Scramjet Success?

[Admiral Valdemar]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2160502.stm

Looks like the Aussies may have done what NASA couldn't.

Also, I see Boeing are starting up their anti-gravity drive project again to rival BAe Systems.

[Crown]

The problem is not in proving that scramjets can work, that has already been demostrated, in theory anyway. The major hurdle has always been, how do you get the scram jet up to functional velocity in the first place? And it's that hurdle that is holding us all back.

[Admiral Valdemar]

The problem is not in proving that scramjets can work, that has already been demostrated, in theory anyway. The major hurdle has always been, how do you get the scram jet up to functional velocity in the first place? And it's that hurdle that is holding us all back.

Well in the experiment they used a rocket booster for the engine, though how does the SR-71 get into the air seeing as how it is a ramjet?

[Akm72]

The J58 engines on the SR71 are combined turbojet/ramjets - at high speeds the compressor, burner, and turbine of the turbojet are bypassed, and all the air is fed straight to the afterburner section.

Try this link if you want to know more;

http://www.marchfield.org/sr71a.htm

[Admiral Valdemar]

The J58 engines on the SR71 are combined turbojet/ramjets - at high speeds the compressor, burner, and turbine of the turbojet are bypassed, and all the air is fed straight to the afterburner section.

Try this link if you want to know more;

http://www.marchfield.org/sr71a.htm

Cheers, I did wonder but kept forgetting to look it up.

[Crown]

Originally posted by Admiral Valdemar
Well in the experiment they used a rocket booster for the engine

Yeah I know, but the bitch of the problem, is that one of the appeals of scramjet tech, is that it could reduce the cost of launching things into space, however if we need a rocket in order to get it up and work in the first place, then it's essentially useless.

[Nick]

The problem is not in proving that scramjets can work, that has already been demostrated, in theory anyway. The major hurdle has always been, how do you get the scram jet up to functional velocity in the first place? And it's that hurdle that is holding us all back.

I looked into what they were trying to achieve with HyShot (UQ's my old university, so I'm always interested in what the Engineering department is up to).

Anyway, they've apparently been testing their scramjets in the monster shock tunnel they've got in the basement of the main engineering building - what they're after with HyShot is the opportunity to correlate the shock tunnel results with 'in the field' results of a scramjet firing in atmosphere.

So it's more a matter of trying to validate the models they are using in the lab, rather than trying out a scramjet - the scramjet engine they fired didn't even generate net thrust.

Still cool though

[Crown]

Definately cool, and how come UQ get's a massive bloody transonic windtunnel, at RMIT all we have is one the size of a drink bottle, that goes up to Mach 3 I believe...we suck!