US to test 13,000mph aircraft

Mr-White

Mr-White

Mr-White

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An aircraft scheduled to be tested by the Pentagon on Thursday is capable of reaching speeds of up to 13,000mph, or 3.6 miles a second.

More here

No wonder the US are skint funding all this R and D

MW
 
According to Wikipedia -

Sustaining hypersonic flight, or speeds beyond Mach 5, has been extremely difficult for aeronautical engineers to perfect over the years.
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Can anyone knowledgeable on the subject shed light on this?
 
I doubt the human body could handle the G-force of a vehicle travelling at Mach 20. Great that they've finally started openly talking about scramjet technology, which they've been using for around twenty years.
 
gillywibble said:
According to Wikipedia -



Can anyone knowledgeable on the subject shed light on this?
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I'm not particularly knowledgeable, but you get problems with friction with the air and surfaces super heating. Things like the SR-71 had to have special surfaces to deal with it, not entirely dissimilar to the tiles the Shuttle has.

To work around this, the vehicle has to fly at a very high altitude where you need a much stronger airframe to not go pop and you have issues with sourcing enough Oxygen from the atmosphere to fuel combustion. (Rockets get around this by carrying their own accelerant).

On top of this there are engines that can work within these parameters, but need a certain velocity to gather enough Oxygen to fuel the engine, so acceleration tends to be fairly lumpy, and the design of a airframe that will be viable for running traditional jet engines up to say 2000kph is quite different to the airframe that is ideal for a scramjet that operates efficiently at 5000kph.
 
IceBus said:
I doubt the human body could handle the G-force of a vehicle travelling at Mach 20. Great that they've finally started openly talking about scramjet technology, which they've been using for around twenty years.
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Perhaps you should read up on the space shuttle, it enters the atmosphere around Mach 20 ;)

Interesting project though, I'll keep my eyes peeled :)
 
-westy- said:
Perhaps you should read up on the space shuttle, it enters the atmosphere around Mach 20 ;)

Interesting project though, I'll keep my eyes peeled :)
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The velocity doesn't matter, it's the acceleration that causes the issues. I doubt space pilots are subjected to acceleration higher than fighter pilots or formula 1 drivers experience.
 
From DARPA's Twitter feed:

"Range assets have lost telemetry with #HTV2. More to follow"

Then:

"Downrange assets did not reacquire tracking or telemetry. #HTV2 has an autonomous flight termination capability. More to follow."

I'm guessing that means the test didn't go so well!!
 
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