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How We Might Have Scramjets Sooner than Expected
loralai writes "Recent breakthroughs in scramjet engines could mean two-hour flights from New York to Tokyo. This technology, decades in the making, could redefine our understanding of air travel and military encounters. 'To put things in context, the world's fastest jet, the Air Force's SR-71 Blackbird spy plane, set a speed record of Mach 3.3 in 1990 when it flew from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., in just over an hour. That's about the limit for jet engines; the fastest fighter planes barely crack Mach 1.6. Scramjets, on the other hand, can theoretically fly as fast as Mach 15--nearly 10,000 mph.'"
I feel compelled to point out that's the unclassified speed record. Its actual top speed is still speculative.
Don't worry, between the security line, customs, delays, and waiting on the tarmac, you'll still be garunteed at least 10 hours at the airport for any trip.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
But until we get forcefields to protect against bird strikes at 10000mph, don't expect to see it in passenger jets any time soon.
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. . . and fusion power in 10 . . .
for the intertubes, and move the information superhighway faster down the series of tubes, perhaps an advanced vacuum tube technology?
senators from alaska want to know
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Would flying at that velocity be at all safe or comfortable? I mean, getting halfway around the world in an hour would be a great convenience, but not if you break your neck in the process.
As we trip over the peak of oil production...
Deleted
so is fusion. pie in teh sky projects that have been promising for decades. like moller skycars.. actual delivery ? nah.
F-16 top speed at altitude: Mach 2+
F-22 top speed at altitude: Mach 2.42 (officially...it's reported it can exceed Mach 4)
F-18 top speed at altitude: Mach 1.8+
I actually couldn't find a modern jet fighter that COULDN'T exceed 1.6 (at least within my aforementioned 2 seconds of research)
Of course, that doesn't diminish the insanity of Mach-15, but still.
Oh yeah, if you turn, your heart will forcibly exit your body via your anus before exploding. Have fun.
I don't think we can handle the instant jump to mach 15
) Human Kind Vs Human Creation
) It'd be interesting to see how many humans would survive to serve us.
1) Mach 3.3 speed record by SR-71 -> official speed record. NASA's X-15 set an unofficial one of Mach 6.7.
2) So.. 3.3 is NOWHERE NEAR the limit for jet engines.
3) Fighter jets don't "barely crack" Mach 1.6. The F-22 in cruise mode goes something like 1.7, is max speed generally known as being well above Mach 2, the actual maximum being, naturally, secret.
Fact-checking is your friend, people.
I like basketball!!1!
Nobody expects the scramjet engine!
The enemies of Democracy are
Now we just need some Unobtainium for the wings+fuselage so it doesn't fly apart when it hits 5000 mph.
Sure, the Space Shuttle is doing 16K mph on reentry, but no scramjet is going to get a plane built like that off the ground.
While I am a huge fan of aerospace tech in general, I cannot help but feel that the technology has begun to flat line. I feel as though we are ship-builders, and that we are excited about the newest interceptor-class sea vessel.
While this new technology is remarkable, it still lays within the same paradigm as it has for over one hundred years: air goes in, air goes out (be it prop, turbine or scramjet), wings generate lift, shape minimizes drag.
I don't know of any other way to do it, so I don't mean to demean these mind-blowing advances. I only mean to make a point that while our speed is increasing, the paradigm will hit a wall.
Are we not seeing smaller advances as the decades roll-on?
I wonder, what other transportation paradigm could allow us the kind of advances that air had as compared to sea?
Read my Very Short "Stories"
The Concorde didn't have many routes because there was a NiMBY problem. Nobody wanted the plane flying out of their airports because of the sonic booms. Opposition to airport expansion is already bad as it is. I can't imagine how hard it will be to convince people to allow these scramjets on commercial flights, even if they were limited to trans-oceanic flights.
The incredible cost of fuel required to slam one of these puppies through the atmosphere is more than compensated for by the savings to the airline due to not having to serve more than one round of beverages.
Or so they tell us. I'm pretty sure that the actual, classified, top speed of the F-22 is above Mach 2.
And the chinese will be given the technology too!
There hasn't been a eureka moment, the "recent breakthroughs" have come over the past few years.: /. for some other mentions.
The HyShot project demonstrated scramjet combustion in July 30, 2002 and had further tests in March;
A DSTO/USAF program had successful tests this past June. Search
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
If you were a bird, would you rather be hit by a jet going Mach 3.3 or Mach 15? I'm personally guessing that it wouldn't matter.
They were talking about jet aircraft. From Wikipedia:
Powerplant: 1× Thiokol XLR99-RM-2 liquid-fuel rocket engine, 70,400 lbf at 30 km (313 kN)What was that about research?
The X-15 had a rocket engine, not a jet.
Fact checking is your friend.
The F-15 can reach at least Mach 2.5 and it's emphisis is on manuverability. The MiG based of the F-15 with larger engines can reach Mach 3, but it's more of a dedicated intercepter than actual 'fighter."
Since X-15 was a rocket-powered and not jet-powered, your second point isn't valid. (Note, it may well be true that jet engines can go faster than Mach 3.3; that's not for me to say. I'm just saying that the X-15 doesn't prove this.)
You also didn't mention the XB-70 Valkyrie bomber prototype, which reached Mach 3 during test flights.
"Scramjets, on the other hand, can theoretically fly as fast as Mach 15--nearly 10,000 mph"
Not in an atmosphere, they don't. Unless you think flying droplets of metal and scorched fragments of composites still counts as a "scramjet".
The CIA had their hands on the A-12, YF-12 and SR-71 since the early to mid 1960s. It is widely assumed that the CIA took those planes higher and faster than the official records indicate.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Sure, that's cool and stuff, and I'm sure we'll eventually overcome the other technological problems, but the energy is a gigantic factor in this. How much would the fuel cost jump to have a two hour flight from NYC to Tokyo? Would it be worth it? Remember that ten times faster might mean 1000 times more costly!
All the technology in the world won't hide your lack of vision, talent, or understanding.
I wonder what hitting a duck at 10,000 mph would be like.
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Sorry, but how many F22's are flying around these days? I think the few dozen machines are less then 1% of the world's fighter jets. So, the average fighter jet is a design from the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s. No supercruisy F22.
Horses and humans can run 20 miles a day...
Trains changed it to 400-600 miles a day...
Cars made it routine to drive 100 miles a day...
Planes made it routine to fly 3000 miles for a vacation...
I really can't wait until it's routine to nip out to Luna for a weekend.
Does that 2 hour flight time from New York to Japan include the time to accelerate and slow down from the 10,000 miles an hour speed? Somehow I am skeptical. Speaking of which, I wonder what the ideal acceleration speed is for plane so that it gets to max speed relatively quickly without endangering the health of it's passengers.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
New York to Tokyo in 2 hours? With all the airport security delays I'll just wait for my flying car and drive there!
Huh?
MiG 29 - Mach 2.3
F-14 - Mach 2.5+
Kfir - Mach 2.3
JAS 39 Gripen - Mach 2.0
The original poster is grossly incorrect regarding the max speeds of current fighters. The venerable F-15 has a very achievable basic airframe limit of mach 2.5. It is rarely flown at that speeds for various reasons, however the engines and basic aircraft are quite capable of reaching that speed. One of the biggest limiting factors, as with all high speed aircraft, is heat buildup. Stuff simply starts melting when you get going that fast and sustain it.
Keep in mind that the mach 1.6 speed quoted is generally tied to the F-16, not the F-15, even though both aircraft use essentially the same engines. The difference is that the F-15 uses a complex variable geometry inlet design while the F-16 uses a fixed inlet. There are very good reasons why each aircraft uses one design or the other, but it has nothing to do with the available technology. It has to do mostly with how much cost we are willing to put up with in order to get the plane to perform up to requirements. The F-15, as our primary air superiority fighter, needed to be able to go very fast yet retain good performance at all speeds and altitudes. So the cost and weight penalty of a complex inlet design was warranted. The F-16 on the other hand, was designed from the start to be a lower cost multi-role fighter, and the cost and weight associated with a variable inlet was not justified by the performance requirements for that aircraft's role.
A similar tradeoff was made with the B-1 design. One of the big differences between the original B-1A design and the production B-1B design was the elimination of the costly and complex engine inlets that were needed to make the B-1 a high supersonic design. The B-1B has much simpler inlets and is therefore speed restricted below the original design specs.
Again, this has nothing to do with the available technology. Rather, it's the result of the basic truism that any speed freak knows, even in automotive racing, that going faster costs more. Almost any design can be pushed to a higher speed, but it's going to cost you and at some point you're throwing a whole lot of money to get marginal speed increases.
The original post's point that we haven't seen a breakthrough in this area in a long time is valid, but anyone following hypersonic technology research knows that in the last few years there have been multiple programs flying actual demonstration hardware with some success. The progress is fairly slow in part because this is considered low priority research since there simply isn't much firm demand for faster air-breathing vehicles (expecially ones that burn petrochemicals and therefore create more pollution than slower, more mature, and more efficient designs) however the research continues in the face of the harsh fact that speed is expensive.
The entertainment systems in the back seat of our flying cars will run Linux on the desktop and play Duke Nukem Forever, next year!
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
that I see, is that at these speeds, you're on the verge of your passengers needing to pass a nasa physical to be able to take the flight without suffering a heart attack or some other problem. its one thing to go fast, its another to be able to go fast comfortably. your average 50+ CEO (the sort of person who can afford a flight like that) most likely will not be able to handle the stress of the flight.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
Designing a commercial airframe that will survive these speeds and be commercially viable (ie. cheap enough to build and maintain) is a far greater challenge. That definitely won't take "a couple of years".
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Yes, infact I knew someone who use to fly those things and they weren't allowed to fully throttle up. He also said that during normal missions the plane would damage itself when going the faster speeds. Now of course this is all at someones word, so I have no written proof.
I heard the same thing from an SR-71 pilot, the damage was melting the nose and other leading edges. So advances in materials, not necessarily thrust, would presumably allow for greater speeds.
Usually they are based on some person's preliminary doctoral research. This time it was based on that perennial nerd baby boomer childhood favorite with a cool name, scramjets.
Ho hum.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MiG-31
these are interceptors though, not fighters.
Thank the stars for a little thing called "acceleration". The fuel costs for an instantaneous acceleration border somewhere along the lines of infinite, so we don't really need to worry about that any time soon.
"the fastest fighter planes barely crack Mach 1.6."
I hope this person doesn't write target tracking software for the military.
That would be slow by todays standards. Yes, scramjets could jump to mach 15 and it would be cool, but try to at lease come close with your accuracy.
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Gotta love the flight from City A to far-away City B comparisons. Except you need to be going Mach 3+ before Scramjets get past minimal stall speed, and the only way to get to Mach 3 right now is with a rocket-assisted takeoff. The neighbors around airports are going to love that, I'm sure.
I wonder if Scramjets would increase or decrease condensation trails, which are known to have a dimming and cooling effect on everything below them. Decreasing would mean more sunlight hitting the ground, but also more heat, which would only heat up the Earth at ground level that much more. If it increases, it means more cooling, but also more dimming.
Interesting times.
X-15 Hypersonic Research Program (from http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/news/FactSheets/FS-052-DFRC.html)
In the joint X-15 hypersonic research program that NASA conducted with the Air Force, the Navy, and North American Aviation, Inc., the aircraft flew over a period of nearly 10 years and set the world's unofficial speed and altitude records of 4,520 mph (Mach 6.7--on Oct. 3, 1967, with Air Force pilot Pete Knight at the controls) and 354,200 feet (on Aug. 22, 1963, with NASA pilot Joseph Walker in the cockpit) in a program to investigate all aspects of piloted hypersonic flight.
Early flights of the aircraft initially flew with two XLR-11 engines, producing a thrust of 16,380 lb. Once the XLR-99 was installed, the thrust became 57,000 lb.
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- A need to go that fast.
- An economic way to pay for it.
- A structure that can tolerate the heat.
- Engines that can run for a long time.
- A structure that can hold all the required fuel, and still have low drag.
As far as I know, if you want to go above Mach 2.X, you have to switch to titanium alloys as aluminum softens at about that amount of friction. Mucho $$$ and much bother in construction and maintenance.Also scramjet engines tend to burn out really quickly-- the temperatures you need in there are beyond the ability of most metals, at least for longevity.
There's a heck of a safety issue too-- scramjets can flame-out and are not easily restarted.
It's also a challenge to stuff as much fuel as you need into a low-drag airframe. You need long range as there's no point in short hops when it's going to take many kilomiles to get up to speed and altitude. But people don't like cramped cabins, so you need more fuel to allow a bigger fuselage.
Also it's going to be hard to find people willing to pay maybe 15 times the usual amount to get there a few hours faster.
For those discussing how many fighters can exceed mach 2 there is one thing to consider beyond thermal management: fuel. Fighters can run at mid range mach numbers but they do so only on full afterburner (exception: F-22 using supercruise). The problem with this is about 60 seconds after hitting mach 2.5 or whatever you are now so low on fuel you better throttle the heck back and find a tanker.
Ramjets/scramjets are more fuel efficient in terms of Miles Per Gallon Per Miles Per Hour (MPGPMPH?) than conventional jet engines, and the platform you'd put them on will have a larger fuel capacity as well.
I'm going to take a guess that they will be flying higher than birds can for these flights.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
Just too late as we trip over the peak of oil production...
... the more we will have for lubrication, plastics, and exotic high speed transportation. Oil prices skyrocket as demand out paces supply, we switch to alternatives, oil prices crash as supply now out paces demand.
We are not going to run out of oil. The price of oil will increase and make alternatives feasible. As this occurs the demand for oil will decrease. The rate of consumption will also peak, it just lags production. The question is really when the transition to alternatives will occur and how much pain do we have to feel to get the process started. In short, as we use less oil to go to work and the supermarket, to get food from the farms to the supermarket,
But yeah, Mach 1.6 is low. Maybe in the '50s?
My recollection is fuzzy, but I believe F-4s hit 1.6 during the Vietnam war twice and ran out of fuel over enemy territory. For the flights that hit 1.4, some ran out of fuel over friendly territory. Max speed is not very important, too many planes are virtually out of fuel when they get there. That is why the F-22 is so revolutionary, having such relatively high cruising speeds. It could conceivably fight at 1+ rather than 0.6 to 0.9.
Oh yeah, if you turn, your heart will forcibly exit your body via your anus before exploding. Have fun.
:-)
Nonsense. The turns will take place over a greater distance, the g forces will probably be the same. Consider that an F-16's turning radius may be measured in yards at its combat speed, while an SR-71's turning radius is measured in states at its combat speed.
you gotta keep in mind the the concorde never took off in the us because it was banned from breaking the sound barrier in US airspace.
We're not going to get an SST due to noise pollution issues -- you'd have to loop over the atlantic, go supersonic, and then turn around if you were flying west from the east coast.
the concorde wouldn't hit mach 1 until it was over canadian airspace.
There's actually a fair bit of speculation that it can barely even get to Mach 2. As best anyone can tell, the inlets are fixed (unlike the F-14, F-15, Concorde, SR-71, etc that had adjustable ramps or cones to tailor the airflow), which means that eventually you will start getting very large losses in the intake. The B-1 lost Mach 2 capability when it was remade into the B version, which had fixed intakes more suited for guarding the engine faces against radar exposure.
The numbers I'm inclined to believe show supercruise topping out about Mach 1.6, with top speed around 1.9-2.0. And remember, top speed isn't a truly important figure anyways. The F-14 and F-15 could max out in the neighborhood of Mach 2.3-2.5, but loaded down for combat you probably wouldn't see them break 1.5 or so. They certainly couldn't make it to Mach 2 in such a condition. Think of it as the F-22 having a much higher average speed; it can't match the absolute numbers but it'll certainly do it for longer. This gives it the ability to cover more territory, carry more energy into a fight, and drop bombs from further out than other aircraft. And its engines give it an absolutely phenomenal acceleration--it'll easily beat an F-15 in a drag race without using afterburners.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
It appears that it's roughly six times less efficient to use a scramjet compared to the now current turbojet. Now, multiply in the ratio of the cost of a hydrogen fuel source with associated infrastructure for generation, transport and storage ...
I see this as a reasonable space transport to low earth orbit (e.g. replacement for the shuttle) but hardly practical as a commercial aircraft anytime soon. There'd have to be a major investment in infrastructure that rivals oil and gas piplines of today.
But everyone seems to forget that for that run, the Blackbird had a flying start. If you timed LA to NY from liftoff to touchdown, it'd be FAR longer.
You don't get up to those speeds and altitudes quickly.
The F-104, flying in 1956, was capable of Mach 2.2 and that was limited by the airframe, not the engine.
Brett
Doubt the US will tolerate > mach 1 anytime soon over the us. People will be pissed. The concorde, which flies, err flew over mach 2, couldn't accelerate until they were like 50 miles out over the ocean or something like that (50 miles probably isn't the right distance but too lazy to look it up!)
Why does the summary say New York to Tokyo, when the article says New York to Sydney in two hours?
My guess is to appeal to the neckbeard otakus who read this site, but still it's a bit of a shame that what is said in the article needs to be obscured.
I expected commercial scramjets yesterday.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Air travel now uses mostly high-bypass-ratio turbofans, which aren't suitable for even supersonic speeds, and not because supersonic engines aren't available, but because the trade-off between economy and speed favors such engines.
Scramjets for air travel sound nice, but the economics most likely won't support it except perhaps as a Concord-like showpiece that is mostly irrelevant.
The article says it was fired by methane. I know it's frustrating to see new transport technologies being developed around fossil fuels, but methane has the advantage of being able to be harvested from non-fossil sources.
hmm. I wonder if there is a market for USA to Tokyo 5 hour package delivery?
When it absolutely, positively, needs to be there and back, today.
heh, you could order a product, get it in 5 hours, find out it's wrong and send it back. All in the same day. That would screw up some logistic software.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The mother of a friend of mine was a top executive at Dow Chemical, at the time the company's highest-paid woman. She always flew Concorde when she could because the company was paying her salary during her flight.
Being able to get across the ocean with time left in the work day meant that Dow actually saved money paying for a Concorde ticket.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
.. by "flew" i mean "drank" and by "one of these" i meant "a coffee". (it sounded funnier in my head)
today's top planes actually have their mobility and speed limited so the pilots don't go dishrag and crash 'em. that despite pressure suits, oxygen, and the rest.
so I would think DVT in the legs would be the least of a passenger's worries on a NorDelTinental non-stop flight from LA to New York in 2 hours on a Scramjet plane. today's commercial jets fly sub-Mach, but not that sub.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
The fact that the freekin top speed is still classified, even after the freekin tooling has been destroyed and the fact that computational power is soooo cheap to simulate the aircraft and that all of our enemy scientists and engineers have been educated here, is just plain frickin ridiculous. Frick'n Government!
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
Acceleration does not equal speed.
La to New York would have a 2 hour flight time at about 2000MPH
Accelerate up to mach 4 in about 45 minutes, and people would hardly notice, hell you could probably do it in 25.
I suspect the scramjets won't be doing a whole lot of turning.
At max speed, the LA to New york trip would take 20 minutes. So you could eat lunch accross the country. Assuming you didn't mind paying 10 Grand to do so!
Also assuming you don't mind eating in the Airport.
Hey Bob, where did you go for lunch?
McDonalds
Which one?
The one at Laguardia
It's Funny:
The articles says New York to Australia,
The slashdot article says New York to Tokyo
And you said LA to New York.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Plasma Spike
In "Skunk Works" about Lockheed's black projects program- U2, SR-71, F-111, etc (a GREAT read btw) Ben Rich said they found scorched specks on some SR-71 canopies that turned out to be bugs that they figured were lofted to 100,000ft in nuclear tests.
You need to travel about 100,000ft to get to 100,000ft, depending on initial attitude and how mean sea level is measured. So that means 2 hours of take off, 2 hours of landing, 30 seconds of flight, and, 2 hours to get to the airport, 2 hours of waiting for security, 2 hours of weather delays (it always is miserable when you fly), etc etc. I saw in a TIME Magazine article that another contributing factor to air travel delay is the fact that planes can't fly in a straight line. They can't fly straight from Boston to Washington DC, even. They have to fly between control and radio towers most of the time, so it's more like a jagged line to stay within the different control tower's radii. How they travel oversees, I do not know. I am willing to be enlightened by anyone who does know about this, in addition to an article about the flying-between-control towers procedure.
With all the idiots posting here who clearly have a fundamental misunderstanding or lack of understanding of basic kinematics, I propose that all slashdot users be forced to pass a basic physics test before posting.
The afterburners on most fighter jets can usually be fired for 10 minutes, 5 of which are usually used during take off. However, out of the aforementioned planes the F-22 has the ability to supercruise, at what speed I don't know, but certainly faster than Mach 1.6. And let me point out "2 seconds of research reveals..."
Deleted
Pulse-wave detonation, anyone? Remember that currently fuel is only "burned" when it could be "detonated" for much greater energy.
So I was fat dumb and happy (I'm not a fighter pilot) at FL390 (39,000 ft above MSL, in theory; the radalt was somewhere around 42,000 ft. Anyway, somewhere around the Nile River, there's this god awful thump, and the radar immediately fails. Not fault codes, just fails. Apparently, ducks, (or pterodactyls in my theory) do cruise at FL390. Rumor is that the SR-71 suffered supersonic bug erosion at it's mesospheric (my exageration) cruising altitudes.
1) Mach 3.3 speed record by SR-71 -> official speed record. NASA's X-15 set an unofficial one of Mach 6.7.
The X-15 is a rocket plane, not a jet plane. Fact checking is your friend too...
If you're going to include rockets the shuttle is much faster than the X-15, it's travelling at around 17,000 mph when it reenters the atmosphere and the Apollo capsules hit reentry doing almost 25,000 mph.
2) So.. 3.3 is NOWHERE NEAR the limit for jet engines.
Mach 3.3 is about the the limit for jet engine powered planes (the SR71 uses RAM Jets), until they figure out how to get SCRAM Jets working (I don't count a few seconds of SCRAM JET power after being boosted to speed by rockets as a functional jet plane). But, you're welcome to prove me wrong. Name a plane that is known to be faster than the SR-71?
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
1) inertial dampers, so our bodies stay intact throughout the flight (Heisenburg Compensator - from Star Trek)
2) cheap fuel. I wonder if it can use bio-fuel? Used McDonald's oil? "Fly scramjets! Now with 0 trans-fat!"
We're optimizing the wrong part, dammit!
Not to mention Concorde used to cruise (well... super cruise) at Mach 2 most of its flight time. What kind of weak ass fighters are they thinking of?
yes, but does it run linux at mach 5?
If he'd said "the fastest fighter planes rarely crack Mach 1.6" that would have been a fairly accurate statement.
The only aircraft I know of that would be close to this capability is the space shuttle. It is doing about 17,500mph (approx Mach 25) when it slams into the atmosphere, and it needs ceramic tiles and thermal matting to stop it from being incinerated. Sure the speed is much higher, but at around 400,000 feet, the air is far thinner. Attempting Mach 15 at a much lower altitude (say 100,000 feet) would cause heating and stresses potentially greater than that of the shuttle on re-entry.
Just like the space shuttle, at those speeds, the air around the airframe would become superheated and ionized, causing a radio blackout. That is not something you want on a passenger aircraft.
If there were airliners travelling at those speeds, and something went wrong, there would be zero chance of survival. The airframe would be ripped apart, and it would just become a fireball spread over a huge area, just like the Challenger crash.
You forgot to count those vast oceans of fossil fuels under the poles.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The amount of boom from the concorde was never that high. In fact, we still have plenty of booms from military aircrafts. So, why the ban? Well, it happened about 6 months after Nixon decided to kill research into the SST (it was the feds that were funding it, not Boeing). But once killed, Boeing pushed for the sonic boom ban. Lo and behold, American airlines would not buy any.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I have thought about this over the years. The military/intelligence community will not give up useful systems unless there is a viable replacement, never! Based on this assumption, which I believe is correct, they either have a new type of plane or developed satellites that have similar capabilities. However, there are several problems with satellites being a full replacement. First they can't be tasked to cover areas as easily as a plane can, second they are limited by the amount of fuel they carry (how many times they can be moved). So, when the SR-71 was retired more than likely there was already a new fleet of planes in place with increased capabilities, the scramjet. This technology has probably been in use for 17 years now, when the SR-71 was shelved. Or, the intelligence folks took a major hit in their imagery gathering abilities.
Iraq billions
The AV-8 Harrier II is subsonic and still widely used by the UK and US armed forces.
The A10 is also subsonic. Of course it's not really a fighter, but a ground attack aircraft if you are going to pick nits. You also can argue whether it is "modern" but it's still in use as far as I know since it is arguable the best close air support aircraft out there.
That said, you are correct that most jet fighters used by modern military forces are capable of flight at or near mach 2, even if only for short periods of time.
Everybody I know who has a dog usually calls him "Rover" or "Spot". I call mine Sex. Now, Sex has been very embarrassing to me. When I went to the City Hall to renew the dog's license, I told the clerk that I would like a license for Sex. He said, "I would like to have one too!" Then I said, "But she is a dog!" He said he didn't care what she looked like. I said, "You don't understand. ... I have had Sex since I was nine years old." He replied, "You must have been quite a strong boy." When I decided to get married, I told the minister that I would like to have Sex at the wedding. He told me to wait until after the wedding was over. I said, "But Sex has played a big part in my life and my whole world revolves around Sex." He said he didn't want to hear about my personal life and would not marry us in his church. I told him everyone would enjoy having Sex at the wedding. The next day we were married at the Justice of the Peace. My family is barred from the church from then on.
... Sex keeps me awake at night." The clerk said, "Me too!"
When my wife and I went on our honeymoon, I took the dog with me. When we checked into the motel, I told the clerk that I wanted a room for me and my wife and a special room for Sex. He said that every room in the motel is a place for sex. I said, "You don't understand.
One day I entered Sex in a contest. But before the competition began, the dog ran away. Another contestant asked me why I was just looking around. I told him that I was going to have Sex in the contest. He said that I should have sold my own tickets. "You don't understand," I said, "I hoped to have Sex on TV." He called me a show off.
When my wife and I separated, we went to court to fight for custody of the dog. I said, "Your Honor, I had Sex before I was married but Sex left me after I was married." The Judge said, "Me too!"
Last night Sex ran off again. I spent hours looking all over for her. A cop came over and asked me what I was doing in the alley at 4 o'clock in the morning. I said, "I'm looking for Sex." -- My case comes up next Thursday.
Well now I've been thrown in jail, been divorced and had more damn troubles with that dog than I ever foresaw. Why just the other day when I went for my first session with the psychiatrist, she asked me, "What seems to be the trouble?" I replied, "Sex has been my best friend all my life but now it has left me for ever. I couldn't live any longer so lonely." and the doctor said, "Look mister, you should understand that sex isn't a man's best friend so get yourself a dog."
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Maybe a typo, but its the F-15, not F-14, that does Mach 2.5+. Tomcat goes 2.3 - 2.4.
Other well known Mach 1.6+ jets include Mig25 Foxbat (2.3-3.2), F-111 (2.5), F-104 Starfighter (2.2), F-4 Phantom II (2.2), B70 Valkyrie (3.1) and the Concorde (2.2).
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070520044927AAfSvFz
Even the prototype Avro Arrow achieved Mach 1.96, back in 1958.
So does this mean Cheney only has to tell NORAD to ignore the planes for 2 hours, rather than 12? Amazing what the Conservative Agenda's efficiency can achieve in only a few short years!
Stay Teh Courze!!!
A great book that talks about some of the engineering behind the SR-71 and later the F-117 is "Skunkworks":
/.'ers.
http://www.amazon.com/Skunk-Works-Personal-Memoir-Lockheed/dp/0316743003
In the book, it is mentioned that they examine the titanium skin of the SR-71 (after some years of surface) to see if it has indeed become weaker from high speed flight and high temperatures.
Their discovery?
That the skin of the plane had annealed and become stronger.
This book should be on the must-read list of all
Oh, okay, so we're not going to run out of oil - it's just that you and I won't be able to afford any. That's a relief.
Not being able to afford it is temporary. When personal and bulk transportation moves to something else oil will only be needed for plastics, lubricants, and fuel for more exotic uses. When we get to that point there will be a glut.
The Wikipedia article has the Test Pilot saying that the Raptor CAN do well over Mach 2. This isnt like the guy who knows the guy who flew the Blackbird all those years ago, this is the test pilot, right now :)
---
"Not in an atmosphere, they don't. Unless you think flying droplets of metal and scorched fragments of composites still counts as a "scramjet"."
Uh dude we have a little problem here. Scramjets are air breathers, ie: they require an atmosphere, they would not work at all in a vacuum.
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
I also rather doubt that the fixed inlets on the F-22 would allow it to top Mach 2.0. It is the only plane in production that can cruise at supersonic speeds - would be interesting to see what kind of supersonic range that the proposed FB-22 would have.
I work at a major university medical center, and we often take care of pilots (current and retired) with diseases/problems not handled by the base doctors.
All of them are calm like a brick, not even a flinch when told they had cancer.
"OK Doc, what do I do next?"
One of my senior partners who was a flight surgeon told me that that's what all the fighter pilots are like - almost unemotional, even when being shot down. All that stuff on TV, with the pilots screaming "WE'VE BEEN SHOT!!!! MAYDAY MAYDAY!!!" is not at all what these guys are like.
Yes, I guess the guy could calmly express that he wanted all the gays/commies/people who don't sweep their sidewalk killed, but I don't think that that type of thinking usually lends itself to calmly expressing those thoughts - they usually come at you like a shotgun.
..........FULL STOP.
Scramjet is so last millenium, antigravity is the way to go.
Learn how to build your own antigravity generator in the book:
They all told the truth: The antigravity papers by Richard P. Crandall, isbn 1-55395-723-7
see
http://www.scribd.com/groups/view/223-extreme-physics
Anybody know what the fuel efficiency of these things is, and in particular, how it compares to that of current subsonic commercial jets? Is it decent, or is this another way for the rich to waste fossil fuel?
You are confusing two different pieces of information.
Maximum speed: This is the maximum speed the plane can reach. this is usually with afterburners on and for short periods of time. It is not a sustainable cruise speed. Many modern finghters/intercepters can exceed mach 2.5 and perhaps mach 3. They can't do this for more then a few minutes without taking damage from friction heating unless they are builit from high temperture materials like titanium.
Cruising speed: The SR-71 cruise speed is mach 3+. In fact it has problems at lower speeds as it's airframe and components are designed to fit properly only when the cruising speed heats the airframe to 'operating temperature'. The fuel tanks leak until heated by high speed flight and the parts fit. None of the other planes can cruise at mach 3+ for hours at a time.
I've heard, but not confirmed, that the SR-71 does a short high speed cruise before the first refueling after takeoff to warm up the plane to operating temperature so the fuel tanks stop leaking.
"Former Lockheed Raptor chief test pilot Paul Metz stated that the Raptor has a fixed inlet; but while the absence of variable intake ramps may theoretically make speeds greater than Mach 2.0 unreachable, there is no evidence to prove this. Such ramps would be used to prevent engine surge, but the intake itself may be designed to prevent this. Metz has also stated that the F-22 has a top speed greater than 1,600 mph (Mach 2.42) and its climb rate is faster than the F-15 Eagle due to advances in engine technology, despite the F-15's thrust-to-weight ratio of about 1.2:1, with the F-22 having a ratio closer to 1:1.[23] The US Air Force claims that the F-22A cannot be matched by any known or projected fighter.[1]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-22_Raptor
So yeah, Paul Metz is quoted on that in other places if you also dont trust Wikipedia! :)I searched "F22 Raptor wikipedia fixed inlet" and quite a lot came up
Hope that helps you, frankly, its all very interesting to me what they say X can do, I dont buy into any of it. I am very interested in the SR-71 (did you know it was to be called RS-71? but US President got it wrong and they changed so he didnt look stupid later? ha, should change things later for Bush!) and the 22, should be interesting to see what the Laser in development will be like for the 22, I've read about the excess power it produces, designed for beam weapons and who knows what else, good old Black Budget :)
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Which launches at similar velocity when a short skirt, thong underwear, inattention toward the family pet, and a dog's standard mode of greeting all come into unfortunate juxtaposition.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
A number of fighters have Mach limits well above 1.6. The F-111 was rated at 2.4 (albeit in a shallow dive from 40,000ft). The F-15 and F-16 are both rated at Mach 2+, and the F-22 is rated at Mach 1.72 (and supercruise of just over Mach 1.5 at altitude)
Impetuous! Homeric!
But, I thought use of the Freedom of Information act (in this case, used in the late '80s / early '90s) revealed tests indicating the SR-71 reached Mach 5.5 or 6... I know for a fact that standard military aircraft of the past 30 years have been achieving Mach 3 - 3.5 with relative ease. The F-15 has been publicized as reaching Mach 3, the F-16 approaching the same, the F-14 hitting Mach 2.4 - 2.6 (depends on the publication) and the F-14 D (short lived Super Tomcat) clocked in at Mach 3.5... All I know is it's still cool.
Interesting, as I think his books are much clearer and to the point than I'm used to in physics/engineering. Perhaps he's just better with the written word than in front of the blackboard? Personally I'd recommend his books to anyone (with three or more years of college physics) who wants to know more about flight. His book on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is particularly lucid, imo.
His strength is that he starts each topic with a brief talk about its application, as a motivator. You are never left wondering "what's the point in this?". He also is very good at choosing the appropriate mathematical depth -- neither bogging you down with equation nor leaving out important steps.
I should note that I have a theoretical fluid dynamics background, rather than engineering, which may influence how I read him.
I think that's a bit over the top. What the TSA workers do is annoying, not but it's not exactly genocide. I can live with (grudgingly) taking my shoes off and not carrying water at the checkpoints. I can't live with being randomly tortured and executed and you can't make any reasonable argument that the former is a slippery slope to the latter.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
No, that's just Imperial Mach 1.6 versus Metric Mach 2.56.
This is not the sig you're looking for.
Ability to go mach 6+ has been done as stated on other reply about X-15 rocket plane.
There have been hints of other experimental craft using plasma on leading surfaces to reduce sonic boom and stresses on airframe. (Various late 90's TV shows: an episode of "Beyond 2000" and a USAF piece on Nova PBS circa '96.) As the tale goes, even at lower alttitudes these seemingly produce wakes that don't touch the ground, making them fairly quite quiet, but have one heck of a radar signature. I'm not sure of the potential for EMI problems both in terms of equipment and long term physiological exposure.
Aside from the above, why pursue the in-atmosphere (and assume for the moment, no or limited plasma skin effect) at about 60K ft when from even ICBM flight times or orbital times of Mercury and Gemini capsules it is clear that in the long run endeavoring into development of civilian spacecraft as sub-orbital and orbital craft would result in even lower flight times?
A space capable vehicle, reaching 80K ft plus, makes more sense as an approach than ramming through the upper atmosphere; unless the ramjet is an intermediary propulsion approach so as to reduce rocket mode to only at highest altitudes.
It might be interesting to conduct a study to determine long term effect to the atmosphere of both approaches as well as sort out which approach has better efficiency in terms of fuel and cost.
AZhun
a bright tomorrow comes by new mistakes not by repeating the old ones
The Eurofighter Typhoon is both in production (and entered service before the F-22) and can supercruise (attain and sustain supersonic flight without the use of reheat) - the F-22 is neither the only aircraft nor the first aircraft to supercruise.
Of course, there's a trade-off here. In order to go real fast you have to get real high, and to do that you have to go real fast (or follow a ballistic trajectory, which would require you to drink your Chateau Lafitte through a straw). So perhaps there is an economically feasible envelope up at around Mach 5 and 100,000+ feet - Concorde pretty much demonstrated there was not one at Mach 2 and 60,000 feet and presumably this one will be even more capital intensive.
What it does for global warming is another question - you might have to only fly them during the day.
Squirrel!
Scramjets will be primarily used for military drones and new high speed missiles.
The transport uses are minimal since they are highly dangerous and erquire minimal speeds to ignite the scramjet engine (like the Flux Capacitor).
So, stop and think about it. Current jetlines don't even remotely attempt to reach the limits of speed even for the modern jet engine. The Concord went out of business for doing this.
They've been designing and failing at scramjets for decades now. So when they finally do get it, it's still unlikely to become a safe means to propel passangers anytime in the imaginable future.
I almost want to say it's more probably we'll have a safer means of transportation by the time the scamjet could actually be made safe. Plus and I think the main reason airlines don't go this fast is that regardless of your design or efficiency, we cannot defy gravity or the g-force it applies to our bodies.
That being said, you'd die in a second of g-force at Mach 11. What would turbulance do to a passanger plane at Mach 11 ?
We'll probably be levitating before we make passanger scramjets. At least nothing for mass travel. The wealthy elite can fly around with scamjet jet packs for all I care.
Nope, in the world of practical application this is entirely a military development. Russia and the US have been DUMPing money in scramjets for quite awhile, it's nothing new and they've VERY slowy been making advances. It's for missiles are drones, kick ass drones, but not things that will likely generate much revenue for the country, unless we start a global arms race.
In lieu of mod points, kudos.
bla bla jet engine, metal strenght of carcass
What about the humans inside? i Mean to get to mach 15, you cant go there in 5 minutes unless you want a really big human soup in the plane.
would it not just be easier to go into low orbit, let the earth spin a little bit faster, then go down?
Thank you for your stories and anecdotes on the Blackbird. I love reading about military technology and its impact on our history. Your amazing posts help bring some of this to life. Whether truthful or slightly embellished, these give me goosebumps. Thanks.
1 G is 9.8 M/S^2
Mach One is 340 M/S
With 1G of acceleration you can increase your mach number every 35 seconds.
Seems like it's a non-issue.
Are you fucking serious? That moron compares TSA policies to genocide and your idiot ass gives him "kudos"? How do people like you muster the cognitive ability to type when you're obviously so retarded...
The X-15 rocketplane, an air-launched manned research vehicle with a maximum speed of more than Mach 6 and a maximum altitude of more than fifty miles, was designed in the 50's and flew 199 flights well into the 60's.
The Aurora is the rumoured mach 6+ successor of the the SR-71. Some speculate that it was using pulse detonation propulsion but nothing has ever been confirmed. Some say that the program was cancelled as it cost a billion dollars per flight!
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
I think it's time to play some Ace Combat 6
Very insightful post. And despite the fact that it is Offtopic, it should still be modded Insightful.
We often times forget that it's the people under the leaders that give them their power. If people were more willing to stand up to injustices when confronted with them there would have been a lot less evil in this world. We likely wouldn't have had Concentration Camps in Germany or Gulags in the USSR or torture by the CIA.
While it can often be commendable for people to follow their leaders to the ends of the Earth, it often times leads to many injustices as they will not ask themselves "Is this right? Can I live with myself if I do this?"
Thank you again for your great post DaedalusHKX.
We have four boxes with which to defend our freedom: the soap box, the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.
Because the fellow probably understands what you did not.
:)
Its called "mission creep" or "incremental gains". Sure, today they're searching your bags, ordering you around and humiliating you (take off shoes, behave like a prisoner of war, shut up about it, be obedient to authority at all times, etc). SWAT's been "obedience training" kids in some school with their little "practice raids". It even made the national news.
Give it a few more years, and we'll see how far this rabbit hole goes
Thanks, I appreciate your insult (coming from you, that is) explains things to me well.
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
In a country where more than half the populace is armed, legally or illegally, and where military and even sanctioned paramilitary (cops, tsa, etc) forces are FAR into the minority, one does not want to lose the golden goose (which is America). So to keep fleecing it until the last possible moment, without waking up the Giant, Jack will have to continue baby stepping things, until he's stolen every possible golden egg. Then he can lead the giant to his doom when he wakes up angry and upset that his gold is being stolen.
It takes baby steps to get to a goal when the sleeping Giant is just starting to grumble in his sleep. If Jack stays downwind and remains stealthy, by the time the Giant wakes up, the only thing LEFT for him to do is fall off the beanstalk.
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
they will not hassle you. Demand to be treated as an American citizen, that's when they get rough. So, will you be a coward, or will you be an American?
Scramjets have a problem when it comes to passenger or cargo transport: Complexity and the tresses of being in the atmosphere at such high speeds. The Hudson Phoenix design, as tested as the Delta Clipper-X is the right way to go. Simple ballistic travel, land on the tail, Safe return with redundant engine failure, and anywhere on the globe in 90 minutes or less. Remember that SpaceShip One wasn't going all that fast, either, and it hit the used-definition of space. You don't want to be going at high speeds in the sensible atmosphere for non-military uses. It isn't cost-effective, and it isn't as safe. Ballistics are much safer, cheaper and with rapid turn-arounds.
Idiot posts like this that compare having your bags go through an x-ray machine at an airport with slaughtering millions of innocents really annoy me.
Years ago I was visiting the family of a Chinese friend of mine, and his father somehow got on the topic of the WWII. He had been a refugee as boy in China, and had experienced first hand being bombed and strafed by the Japanese in a refugee column. He was still angry and bitter. When you compare his experience watching friends and family die to your experience at an airport, you demean him, you demean millions and millions of people.
Stop it.
"Scramjets, on the other hand, can theoretically fly as fast as Mach 15--nearly 10,000 mph.'"
If only this technology was available on 9/11.
LBJ also misread AMI (short for Advanced Manned Interceptor) as A-11, so the YF-12A was credited as being derived from the A-11 when in reality it was derived from the A-12.
It's possible that the fixed inlets on the F-22 may be shaped to give a better shock wave than the F-16, but it still gives up a lot of top speed compared to what would be possible with variable inlets. On the blackbirds, the inlets produce about half the thrust at Mach 3.0 and the Concorde was getting significant thrust from the inlets at Mach 2.0.
Flamebait?? Good lord, are the mods on crack today? I was neither flaming him, nor demeaning him, nor inviting a flame war.
Do moderators even know what the moderation of flamebait even means any more?
Anyway, apologies to the OP if it was construed as flamage. It wasn't.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
>Mao Tse Dun
Those little dumplings are absolutely delicious with that plum sauce.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
This will only be practical for long haul over-ocean flights. Even if they go up to FL 999 (99,900 feet) or higher they will cause a sonic boom so nobody wants them flying overhead (nor is it currently permitted in this country AT LEAST). This will also be an expensive plane to design, produce, test and operate. Combine those two and the economics will keep it to boutique operations involving the very wealthy and corporate executives.
The travel times will be limited by the climb phase (subsonic until far enough over the ocean, then limited by airframe limits until altitude high enough/air thin enough to allow full design speed) and the terminal descent phase where again, they have to slow down as altitude decreases and the air gets denser, and then drop subsonic as they get closer to the destination. Add in routing and sequencing to this whole mess and the great speeds have their best advantage only on the longer flights.
PS, will they extend Class A controlled airspace to over 60,000 feet now? Talk about VFR on top!!
No, when you tell me to shut up, what you're doing is saying that you'd rather wait until you get strafed.
You're also a victim worshipper... I'm watching to see if anyone who ISN'T a victim worshipper will be around. I've got RELATIVES, not "friends" who were murdered through government aggression. And the patterns are cyclical. They're occurring in the West now, because they've gotten to their logical conclusion in the East.
Some of my great grandparents were killed by invading Russians and the following collectivization... in America, the "allies" call them "heroes" or "allied Russian forces fighting for freedom", even though where my grandparents grew up, the Nazi soldiers were remembered for being gentlemen and even paying rent to stay in their town and be fed by the locals, while the Russian "saviors" were the ones who indulged in rapes and butchery and burned whatever they couldn't steal.
History... has always been written by the victor... in America, as in everywhere else. If you ever get to be a "refugee" it means you didn't see it coming. And you won't, you're too busy telling those who do, to shut up.
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
I believe he was "anglicized" as Mao Zedong.
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
There has already been simple scramjet engines produced and lab tested for numerous hours. Several years ago, at a large laboratory in the Midwest, I performed hi-res X-ray CT scans of a fully functional and lab tested scramjet nozzle and combustion assembly about eight feet in length. The material was a carbon composite core with carbide type exterior. The material is similar to shuttle tiles but much more robust and structural.
Burt put out a revolutionary pusher plane and had hell to pay to be allowed to sell it.
It was safer, cooloer looking and more efficient. Because he did not pay off govt or have a few for them to crash,
they withheld approval for sale.
Government interference with the market is why you are still flying in a tube with wings.
A bigger, more efficient tube, but one your grandparents would recognize in a picture.
I'm just hungry for pork buns today.
Gomen nasai.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
The only thing that I've learned from this thread is that the old SR-71 pilots talk too much. They need to learn to shut their mouths. For national security.
Do you have a link you can provide for these "practice raids"? I've not heard about these despite keeping up on the news.
We have four boxes with which to defend our freedom: the soap box, the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.
Idiot posts like this that compare having your bags go through an x-ray machine at an airport with slaughtering millions of innocents really annoy me.
Perhaps you should actually read his post again and attempt to understand what he was actually saying.
He was debunking the cowardly excuse of "I'm just a soldier following orders".
That's how the slaughter of millions *starts*.
And it is the regular people just like that who do all of the actual atrocities. Hell look at cops with the drug war and the massive increase in the police state that that demanded. Not one decent human being or citizen could possibly join a police force after that started so we're guaranteed a police force of brutal thugs which is what we have as you would have noticed by now were you at all aware of your surroundings.
As they increase the assinine rules in airports, like the whole liquids thing (There was no plot, it isn't even feasible, but the rules are still there because Bush had to cry wolf again to keep you fools scared so you'd keep their licking boots as you did in this post), then you end up with a job that no decent human would take but you still have plenty of people signing up.
Years ago I was visiting the family of a Chinese friend of mine, and his father somehow got on the topic of the WWII. He had been a refugee as boy in China, and had experienced first hand being bombed and strafed by the Japanese in a refugee column. He was still angry and bitter. When you compare his experience watching friends and family die to your experience at an airport, you demean him, you demean millions and millions of people.
Then perhaps you should stop being the one to ignore the lessons learned with the various totalitariain regimes of the previous century and therefore demeaning your friend's losses?
I mean it is really deeply sickening to watch people like you whine about how things aren't that bad so you should shut up about it while the whole time it is rapidly progressing down that same pathway. It's cowards like yourself who refuse to learn from history and refuse to look around them and apply those lessons that *allow* this to happen.
Stop it.
I certainly hope he doesn't, and I know I won't because we have seen this all before too many fucking times in history. Rather than asking others to please stop talking about reality so you can go back to hiding from it, how about you start acting like an adult and a citizen rather than a childish subject and a tool?
So, will you be a coward, or will you be an American?
Most modern Americans are defined by cowardice and a militant death grip on ignorance, so your question is redundant.
I read a lot of Jeremy Clarkson (top gear guy), he's very fond of the English Lightning, when he lived in a lighthouse (I think) he had one pared on his front lawn!
In his book, I Know You Got Soul, he has the SR-71 as the main thing, its on the covers. According to him, it produced only 20 percent of its power from the actual engine, you may have also known it got better economy the FASTER it went. I've read the engines could have done mach 4.5, which sure would have been something, you could basically, I would think, tickle them up to 5 from 4 and a half. Its rather sad to think that people came up with all this great stuff so so long ago! When an iPhone would have been the work of a witch! And yet, Mach 3 was reachable. I Know You Got Soul is quite good reading.
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At least one SR-71 had two LOX tanks. The usual one for the cabin, and a second near the fuel tank, almost certainly as oxidizer. I filled them both at Kincheloe AFB, so I know it was there. This makes the top speed and altitude likely to be much higher than advertised. Many details of the SR-71 program were taken from the DynaSoar project, of which I'm quite familiar. It is likely at least this one SR-71 earned some air crews astronauts wings, though they'd never be able to say so. At 50 miles up (the USAF limit for astronaut wings) it could have gone Mach 15 and had an air equivalent spped of just under Mach 1, easily within its heat limit. (Calculations actually done for 230,000 ft, limit of my standard atmosphere equivalence calculator, a bit less than 50 miles.)
It'd have to have oxidizer in order to go high enough to go that fast because it'd have to go much higher than its advertised limit. Mach 3.3 at the advertised altitude was pretty much the heat limit for the airframe, especially the leading edges.
Since equivalent Mach number decrease with altitude, a scram operating at Mach 15, so as not to fry itself, will be flying so high that its Mach equivalent speed will still be within the heat limits of the leading edges. The ground speed will still be 11,250 MPH (Mach 15 equivalent at sea level). A scram would have to balance high altitude to keep from burning up with low altitude for there to be enough air to work with.
There having been advances in materials which would allow higher temperatures, it could easily hit Mach 5 at normal aircraft operating altitudes, and scram up to suborbital speed and trajectory. It'd also have to be a lifting body design, because a scram does nothing to slow it down other than leaving it off and using the drag, and that's not going to be much drag at all unless they put a flap over the intake while at peak altitude (when the scram isn't operating).
I want one.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
I've heard a figure of Mach 4.2 as the max speed for the inlets on the SR-71 - suspect thermal heating precludes much opertaing above Mach 3.3. I've also have heard that the fuel consumption per mile (or km) decreased as the pane went faster. Will have to pick up a copy of 'I Know You Got Soul' (another book on my 'should get' list is 'Magnesium Overcast'). While the Blackbird gets lots of attention, the B-70 was equally a technological feat - it was simultaneously almost the largest and fastest plane flying - and had a longer range cruising at Mach 3.0 than the SR-71 - only problem was that it was a giant radar reflector (while the Blackbirds were the first stealth aircraft).
It is really weird to think that only 15 years passed between the flight of the X-1 and the first flight of the A-12.
Your inability to formulate anything coherent rather than a string of invective has sadly lowered my opinion of AC posts. I'll respond to the stupidity (IHBT, in other words).
You fail to get that your GP was not fucking talking about TSA policies (did I get the point across better by swearing?). He was making a general point regarding the blame given to leaders for evil they make their underlings do. His point was that the "I was following orders" defense is not a defense, but rather a cop-out for such criminals for disabling their own conscience. Given how Nuremberg worked out, this is hardly a new concept. It is a sound analysis of the morals involved.
So far the post. Now back to airport security (which the GP did not talk about, but which I still go back to because that's the topic of the article). "Genocide"? Do you need to kill millions of people to do evil? Do you need to kill thousands? Or just a few with liberal application of electric shocks? Or do you even just need to inconvenience thousands of people based on their ethnicity? I'd say that segregation and discrimination, humiliating and depriving people of their quality of life is capital-e Evil, even without mass murder.
If the only good thing you can say about TSA policies is that "they're not comparable to genocide", then that says a whole lot. If you fail to see that, maybe you are the moron yourself?
No, I'm saying that comparing taking precautions to make sure that terrorists don't kill people to committing genocide is just plain dumb. Don't do it.
All were atheists who killed large numbers of people. Hitler started out Catholic, but changed his views in the early 1940's when he saw Christianity as a threat to Nationalism and became anti Christian, but still believed in some sort of God.
More importantly to the deaths was not their religious views, but probably their dogmatic Marxism and communist ideals.
Body count
Hitler 10-12 million (6 million Jews + 5-6 million Poles, Gypsies, Russians, etc) this does not include war casulties, but concentration camp victims.
Stalin 15-50!! million (from various farm collective starvation, pogroms, etc)
Mao 16-60 million "Cultural Revolution" similar to Stalin- outright liquidation of millions of people + deliberate starvation for the rest.
Pol Pot - managed to reduce Cambodia's population from 7 million to 3 million.
Total body count range from the big 4 range from 43- 120 million people.
..........FULL STOP.
http://www1.nasa.gov/missions/research/x43_gwr.html :(
This site seems to suggest the official record is mach 6.8316 and has a picture of the guiness book of records certificate to confirm it. I remember watching videos on this stuff years ago and they were talking about reaching just over mach 6 so it irked me a bit when they said the official record was 3.3