Superjet technology nears reality after Australia test

[MowCowWhoHow III]

Source: AFP

Sydney (AFP) - A two-hour flight from Sydney to London is a step closer to reality after the latest successful test Wednesday of hypersonic technology in the Australian desert.

...

Scientists involved in the programme -- called Hypersonic International Flight Research Experimentation (HIFiRE) -- are developing an engine that can fly at Mach 7, Michael Smart of the University of Queensland told AFP.

"It's an exciting time... we want to be able to fly with a hypersonic engine at Mach 7," said Smart, a hypersonics expert involved in the programme which also includes US aerospace giant Boeing and German space agency DLR. He added that the scramjet was a supersonic combustion engine that uses oxygen from the atmosphere for fuel, making it lighter and faster than fuel-carrying rockets. "The practical application of that is you could fly long distances over the Earth very, very quickly but also that it's very useful as an alternative to a rocket for putting satellites into space," Smart said.

The experimental rocket in the trial on Wednesday reached an altitude of 278 kilometres and a target speed of Mach 7.5, Australia's defence department said.

Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/news/superjet-technology-nears-reality-australia-test-064839816.html?ref=gs

[Scientific]

1. Shazaam!

[Fast Walker 52]

2. do we need this? How about working on climate change and world peace?

[Bernardo de La Paz]

3. It is possible to walk and chew gum at the same time. . . nt

[sofa king]

6. One obvious reason:

It has taken aerospace engineers, who will exist no matter what the state of climate change and world peace, seventy years to create the scramjet.

It required dramatic advances in materials science, in heat management, in production, in shock wave management and atmospheric deflection technology, in containment of enormous pressures.

In other words, the advances that make the the scramjet possible may also, finally, make a solar steam boiler possible, which you don't currently have because it would explode in your back yard and take out a good proportion of your neighborhood, which is why you are reliant on fossil fuels for your lavish lifestyle.

The shorter answer is that advances in any scientific field advance the boundaries of all fields. To myopically concentrate our efforts on only the problems you care about not only guarantees that other fields will languish, it dramatically lowers the probability that the problems you actually care about will be solved.

By the way, when the United States announced the intention of going to the moon, President Kennedy's audience was covered from head to toe in animal products. Fifteen years later, they were not, thanks to the space program providing manufacturing solutions that made killing animals for clothing less profitable than making clothing out of synthetic materials. Space exploration is the peaceful key to fighting climate change and achieving world peace.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

7. That's a great answer. Especially:

"The shorter answer is that advances in any scientific field advance the boundaries of all fields."

Thank you.

Best wishes.

PS: I used a computer to send this message, rather than deliver it myself on a stone tablet that I carried to your tribal dwelling. I hope that's okay with people.

[Fast Walker 52]

10. fair enough, thanks

[hunter]

4. The original people of Australia didn't need no stinkin' hyperjets.

They walked, they sailed, all the way from Asia, forty thousand years ago or more.

All right, I'm not that much of a Luddite, but any form of transportation that uses fossil fuels is rotten, and do we always need to be in such a damned hurry?

Our so-called civilization is already screaming down the highway to hell.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

8. You said it. Walking speed was good enough for my great-great-great-great-grandpappy.

Boo, this:

[cstanleytech]

9. "any form of transportation that uses fossil fuels is rotten"

"He added that the scramjet was a supersonic combustion engine that uses oxygen from the atmosphere for fuel, making it lighter and faster than fuel-carrying rockets."

Of course it depends on how much fossil fuels if any it needs to go (not all fuels are or have to be fossil ones btw) but if it uses less overall than a conventional jet would use to get from say London to New York then I would call that a win.

[allan01]

5. this

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