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Popular Science has a technically-awesome article on scramjet technology getting closer and closer to deployment in military aircraft. The “technically awesome” part comes from what exactly a “scramjet” engine is, and how it works.
Existing jet airplane engines are based around turbines moving air through an engine as fast as possible with turning blades. The problem is that an aircraft based around this technology cannot go faster than Mach 3 without the blades completely melting.
The next bump in engine technology is a “ramjet”. The way a ramjet engine works is to literally “ram” incoming air into the combustion chamber of an engine. The problem with a ramjet is because the incoming air has to be slowed down to subsonic speeds to be combusted, the jet has to stay under Mach 5 otherwise the friction/heat created by the incoming air would destroy the engine.
Lastly, we have the “scramjet” engine technology AKA “supersonic combustion ramjet”. The picture you see at the top of the post is one of the successful test-fires of the scramjet. The jet itself is ignited inside of a 2,000 F degree jet of methane gas to simulate the true firing environment of the jet running at Mach 5+ (the scramjet has been publicly tested up to Mach 6.5). At full throttle the speed environment that the scramjet could be fired in would be Mach 15 flight, or roughly 10,000 MPH.
While the Pop Sci article titillates us with 1hr LA -> New York flights or NY -> Tokyo flights in under 2hrs, you have to consider if these are being test-fired right now, my guess is some black-ops military program already has them deployed, which means we have another 10 years at least before these things make their way into any commercial airline and even then it will likely be the most expensive, Concord-esque replacement.
I don’t see scramjets being a reality for Southwest fliers anytime before 2050, when the technology is proven safe and an insurance company is willing to sign on the dotted line that the jet won’t disintegrate the airplane when fired.
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December 17th, 2007 at 5:00 pm
Interesting read, I think I read something about NASA testing a ramjet or scramjet. I wonder if any military aircraft use these engines
February 22nd, 2009 at 11:23 am
Great article… It’s important that the U.S. lead efforts in developing scramjet technology. The benefits of practical commercial scramjet usage are unlimited.
September 1st, 2009 at 7:57 pm
The SR 71 spy plane utilized a hybrid turbojet to get the airplane into supersonic speeds; at about mach 1.5 the engine nosecones would be moved forward, creating a convergent duct at the front of the engine and a divergent duct behind the inlet where airflow would drop below mach speed. Fuel was then injected and ignited by simple compression. The now superheated (highly compressed) gases bypassed the turbojet engine and left the engine (through a convergent duct). If you ever have a chance to get a close look at an SR 71 on display, look at the nosecone just behind it’s largest diameter and you will find row after row of tiny slits (>1/2 mm X 10 mm) in concentric rings from just past it’s midline back down the the cone in it’s divergence area. Some of these slits flow nothing but air to create a cool boundry layer over the cone for heat protection; the rest of these slits are for fuel injection. This is a highly advanced design even by today’s standards.
The old USSR developed a mach 4 sea skimming anti-shipping missile that was designed to get past the PHALANX anti missile defenses used by the US Navy to protect aircraft carriers.This missile is ramjet powered and uses rockets for directional control. This missile goes through a series of radical manouvers in the last 2 miles from the target. This happen so quickly that the PHALANX radar, computer, and gun cannot find a targeting solution that can intercept the missile and save the ship (the front and the back of the missile each have a ring of small high-impulse rocket engines which are controlled by a minicomputer and radar targeting system; these rockets throw the missile into a series of convulsions, jinks, pop-ups and dives). The missile also uses stealth technology. This sea skimmer, cruising at mach 4, allows 25 to 35 seconds from detection to defeat. The USSR sold about 300 of these to Iran in the late 80’s and a number of them to China and India. After the breakup of the Soviet Union the Russians must have been feeling guilty and informed the US Navy that these systems had been developed, perfected, deployed, and sold to these other nations. The Navy was so impressed (read: totally freaked out and horrified) by the prospect of an absolutely unstoppable carrier killer in third world hands that they bought approximately 75-100 of these missiles for testing in FY 1994. The Navy then developed a new anti shipping missile missile system. A recently retired Rear Admiral told me that Carrier Commanders have absolutely no faith in this defensive system against a single missile attack, much less a swarm attack which is the most effective scenario in an attack against a carrier or a carrier battle group. The bottom line: the US Navy cannot effectively protect it’s Carrier Task Forces and admitted this to the US Senate Defense Committee in the late nineties. In a real shooting war against a number of third world countries we can expect an attrition rate of 100% of all carriers that find themselves in range (+/- 80 to 120 nautical miles) of these ramjet powered missiles, which can use a surface ship, diesel-electric or nuclear submarine, bomber, or fighter as a launch platform. This missile is known as the Baluga. In 1994, the Clinton Administration, working with Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, chose to waive laws that ban the sale of high technology that can possibly have military uses; in this particular case, two Cray and one Sun Microsystems supercomputers. The first Cray off the boat found itself in the basement of the Moscow Institute of Thermal Research within a few days of arrival, being programmed for 3d modeling of thermal dynamics, particularly in shock wave formation and fluid flow characteristics at very high mach numbers and low atmospheric pressures. Why? 1. To develop an intercontinental high speed cruise missile (think ICBM) and 2. Develop the next generation of anti-shipping missile, known by NATO as SS-N-22 Sunburn, which has been sold to China with purpose- built destroyers. These things have radically altered the dynamics of the China vs. Taiwan situation since the USA will most likely lose entire Carrier Task Force units if we attempt to intervene in a chinese attack upon Taiwan.
The name of the new ICBM (think Road-Mobile Orbital Manouvering High Speed Low Altitude EMP Hardened Laser Resistant Stealthy Cruise Warhead Delivery System) is the TOPOL M1. It was successfully tested in October of 2007. It was launched in Khazakstan, underwent a series of manouvers, and nailed a 20′X20′ target on the Kamchatka peninsula 17 minutes later; the warhead carrier (or re-entry vehicle or whatever you choose to call it) indicating a speed of at least mach 17. IT DID NOT FOLLOW A BALLISTIC TRAJECTORY, rendering most all anti-ballistic missile systems useless; that’s right, Matilda- twenty years and at least a trillion dollars spent on the Strategic Defense Initiative (star wars) has been made obsolete by the Russians using research equipment that the US government sold them ILLEGALY in 1994.
A few interesting tidbits on the topol m1: the missile is carried in a sealed nuclear-hardened cannister which lays flat on the trailer of a mobile all-terrain carrier, which is designed to keep the crew alive and the missile usable as close as 1.5 kilometers from a 1 megaton blast (in other words, it will work unless it’s so close to the point of impact that it actually falls in the crater). The rocket itself is relatively small, which gives this system lot’s of clever advantages. It is roughly 6′ in diameter and 40′ long; it is single staged, using solid fuel; it is relatively lightweight, as far as ICBM’s go. It is launching it’s payload to an altitude of only 120,000 – 150,000 feet {23 to 29 miles). U.S. early warning systems depend upon several satellites in geosynchronous orbit using highly advanced infrared sensors to detect the heat bloom from a large rocket launch. The Topol
doesn’t have much thermal bloom and it is quite brief, since it is releasing it’s payload at such a low altitude; I don’t know the exact number, but I would expect it to be no more than 25 seconds. The primary mission of the rocket is to accelerate the ramjet-powered delivery vehicle to high mach speeds. No one is talking about the range of this device, (which is really nothing more than a cruise missile) but the speculation is that it is probably 17,000 miles. It is known that it is capable of being launched from Russia and approach the US from any direction, including south. The Russians call the reentry vehicle the IGLA. The IGLA currently carries a single 600kt warhead. Putin has publicly declared Russian plans to MIRV the IGLA.
During the press conference that announced the successful test of the IGLA, Putin also stated that Russian scientists are developing “an entirely new kind of atomic bomb”. Nuclear weapon technology matured by the early sixties. The only possible “new” kind of atomic bomb is either a single staged fusion bomb using electromagnetism to crush the cylindrical “spark plug” and initiate fusion -or- a bomb that splits subatomic particles, which is pretty damn scary since this type of device would fission a heavy molecule all the way down to hydrogen and this could, and probably would, initiate quantum reactions be about 10 orders of magnitude over the efficiency of traditional thermonuclear weapons. I hope that Putin was lying or bluffing, but I’ve never known him to do either.
The Russians are at least ten years ahead of the rest of the world in ramjet and scramjet technology; and perhaps they put the other supercomputers that we sold them into nuclear weapons design; hell, it’s like 1957 all over again. ;:
I would suggest that anyone with an interest in this sort of thing to Google and research my assertions; everything stated in this reply is factually true. I can be contacted at: sailbiker1@gmail.com