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.""

Comments

Not the first time

[Anonymous Coward]

This has been done before, at Woomera test range. The University of Queensland launched HyShot in 2002, and had a major success.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/slab/hyshot/default. htm

Re:Not the Brits

[Haeleth]

ScramJet is the work of Australians Ray Stalker and Allan Paull who achieved the phenomenon with a budget of tins cans, string and glue

RTFA: "The scramjet engine, known as Hyshot III, has been designed by British defence firm Qinetiq."

There's this concept called "international collaboration". It's not actually impossible for a project to involve people from more than one country. Yes, and one of the Australians you name is in charge. But the scramjet engine that's being tested on Friday was designed by the British. A few days later they'll be testing another one that was designed in Japan. After that, there's an Australian-designed one lined up too.

We're talking big money international collaboration here. Stalker and Paull aren't working with a budget of tin cans any more.

Re:Not the Brits

[AeroIllini]

Nasa failed with a team of hundreds and a 9 figure budget.

The first much-ballyhooed flight may have failed (because the Pegasus rocket exploded, not because of a problem with the scramjet), but the Hyper-X program is considered a rousing success, with two successful hypersonic flights and a new jet-powered speed record of Mach 9.6.

That being said, I applaud the efforts of the University of Queensland, who is helping push the limits of aerospace knowledge. If they can do that on a shoestring budget, then that's all the better.

Re:One million GBP?

[tsotha]

If you had RTFA, you would have seen this:

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.

Some hurdles

[quanminoan]

Scramjets are really interesting. They are just as powerful as rocket engines should they work properly, but they don't have to carry around nearly as much fuel. Liquid hydrogen/oxygen fuel for a rocket has most of it's weight stored as the heavier oxygen. The scramjet and ramjet engines intend to scoop the oxygen from the atmosphere, reducing the weight of the aircraft by several times.

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