Aerospace Technology

As the 21st century began, scientists began to create supersonic combustion ramjets or “scramjets” in short. These high-altitude jet vehicles such as the X-43A are designed primarily for speedy transportation. Researchers predict that scramjets can reach 15 times the speed of sound where an 18-hour trip from Tokyo to New York City becomes a 2-hour trip. In my opinion, if scramjets were used for commercial purposes, I believe that reaching Europe or Asia(from Costa Rica) wouldn´t be as long however it may be very expensive. The technology behind this fast-moving vehicle is very similar to a rocket. A rocket burns its fuel by using a combustion chamber therefore, it creates a significant large amount of weight. In a combustion chamber, an oxidizing substance is used to burn the fuel and both the oxidizing substance and fuel is very expensive because of its large quantities. However, a scramjet burns its fuel by collecting air from atmospheric altitude without the need of a combustion chamber. This, therefore, brings less weight on the vehicle, becomes faster, and much much cheaper than a rocket. During the Apollo Program,(program to produce rockets to reach the moon) the Saturn V rocket(most powerful rocket in history) reached the speed of Mach 3, three times the speed of sound. On the contrary, the U.S. Air Force SR-71 is a currently used manned aircraft that reached 3.4 Mach, 3.4 times the speed of sound. Currently, scramjets are being tested unmanned and the U.S. Air Force SR-71 is an example of a manned scramjet. NASA’s Hyper-X Phase 1 is a project conducted by the Langley Research Center located in Hampton, Virginia. Phase 1 will take seven years and will cost about 230 million dollars for research on flight-validate scramjet propulsion, hypersonic aerodynamics, and design methods.

 On June, 2007, The Australian Defence Science and Technology Organization(DSTO) tested their scramjet engine and reached 10 Mach, 10 times the speed of sound. HyCause is Hypersonic Collaborative Australia/United States Experiment where the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and DSTO are researching and testing together in Australia. This success is the key for a 2-hour trip from London to Sydney, Australia. Not only are the U.S. and Australia working on scramjet projects but Japan and Italy are researching and developing scramjets. If this hypersonic engine is used for commercial purposes, long-durated plane trips may no longer be a problem and some military leaders are considering scramjets for military purposes as well. They have concluded that military scramjets would send too much infrared to be detected by satellite and be followed by a heat-guided missile. However, they have realized that there is no such missile that can reach Mach 10 and its speed may be the key for its defence.

Personally, I think that scramjets is a big success in the aerospace industry because it may change the speed in aerial transportation. While you are reading, aerospace engineers are researching and developing scramjet engines at this moment. At the same time, scientists are researching the propulsion and lots of other people are having different roles in the creation and development of scramjets. Currently, aerospace engineers are working on NASA´s Hyper-X Phase 1 at the Langley Research Center at Hampton, Virginia.

Information from: wikipedia.org and nasa.gov

The link underneath has a video about the X-43A scramjet. Note: The rocket you see falling from the plane is not the scramjet. The scramjet is strapped on the rocket to increase its speed because it needs a specific speed to start absorbing atmospheric air. After the rocket lets go of the scramjet, it would be hard to locate it on camera since it´s too fast.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6652339530072290462

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 at 5:06 p04 and is filed under Transportation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.