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China Starts Developing Hybrid Hypersonic Spaceplane (popsci.com)
hackingbear quotes a report from Popular Science: While SpaceX is making news with its recoverable rockets, China announced that it is working on the next big thing in spaceflight: a hypersonic spaceplane. The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation is beginning advanced research on a high tech, more efficient successor to the retired Space Shuttle, with hybrid combined cycle engines combining turbofan, ramjet, scramjet and rocket engines, that can takeoff from an airport's landing strip and fly straight into orbit. CASTC's rapid research timeline also suggests that the reports in 2015 of a Mach 4 test flight for a recoverable drone testbed for a combined cycle ramjet/turbofan engine were accurate. And China also has the world's largest hypersonic wind tunnel, the Mach 9 JF-12, which could be used to easily test hypersonic scramjets without costly and potentially dangerous flight testing at altitude. Its nearest competitor, the British Skylon in contrast uses pre-cooled jet engines built by Reaction Engines Limited to achieve hypersonic atmospheric flight, as opposed to scramjets. Both spacecraft will probably first fly around the mid 2020s.
No doubt the Communist Chinese are now confident they've stolen enough ideas, tech and infrastructure from everybody else that they can put some poor bastard in charge of a doomed project and hang him as a traitor when their "space plane" accomplishes something a bit..."North Korean" on its maiden flight.
(Let's watch how fast this comment gets modded down into obscurity. ;-)
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Well I guess that's easy when you hack into and steal everyone else's hard work.
You could have funded Skylon for more than the chicken feed you handed them, you could have led the world in SSTO systems and exported the technology globally like you did with nuclear power generation and passenger jets. Now the Chinese are going to knock something up in 4 years and you'll be left with a footnote in the history of human space exploration as an "also ran"
Only one sentence in the whole article mentioning hardening against reentry heating. It glosses right over how exposed combined-cycle engines could be expected to survive this.
Lessons from shuttle include:
Dont take control surfaces and engines you dont need in space to space.
Don't connect stuff to the side of a rocket put it on top instead.
Lessons from sr71 blackbird:
Dont make a plane with holes to fill in by expanding metal skin. Blackbird leaks a lot.
"take off". "takeoff" is a noun.
We're been dreaming about this ever since the 70ies. I remember as a Kid - both my father and grandpa worked for and with Nasa - seeing the SÃnger concepts.
We'd leapfrog SpaceX if this would finally happen, but I'm not holding my breath. This is difficult. Really difficult. But cool if the chinks can make it happen. Two thumbs up for the attempt.
My 2 Eurocents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
How about switching to unicode, dear Slashdot Team. It's 2016, for chrissakes. Or is this just mobile? 'Sänger' is the Name. (Let's hope HTML Umlaut renders correctly .... It's like 10 years ago that I last had to use these)
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Of course, Britain cannot possibly have a monopoly over the skylon idea. Even *if* they had made a working skylon spaceplane first (which would imply the idea is realisable) the Chinese would have made a similar thing in short time.
Legally obtaining information or content is copying content that has been compensated for through money and a legal binding contract.
Pirating information or content is copying content that can also be obtained using money by many people and making it accessible without charge for a huge amount of people.
Stealing information or content is copying content with strict access restrictions that cannot also be obtained using money (or by many people doing so) and also containing that data within a very limited access.
Freeing information or content is copying content with strict access restrictions that cannot also be obtained using money (or by many people doing so) and releasing that data for public access.
China has Legally obtained information for example by buying Kuka.
China is not interested in Freeing information because this secret information is not shared, also secret information was not publically availiable so China does not do pirating the information.
So except from legally obtained information, China is really stealing information. Also China has shown no interest in freeing information (example: number of peoples executed is considered a state secret).
China is different, but you are correct on one point information should be free and without control and censorship, especially in China.
It's not hard; "take off" is a verb, "takeoff" is a noun.
Try using the past tense, you'll see: Did you see that takeoff? That plane took off like a bat from Hell?
I think they are cheating here, as it is quite easy to beat the speed of sound in space...
If you're not employing megnetoplasmadynamic engines with potassium seeded helium propellant, I'm not interested.
Learn to spell.
I guess China has finally stolen enough ideas, tech and infrastructure that they feel confident enough to try something like this.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
I hope they are right, I really do. Its just that I'm old enough to have seen dozens of these ideas appear, get hyped, the disappear. Anyone remember NASP? So far though, the only things that works to get to orbit are conventional rockets. SpaceX is making a lot of progress there.
They should pack a lot of dogs to eat.
The credulous piece by Popular Mechanics just relays the Chinese government's propaganda.
Nobody can get SCRAM-jot to work for than a few minutes. RAM-jets are hard enough. You need to be up to at least Mach 3 for a RAM-jet to even ignite.
TFA describes a multi-type jet + RAM-jet + SCRAM-jet engine that adjusts the intake cowling to "transition" from jet-powered supersonic flight to RAM-jet powered supersonic flight, and so on.
The biggest point that the article missed is that a SCRAM-jet relies on oxygen in the atmosphere to supply to the oxidant. So how in the hell is that thing going to use a SCRAM-jet to get into LEO, where there is basically no air?
The article is almost as bad as that Iranian press release showing 15+ missiles all launching at the same time, that people on the internet immediately noticed was a bad Photoshop of a single launch, just cloned several times in the image.
Dear /. editors: Please stop being so credulous.
A new space race would be awesome.
...when they've built the "first" of anything that hasn't been researched, developed, and likely designed by someone else such that they simply stole the plans, connected a few lines, and built it domestically.
They can't really even build a decent jet engine themselves.
-Styopa