £1m engine eventually crashes into the ground
A million British Pounds is US$1.7 million, which would put it firmly in the "seven figures" realm for JUST THE ENGINE. So I would think it would be reasonable to assume that eight figures ($10M) have been spent on the project in total.
Lastly- the Aussies benefited quite a bit from research NASA has made over the last couple of DECADES...
Please help metamoderate.
At those speeds, we don't have any materials that will survive impact with the ocean. In fact, the Shuttle Solid Rocket Boosters, when they parachute gently into the ocean, sustain considerable damage to the aft end (nozzle & stuff IIRC). It's worth it to salvage the casings.
Yes, I am a rocket scientist (well, I used to be).
The recently-launched SPACEWAY-3 communications satellite sports 10Gbps of bandwidth from geosynchronous orbit. I do not think wireless is as slow as you might be thinking.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
err. more importantly, the freakin' jet engine!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Whittle
entertainingly, the new US show "American Inventor" credited the invention of the motor car and the computer to the Americans last week. doooooh!
meanwhile, this scramjet isn't even by the brits, it the aussies. It's being reported by the BBC, hence the confusion
'This writing business. Pencils and what-not. Over-rated if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it' - Eeyore
The engineering behind the ramjet and scramjet couldn't be any more different. Ramjets are basically scramjet engines that purposefully slow the air intake so that combustion can occur. In a scramjet the big problem is that the air is moving so fast that when you ignite the fuel/air mixture, the combustion will actually take place outside the engine. It would be ridiculous to slow the air, so the problem lies in how you get the mixture to ignite sooner. To this end they are testing ionizing mixtures, etc. Some scramjet geometries are highly classified.
Here's a good link that talks about the combustion issue: http://www.aip.org/tip/INPHFA/vol-10/iss-4/p24.htm l
And of course some general information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scramjet
The test scramjet will be attached to a rocket that takes it up to 330km being dropping back to Earth. It should hit the requisite speed at 35km.
Also, what do you propose for a simple up & down trajectory that isn't parabolic?
As for destructive testing, there would need to be a lot more work done to save a prototype that will never be used again and the primary datapoint they are looking doesn't require much resolution.
"Did it light? Good."
KISS!
A colleague of mine is the project manager for the HyShot trial. It is being conducted at the Australian Defence Force's Woomera test and evaluation range and shooting north-west across the Australian desert.
Woomera and nearby areas has a long history of trials; several British designed rockets were trialled there, and several satellites were launched to earth orbit. Maralinga was one Australian site of British atom bomb tests in the late '40s and '50s.
HyShot is intended to be recovered, but it is a large area in which it might land. Watch this space!
Looking at space, radio, science and computing from a 'down-under' amateur enthusiast perspective.
Ummm... In the article, they rocket to 330 km and 'plummet back to Earth', the scramjet only ignites at 35 km. They DO have the full 35 km for testing, but it accellerates downwards....
We're not, but the Qinetiq engine being tested tomorrow (supposed to be today, but delayed due to bad weather) is British.
The HyShot program is an international effort coordinated by several Australian universities, but particularly the University of Queensland, with testing performed at Woomera rocket range in South Australia. In another four days, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (Jaxa) engine will be tested and in June, our own Australian Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO) version will be fired up. That one's expected to go past Mach 10.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
No aerodynamic control surfaces. That's also why the HyperX cost more. The NASA tests were 10 seconds of scramjet testing and 10 minutes of hypersonic manouvering.
The automobile is one of those trophy inventions that every country would like to take credit for and no one country really can. Considering that Henry Ford made it practical with the assembly line, I think we've got at least as much claim as the frenchmen who made an off-road steam engine or the British who poked around with internal combustion.
Actually, it would seem that the Germans can quite legitimately take credit for the car. Three people in particular are responsible for inventing the major components of the car engine: Gottlieb Daimler, Wilhelm Maybach and Karl Benz. They had a whole automobile industry on the go before Henry Ford streamlined the production process (1913). Ford did do a great deal to make cars much more popular, but he was more an industrialist than an inventor.
The French industry was based largely on designs by Maybach, and I'm not sure that the English had very much to do with the internal combustion engine used in cars - the valve gear came from George Stephenson (the Englishman who also invented the steam engine), but the use of petroleum, the injection system, accelerator and so on were all developed by the three Germans. We do, of course, have to thank the English for pneumatic inflatable tyres (some guy by the name of John Dunlop, in particular) - without which, we'd have a very bumpy ride.
-- Steve
The British Comet investigation is regularly held up as the start of Air Accident Investigation procedures that are used to this very day. Plus the DC-10 Sioux City incident involved the engine 3 fanblade disintegrating and severing all three hydraulics lines, not a cargo door. There was also a second incident involving a DC-10 and hydraulics, when the left hand engine of one was ripped off on takeoff, which also severed all hydraulics in the left hand wing, resulting in the droops retracting and the aircraft stalling on the left side, resulting in a crash.
And, you gotta ask, just how many pints would you have to drink to decide you wanted to be launched out of such a device?
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