Mach 7

[Vampiel]

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/03/24/plane.nasa/index.html

I wonder how much of a pancake someone would look like when they fly that. I think their cheeks would be wrapped around the back of the chair.

[rraehal]

Originally posted by Vampiel
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/03/24/plane.nasa/index.html

I wonder how much of a pancake someone would look like when they fly that. I think their cheeks would be wrapped around the back of the chair.

There was a time when people thought the same thing about cars. Maybe they will not go flat. :)

[FrnchDp]

lol thought this might be about a new gilette razor

:D

[zybch]

Strange, that article claims that a scramjet has never before been tested outside of a wind tunnel.
Last year (july 30-2002) a group from Australia's Queensland University working with a shoe-string budget successfully launched a scramjet rocket.

It too reached scramjet operating speeds for 10 seconds, the same as is projected for this multi million dollar NASA test, but did so with less than 1/100th the budget.

I love this quote:
'We've bought a lot of bits and pieces off the shelf from automotive shops.'
Allan Paull, University of Queensland


Perhaps NASA are hiring the wrong people if they have to spend $250M but still haven't actually had a successful test yet.

http://www.space.com/images/v_hyshot_020730a_02,0.jpg

[ukulele]

The Australian test was not successful. Do your homework.

[zybch]

The one in 2001 wasn't, the one in 2002 was. Do your homework :)

[ukulele]

It's not my homework. Post a link. :p

[FrnchDp]

Yuck.. too much homework going on in here...

I didn't do aeronautical engineering to do homework afterwards...

[zybch]

Failure in 2001:
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/aust-01h.html

Success in 2002:
http://abc.net.au/news/2002/08/item20020816182227_1.htm
http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail?assetid=14779


"Onboard sensors confirmed that combustion occurred in one of two parallel chambers.'

This has been taken by some to mean that ther test was not a success. However read straight on and you get this:

"This did not, however, reflect a partial misfire: The second chamber was purposely not provided with fuel, so that the engineers would know exactly what physical changes burning produced. According to Myles Frost, a member of the Australian team, flight data indicated that air flowed through the combustion chamber at about Mach 2.7, clearly qualifying it as supersonic combustion. "

[ukulele]

That's old news. Read the part about the design itself. It was not an actual scramjet. It only produced combustion on the outside. It did not and in fact could not produce thrust, hence it was not a real working scram jet.

[zybch]

Looks like we are getting into the symantecs of what was actually tested. The point was that supersonic combustion took place using identical principals as the upcomming US test will use.

You might as well say that the Wright brothers didn't actually achieve powered flight as they were not powered by curent conventional jet engines.

[ukulele]

Read this article. (http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail?assetid=14779)

The Aussies are on the right track but don't get the bananna just yet.

You can post links it seems but you should read them first.

[zybch]

That is the article I refferenced above. It even says and I quote:
'..the world's first successful flight test of scramjet technology...'.

I'm really not sure what you are getting at, or if its just a matter of sour grapes because someone beat the famous NASA.

Perhaps with this next test, NASA will have figured how to stop the fins dropping off their test missile which only cost 166 times as much to develop and build. I wonder, will they get 166 times the success?

Its a bit like the space programme. In real dollar terms, NASA receives more funding now than it did during the Appolo days just before the 1st moon landing, but what have they got to show for it?
A couple of rovers that worked, a handful that didn't, a Space station not much bigger than the Mir but that cost an order of magnitude more to construct, a telescope with faulty optics and still no cities on the moon ala Kubrick's 2001.

I for one would like to see their budget cut temporarily, and for NASA to be given a short term goal like putting men on Mars.
I believe without all of the dead weight they currently have, such a thing could be made to happen within 5 years.
If the cold war were still in full swing I'm sure we would have a permanent settlement on the moon or possibly Mars by now.

Being seen to beat the Ruskies was a great cattle-prod up the backside of innovation, it helped it along a lot, even if it wasn't in completely constructive ways :eek:

[FrnchDp]

Yuck.. too much reading going on in here..

I didn't take ..........


:D :D :D

[Vampiel]

zybch thats awsome and I hope the Austrailians do develop the technology. I dont care who comes up with it although this is coming straight off your second link...

The Australian flight is indeed an aviation milestone, but it's not so clear that it should be regarded as the first time a scramjet engine was successfully flight-tested.

But there are other reasons to question the conclusion that the recent Australian flight constitutes the first demonstration of a scramjet high in the sky. A combination ramjet-scramjet engine designed and built by engineers at Russia's Central Institute for Aviation Motors was repeatedly tested during the 1990s using a surface-to-air missile to accelerate it to operational speeds. Two trials were conducted jointly with French engineers, including François Falempin, who reports that the Russian engine achieved a speed of Mach 5.7 and that within its combustion chamber "we measured the average Mach number always above one." Further tests made jointly with NASA pushed the Russian scramjet even faster.

What they did has allready been done by three other countries. Russia, France, and the US.

These were carried out in the dead of the Siberian winter so that the extreme cold would make the fuel on the missile denser than normal, allowing more to be packed in and increasing the top speed to about Mach 6.5.

The Austrailians were not the first one's to do what they did, I think that first article sort of jumped the gun on a conclusion.

[zybch]

There will always be questions about who did what first. I think we can take the Russiona tests with a grain of salt though as it was:
1 - During the cold war
2 - Even the failed technology of today hadn't been developed yet
3 - C'mon, it was the Russians and the French, they had more to worry about, trying to find all their lost suitcase bombs and enough bottles of wine to keep sobriety at bay :)

I'm also not entirely sure how measurements 'always above 1' can equate to mach 5.6.

But as Vamp says, who gives a rats backside about who did it first, scramjet technology will hopefully decrease travel times and cost significantly.
Its just annoying that seems to be this 'We are America, and unless its done by us it doesn't really count' kind of mentality, especially when more than 166 times the cash has been spent with no result yet compared to a bunch of hicks using auto parts from the local shopping centre :)