Hypersonic & Supersonic Aviation News and Discussions

[wjfox]

Paywalled, but you get the gist of it here.

This is one of several similar articles I've seen over the last couple of years. China seems to be pouring truckloads of money into next-gen aviation, space planes, etc.

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China designs hypersonic jet bigger than Boeing 737 with wings like Concorde

14 Jul, 2021

• Researchers used aerodynamic model that contributed to China’s latest space missions
• Official timeline aims by 2035 to operate a fleet of hypersonic aircraft that can transport 10 passengers to anywhere on Earth within an hour

China is developing a hypersonic aircraft larger than a Boeing 737, according to a study by scientists involved in the nation’s Mars and moon missions.

At 45 metres (148 feet), the plane would be nearly a third longer than a 737-700, with two air-breathing engines mounted on top of its main body. The design has a pair of delta wings similar to those of the Concorde, but with tips pointing up.

Such a complex design can bring multiple aerodynamic challenges when the aircraft goes hypersonic, or faster than five times the speed of sound.

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science ... s-concorde

[wjfox]

US Air Force, Venture Firms Make $60 Million Bet on Hypersonic Aircraft Startup

August 5, 2021 08:47 AM ET

The U.S. Air Force, along with a number of venture capital funds, are making a $60 million bet on a Georgia-based startup, hoping the company’s efforts to develop a hypersonic airliner will benefit the military.

The service entered a $60 million strategic financing arrangement with Hermeus on July 30; the contract was announced Aug. 5. The deal is believed to be one of the largest such agreements brokered by AFWERX, the Air Force office that works to get commercial tech into the military. The Air Force did not respond to multiple questions about the deal.

“[H]ypersonic aircraft and propulsion systems are truly game-changing, and will revolutionize how we travel, just as automobiles did in the last century,” Maj. Gen. Heather Pringle, the Air Force Research Laboratory commander, said in a statement. “We are excited to be part of this effort, and to help propel this important technology.”

Hermeus is building a reusable hypersonic plane, something that has never been done before; so far, all hypersonic test vehicles and weapons have been built for a single flight.

The Air Force deal will allow Hermeus to accelerate its own work on technology that is projected to ultimately allow it to build a Mach-5 passenger aircraft that could fly from New York to London in 90 minutes. Executives said the company’s research and testing could speed up the Pentagon’s own quest for reusable hypersonic vehicles.

Read more: https://www.defenseone.com/business/202 ... up/184306/

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

Why a Mach 5 passenger plane is a crazy idea that might just work

Jacopo Prisco, CNN • Updated 16th October 2021

Almost two decades since Concorde retired, interest around supersonic travel has been picking up pace, and several super-fast planes are under development. Airlines seem interested: United has already committed itself to offering supersonic routes as early as 2029.

But what about hypersonic travel, which happens at speeds of Mach 5 -- five times the speed of sound -- and above? That would get an aircraft from New York to London in just 90 minutes, compared to about three hours for Concorde, and between six to seven hours for a regular passenger jet.

Is it even possible?

Hermeus, an Atlanta-based startup whose goal is to develop hypersonic aircraft, believes so. It's already testing a new type of engine it says will eventually be capable of reaching Mach 5 (over 3,000 mph). The engine is designed for a small, unmanned hypersonic aircraft Hermeus is currently creating for the US Air Force, but scaled to a bigger size, it will be able to power a passenger plane.

https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/ ... index.html

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

Hypersonic Plane From Venus Aerospace Will Travel to the Edge of Space

6/09/22 7:30PM

Earlier this week, Venus Aerospace, a Houston-based aeronautics startup, released renderings for Stargazer—an incredibly fast high-altitude vehicle it’s hoping to develop.

Venus Aerospace has been working on the hypersonic aircraft since 2020, according to a company press release, and it has raised $33 million to build the plane, of which $1 million came from government funding. Hypersonic refers to vehicles or missiles capable of traveling Mach 5 or faster, and Stargazer has the potential to reach Mach 9, or nine times the speed of sound. The vehicle is being designed to hold 12 passengers while it travels at an altitude of 170,000 feet (51.8 kilometers), the company said in an email.

Even though Venus Aerospace calls Stargazer a “spaceplane,” the vehicle won’t actually venture to space. The technical boundary of space is still about 30 miles (50 kilometers) higher than Stargazer’s maximum altitude, so the plane won’t travel to beyond the Kármán line—sort of like how space balloons don’t really enter space either. That said, passengers will still have quite the view, with the curvature of Earth being clearly visible.

The Stargazer is expected to get passengers from Tokyo to Los Angeles in an hour. Imagine that—you’d be able to gallivant around Shibuya Crossing and climb the Skytree for a few hours, only to be back home on the west coast before dinnertime. That’s definitely an improvement over the the 11-hour flight on a commercial aircraft.

Stargazer would take off using engines just like a conventional airplane, but then “transition to rockets once at altitude and away from [the] city,” Venus Aerospace CTO Andrew Duggleby said to me in an email. Stargazer’s first ground test isn’t expected to happen until 2025 at the earliest, and there would be “no less than five years of flight testing to ensure safety, reliability, and performance,” he added.

https://gizmodo.com/venus-aerospace-hyp ... 1849039397

[caltrek]

Before we get too wrapped up in the hype and romance of hypersonic transport, we need to remember that there may be some very real downsides.

Specifically:

The effects of emissions on stratospheric ozone from a hypersonic airplane flying at about 100,000 ft. altitude have not been fully evaluated by the atmospheric science community. NOx emissions are expected to lead to some level of ozone depletion, but the amount will depend on cruise altitude, the quantity of NOx ­emitted from engines, and fleet fuel use. Water vapor emissions from a hypersonic airplane will accumulate in the stratosphere, potentially affecting ozone as well. Moreover, CO2 and water vapor emissions are both greenhouse gases, but the climate effects of these emissions in the stratosphere have yet to be evaluated.

The effect on CO2 emissions is a little more complicated:

Lifetime CO2 emissions for a hypersonic airplane are a strong function of the amount of fuel burned and a weaker function (<1 percent) of the energy and ­materials used to fabricate, assemble, maintain, and dispose of the airplane. How the fuel is created can make a large difference as well. Fortunately, biofuel versions of hydrocarbon fuels can provide significant environmental benefits because CO2-absorbing biomass is used as feedstock to create the fuel. It is expected that this fuel would reduce lifecycle CO2 emissions by up to 70 percent.

Using current performance assumptions, calculations show that CO2 emissions per passenger mile for a hypersonic airliner will be comparable to those of a super­sonic airliner, but still much higher than for a conventional subsonic transport because of the increased fuel use needed to fly at supersonic or hypersonic speed. However, a passenger on a hypersonic airliner using 100 percent biofuel will have a comparable CO2 footprint per passenger mile to someone flying first class in a subsonic airliner that uses conventional Jet A fuel. While it is true that using 100 percent biofuel on conventional subsonic aircraft would give it a CO2 advantage, the relatively small fraction of passengers anticipated to fly on hypersonic airliners will largely mitigate the effects of this difference.

Biofuels are more expensive than traditional ­petroleum-based fuels, especially in the relatively small quantities now produced (<1 percent of current jet fuel supply). This actually presents an opportunity for supersonic and hypersonic airplanes as their passengers are less likely to be sensitive to ticket price, hence fuel price. In other words, they would be more likely to pay an additional premium to travel in a more eco-friendly manner, and in so doing spur the demand for biofuel, driving down the cost for all users. Existing aircraft, with legacy fuel and engine systems, are generally limited to 50 percent biofuel blends; new aircraft, such as a hypersonic transport with new or modified engines, can be designed to use 100 percent biofuels.

Source: https://www.nae.edu/19579/19582/21020/2 ... nic-Flight

As the cited article points out, there are also nuisance problems brought on by sonic booms. This might restrict high speed travel to over ocean routes and to relatively unpopulated land areas. That would, in turn, effect the economics of scaling up from experimental stages of development. The one percent elites might not mind the cost differentials, but the bulk of the traveling public might not find the saved time all that worth while.

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

It's a bit quick...

[wjfox]

UK studies reusable hypersonic military jet technology

2 days ago

Aeroengineers are to investigate the potential of hypersonic technologies for use by British armed forces.

Russia, China and the US are all developing missiles that can travel through the atmosphere at many times the speed of sound, making them very difficult to track and shoot down.

The UK project, announced at the Farnborough Air Show, would look to develop a super-fast, uncrewed air vehicle that could deliver payloads at great distance and then return to be used again.

The team behind the venture includes Rolls-Royce, the RAF, the defence research agency DSTL and the Oxfordshire company Reaction Engines.

It's also got the backing of the UK's National Security Strategic Investment Fund.

The consortium has already begun its work and will aim to fly a demonstrator "well within this decade".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-62218968

[Nanotechandmorefuture]

It's a bit quick...

Gotta love these series helping visualize things. I gotta say the spy plane looking one that skirts the earth's orbit is nice. Its gotta be one hardcore pilot flying that because it is more of using their instruments and less of the exterior at that point. The view must be nice!

[raklian]

“The FCT test program greatly expanded the demonstrated capabilities of our engine precooler technology”, said REI Director of Engineering, Andrew Piotti. “During these recent tests, the precooler successfully achieved our objective of over 10 megawatts of transferred thermal energy from the high-temperature airflow, which is three times higher than our previous test program.”

The delivery of the required airflow conditions, which mimic those expected during eventual high-Mach flight, necessitated the expansion of REI’s TF2 test facility, and also included the addition of a new water coolant system to reject the huge thermal load. “I’m so proud of our team and the commitment they showed in rapidly meeting these challenges and achieving these important test outcomes,” said Piotti.

https://reactionengines.co.uk/fct-testing/

[wjfox]

China Built a Hypersonic Ski Jump for Sending People to Space

Published: Jan 18, 2023

Launching planes from aircraft carriers via ski jumps went out of vogue years ago. But Chinese scientists believe the desire for hypersonic near-space flights can bring the technique back—at seven times the speed of sound, no less.

Using advanced wind tunnel testing at the JF-12 facility, which included a 1/80 scale of a hypersonic plane, researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Mechanics in Beijing showed how the ski-jump technology created a safer, smoother launch of the plane at Mach 7.

In the early days of aircraft carriers and plane launches, an extreme upward tilt of the end of the runway, known as the ski jump portion, helped offer enough lift for a plane to get airborne off the short deck. By offering a design with a reduced tilt, the new testing showed the hypersonic plane not only got enough upward title to help it reach flight, but the method also eliminated the gap between the plane’s two bodies to reduce the risk of any collision, the researchers say in the journal Acta Aeronautica et Astronautica Sinica, via the South China Morning Post.

The entire process had another benefit: smoothness. Unpredictable turbulence is a problem for high-speed launches, which can then lead to further unpredictability. The modified ski-jump design, with a flattened upward tilt, reduced the drag from the two pieces separating at high speeds.

https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/ ... c-flights/

[weatheriscool]

New Engine for the Next Generation Fighter
August 18, 2023 by Brian Wang

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2023/08/n ... ghter.html

GE Aerospace and Pratt & Whitney are in the prototyping phase for the Next Generation Adaptive Propulsion (NGAP) engine which will power the next generation air domination fighter. They both participated in the Adaptive Engine Transition Program (AETP) meant for the F-35 and are instead bringing that engine technology over to the new project. The advanced engine should allow for 20% more speed and 30% more range.

Above are renderings of what the next generation fighter might look like.

[weatheriscool]

B21 Next Generation Stealth Bomber First Flight Test Should Be Weeks Away
August 22, 2023 by Brian Wang

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2023/08/b ... -away.html
The B21 next generation stealth bomber is only a few months behind schedule for a 2023 first test flight. This means we are about 4 to 16 weeks away from the first test flight. The prototype B21’s have already had engines turned on and runway taxi tests performed.

The white B-21 is using the latest in radar absorbing technology. They are likely to prevent passive detection systems from finding the stealth bomber.

The US has about 18-21 B-2 bombers still in operation.

Six B-21 test aircraft are currently in production at USAF’s Plant 42 facility in Palmdale, California, under the engineering and manufacturing development phase.

[weatheriscool]

NASA moves a step closer to supersonic passenger flights
CNN

Since the 2003 end of Concorde, of course, flitting quickly across the Atlantic has been a thing of the past. Flights between London and New York take around eight hours, or closer to seven in the other direction. The record currently stands at just under five hours from New York to London, pushed on by a favorable jetstream.

But now, the thought of supersonic travel has been mooted again – by none other than NASA, which reckons that New York-London flight could take as little as 90 minutes in the future.

The space agency has confirmed in a blog post about its “high-speed strategy” that it has recently studied whether commercial flights at up to Mach 4 – over 3,000 miles per hour – could take off in the future.

The study by NASA’s Glenn Research Center suggested that there are already “potential passenger markets… in about 50 established routes.” These routes were confined to transoceanic ones, including over the North Atlantic and the Pacific, because nations including the US ban overland supersonic flight.

However, NASA is developing “quiet” supersonic aircraft, called X-59s, as part of its Quesst mission. The agency hopes that the new aircraft could eventually prompt modification of these rules, with aircraft flying between Mach 2 and Mach 4 (1,535 - 3,045 miles per hour). Concorde’s maximum speed was Mach 2.04, or 1,354 miles per hour. A jet traveling at Mach 4 could potentially make a transatlantic crossing in as little as 90 minutes.

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/nasa ... index.html

[wjfox]

NASA Targets 2024 for First Flight of X-59 Experimental Aircraft

OCT 12, 2023

NASA’s Quesst mission has adjusted the scheduled first flight of its X-59 quiet supersonic aircraft to 2024.

A one-of-a-kind experimental aircraft, the X-59 has required complex engineering from NASA researchers working with prime contractor Lockheed Martin Skunk Works. In addition to the aircraft’s design, the X-59 also combines new technology with systems and components from multiple, established aircraft, such as its landing gear from an F-16 and its life-support system adapted from an F-15.

As part of the demands of developing this unique aircraft, the Quesst team is working through several technical challenges identified over the course of 2023, when the X-59 had been scheduled to make its first flight. Extra time is needed to fully integrate systems into the aircraft and ensure they work together as expected. The team is also resolving intermittent issues with some of the safety-redundant computers that control the aircraft’s systems.

Quesst made steady progress toward flight over the past year. The team installed the finishing touches to the X-59’s tail structure, which allowed them to finalize its electrical wiring and proceed to critical ground tests, and moved it from its assembly facility to the flight line to perform structural testing.

The X-59 will demonstrate the ability to fly supersonic, or faster than the speed of sound, while reducing the normally loud sonic boom to a quiet sonic thump. NASA plans to fly the X-59 over several communities to gather data on how people perceive the sound it produces. The agency will provide that information to U.S. and international regulators to potentially adjust rules that currently prohibit commercial supersonic flight over land.

https://www.nasa.gov/aeronautics/nasa-t ... -aircraft/

[weatheriscool]

NASA and Lockheed Show Quiet Supersonic X-59 Quesst Jet
January 12, 2024 by Brian Wang

NASA’s rolled out the new X-59 Quesst supersonic aircraft live from Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California. Quesst is NASA’s mission to demonstrate how the X-59 can fly supersonic without generating loud sonic booms, and then survey what people hear when it flies overhead. Reaction to the quieter sonic thumps will be shared with regulators who will then consider writing new sound-based rules to lift the ban on faster-than-sound flight over land.

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2024/01/n ... t-jet.html

[weatheriscool]

Hermeus is Rapidly Iterating to Quickly Develop Hypersonic Aircraft
January 22, 2024 by Brian Wang

Hermeus completed testing of their full system hypersonic ground Mk0 test plane. It is a complete system made in 6 months and tested in 37 days. The fully-integrated vehicle, Quarterhorse Mk 0 is a non-flying prototype acted as a ‘dynamic iron bird’ for the company by validating all major aircraft subsystems in a real-world environment. It has been one year since the Hermeus had a ground test of their Chimera engine transitioning from turbojet to ramjet power. They need to build the successive airframes to hold their engines to reach hypersonic speeds.

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2024/01/h ... craft.html

[weatheriscool]

Quarterhorse Mk 0 takes first steps toward breaking SR-71 speed record

By David Szondy
January 23, 2024

https://phys.org/news/2024-01-global-bi ... -fast.html
In a bid to outdo the world speed record of the famous Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird spyplane, aerospace technology company Hermeus has completed ground testing of its first fully-integrated prototype vehicle called Quarterhorse Mark 0.

In 1976, the world record for the fastest air-breathing manned aircraft was shattered by a spyplane that looked more like a spaceship. When it rolled out of Lockheed's secretive Skunk Works in Burbank, California before entering service in 1964, it was already a technological marvel. When it reached the record speed of Mach 3.3, it was in a class of its own.

With Quarterhorse, Heremeus aims at not only matching that 48-year-old record, but to surpass it. That's going to take more than just recreating 1960s technology. It will require pulling that technology into the 21st century. According to Hermeus, the company is doing this by building not one, but four prototypes before attempting to break the SR-71 record.