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Posted on 06/16/2002 12:04:34 PM PDT by Excuse_My_Bellicosity
ARLINGTON, Va. (NNS) -- The Office of Naval Research (ONR) and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) successfully conducted the first ground test of a full-scale, fully integrated hypersonic cruise missile engine using conventional liquid hydrocarbon fuel on May 30, 2002. The test, performed in a wind tunnel at NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, Va., demonstrated robust operation of the engine at simulated hypersonic cruise conditions (Mach 6.5 at 90,000 feet altitude).
Demonstration of efficient supersonic combustion ramjet (scramjet) performance with a liquid hydrocarbon fuel is an essential step to enabling a viable hypersonic cruise missile. The May 30 test is the first demonstration of net positive engine thrust for a fully installed, hydrocarbon-fueled scramjet missile engine. Additional tests are planned later this summer at the Arnold Engineering and Development Center, Arnold Air Force Base, Tenn., to verify operation at Mach 3.5 and 4 flight conditions, which will simulate the hypersonic engine taking over following a rocket boost.
The engine will be used in the four-year, joint ONR/DARPA Hypersonic Flight Demonstration program called HyFly. The objective of the HyFly program is to flight-test a missile demonstrator able to cruise at speeds of up to Mach 6 to a range of 600 nautical miles using liquid hydrocarbon fuel. The HyFly program is being performed by a team consisting of The Boeing Co. of St. Louis; Aerojet of Sacramento, Calif.; The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md.; and Naval Air Warfare Center at China Lake, Calif. The engine is a dual combustion ramjet engine developed by The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory under ONR’s Hypersonic Weapon Technology program.
“HyFly’s objective is to mature the dual combustion ramjet-based hypersonic strike missile concept, through flight demonstration, in a weapon configuration that’s compatible with launch from surface ships and submarines as well as Navy and Air Force aircraft,” explained DARPA’s Preston Carter, program manager for HyFly.
The U.S. Navy’s Chief of Naval Research Rear Adm. Jay Cohen, and Anthony J. Tether, director of DARPA, in a joint statement noted, “The dual combustion ramjet engine concept is the enabling technology for a future high-speed strike weapon. A hypersonic strike weapon has the potential to transform our nation’s armed forces to meet future warfighting needs. HyFly is a leading element of DoD’s National Aerospace Initiative to demonstrate advanced hypersonic technologies.”
Developmental flight tests of the HyFly demonstrator vehicle start early in FY04 with demonstration of a surrogate submunition deployment planned for March 2004. The program plans to progress to powered flights at Mach 4 in November 2004, with Mach 6 flights starting a year later.
At Mach 6 it would have crossed the distance from England to Germany in a few minutes and left NO warning.
Way to go DOD .... now make a decent missile of it.
Who needs stealth when you can outfly anything the nenemy can shoot at you.
and a Mach 3.2 platform pushing a Mach 6.5 missile would certainly give little advanced warning!
(Ahh, can't you just feel the testosterone flowing with these numbers floating around?)
Supposedly every time the Russians or someone else would set a new record, they would fly the SR-71 just fast enough to set a new record.
I have also heard that they don't really know the absolute top speed. That because of the fact that the engines generate more power the faster they go, that they think the SR-71 would just go faster and faster until something breaks, melts, or blows up.
In flight at Mach 3 and above the effective viscosity of air is like that of 30 weight motor oil. Not only is it hard to get it to flow through the engines and around the aircraft, but a flame out can decelerate the aircraft so hard that the pilots are turned into mush.
Burning kerosense in a scamjet is no small feat either. Unlike Hydrogen is has a relatively slow flame speed and can easily be self extinguished by a small change in mixture ratio.
If they have really done it then, Bravo. It took generations of research to get there.
I don’t know about the SR-71… My uncle was an air traffic controller in/around Reno. I don’t know exactly where, but he lived in Sparks at the time. He said the Air Force would routinely tell them they were flying planes through their area and to ignore them. He said you could mark their positions on the screen with a grease pencil as they flew through and then measure the distance traveled each sweep to approximate speed. I don’t remember exact numbers for exact planes, but I remember they (according to him) were flying much faster than what the Air Force admitted to…
True ...
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