Hypersonic & Supersonic Aviation News and Discussions

Nanotechandmorefuture
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Re: Hypersonic & Supersonic Aviation News and Discussions

Post by Nanotechandmorefuture »

wjfox wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 8:56 am
wjfox wrote: Wed Jul 13, 2022 8:53 pm 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!
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raklian
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“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/
To know is essentially the same as not knowing. The only thing that occurs is the rearrangement of atoms in your brain.
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wjfox
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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/


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weatheriscool
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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
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Hermeus is Rapidly Iterating to Quickly Develop Hypersonic Aircraf
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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
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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.
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