Slashdot Mirror
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.""
Perhaps they could team up with some Earth Sciences researchers doing work on crater formation...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
All expeirements should end in some kind of explosion! What good is being a scienctist if you don't get to blow shit up?!?
> "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."
Revised for 2006: "We'll settle for one out of three these days... as long as you have a hell of a lot of it to compensate."
Then again, the British did usher in the passener jet age with the Comet.
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.
and that will be obvious after my question........
but couldn't they build it to survive impact into the ocean, and then retrieve it?
I seem to remember the US space program doing this when they first went to the moon. And that man who singlehandedly built the rocket and went to the moon. What was his name? Apollo Creed? Anyways Tom Hanks was really great in that movie. Forest Gump I think it was.
On its descent the engine is expected to reach a top speed of Mach 7.6 or over 9,000km/ hour.
I think crash is a bit of an understatement!
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
i realize everyone thinks they're cute by making cracks about how we don't want to test planes by crashing them, but it's actually pretty awesome that we're to the point where we can get all of the info we need about in-flight stuff in just 6 seconds, and that we don't have to worry about making the plane able to land in order to test the engine. it should speed up development time, and who knows, maybe a plane flight to tokyo won't put you in danger of deep vein thrombosis. =p
good job, brits.
I'm sorry. The number you have reached is imaginary. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and try again.
I'm sure they could suggest hundreds of places where they'd like to see a new crater. Two birds with one stone 'n' all that.
"The White House is not an intelligence-gathering agency," -- Scott McClellan, Whitehouse spokesman.
his worst job ever ...
... the inventor of this plan had with the senior manager in control of the budget:
"So let's see, in short your plan is to fly a plane up to 35 kilometers in height above the mainland of Australia, switch off the engine, let it drop down with a highly experimental engine - this 'scramjet' - that you suppose would then go off automatically and accelerate the vehicle to a phenomenal speed, finishing it all off with a nice crash of that same million dollar plane into the ground ?"
"Oh yeah mate, blimey, that's it - you got it in one row !"
"You ever done this before ?"
"Nah, if I would ave, I wouldn't be standing here mate, eh ?"
"And this 'scramjet', it would ignite automatically ?"
"Sure, that's what the manual says anyhow"
"And while it sores over our Australian mainland with this high velocity, and when it enters the ground in the final stage, it would not have reached any, say, 'populated' areas?"
"Nah mate, only a couple'a'dingos probably. Everything should be fine, unless things go wrong, but that's why we're testing eh, aye?"
"You're absolutely right, I guess... Here's your money, and now don't screw up !"
"Sure thing, won't screw up, and I will tell the same to the monkey that drives the controls ! Cheers mate !"
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(Hydrogen-fuelled ramjets are useless above Mach 5, but that's about when the scramjet should ignite, so you really wouldn't need a whole lot of additional acceleration at that point. If they've got the ignition point within the limit, you could even switch directly from one to the other.)
The other thing I don't like is that this is destructive testing. It's inescapable, given the approach they're using, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. Their data collection has to be wireless, since no recording device is going to survive a mach 7 impact, but wireless is relatively slow. This means that they're going to be limited in what they can collect - what parameters, what accuracy, what resolution, etc.
Normally, this wouldn't matter a great deal. But we're talking mach 7 speeds in a far denser atmosphere than most existing hypersonic travel (such as the shuttle re-entry) have taken place in. I believe there have been two successful scramjet flights in the past, so we have a little information on what happens under those conditions, but it seems somewhat... brave... if they are assuming they can interpolate between the few data points they'll be able to collect -and- extrapolate beyond the six seconds of flight.
Again, I'm sure they have their reasons, but for novel engines under novel conditions, I'd have thought that getting as much data as humanly possible would be worth almost any additional effort.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
it can only be deemed a failure if it *doesn't* crash? -- jeek
Until MythBusters decides to try this one!
Creative misinterpretation is your friend.
Scrambledjet
The third one burned down, fell over, then crashed into the ground. But the fourth one stayed up!
Do you see a comment by "heatdeath" responded to by "LiquidCoooled."
Computational Chemistry products and services.
I always wondered hwo thre going to cut the flight time from the UK to Australia.
looks like ther planning on taking the direct route....
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.
Begin test in 3...2...1... START!
-At-choo!
-Dude, WTF? Hit the RECORD BUTTON!
-What?
*CRASH*
-Ah, nevermind.
You would have to use something other than ducktape. As we all know, ducktape is sufficent to contain a nuclear explosion!
NeoThermic
Use my link above, or to view my server, NeoThermic.com
Imagine the consequences if they confused meters with metres !
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
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
Anything worth doing can be done in 6 seconds! ;)
... Windows 98. No, seriously, think about it:
The scientists will then have just six seconds to monitor its performance before the £1m engine eventually crashes into the ground.
Replace the word "scientists" with "consumers", "£1m" with "$5b", and "engine" with "OS." Also, add the phrase "If it boots," before the statement.
Latewire
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.
And yet, when I tried to apply this in my Biology labs, the professors got REAL cranky...
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
The word you want is DUCT as in DUCT tape. Of course there is a company called "Duck" that makes "Duck Tape" which is actually duct tape, which no doubt adds to the confusion.
Yes, Duct tape can contain nucular explosions. Duct tape can be used for anything*!
* except taping ducts; it's no good at all for that.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
do you see someone notice something like that...
Wisest is he who knows he does not know.
Surely they'd be able to try and get the engine to *move* during those 6 seconds and maybe gain altitude? What is stopping them from trying to get the engine out of a nosedive, especially at 1M pounds/unit?
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
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."
Supposing two planes carried it together....
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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