Scramjet success!

[time]

The first successful operational scramjet test just completed in South Australia. The engine reached about Mach 8.

Here's some background: http://www.spacedaily.com/news/future-01a1.html

The official site: http://www.mech.uq.edu.au/hyper/hyshot/

And here's the dissappointly brief news announcement:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/justin/nat/newsnat-30jul2002-42.htm

No pictures etc, yet, but hopefully there'll be a full press release soon.

I guess this will boost the morale of those underfunded guys at Nasa who are also trying. :mrgrn:

This item has been cross-posted at SR since apparently no-one reads both anymore. :wink:

 

[CougTek]

I read it first on SR a few minutes ago (in fact, it must have been close to an hour). Interesting, but I cannot add much since, although I have read quite a few articles on the same or related subject, I don't feel I have enough knowledge on the topic to bring anything meaningful.

I'll only say that I'm not very fund of propulsion technologies that need a crutch in order to work (cannot lift off by itself). On the other hand, if they could make some kind of space vehicule using scramjet, it would be more intelligent (in fact, less stupid) than the way they currently ship the shuttle in orbit. Trying to defeat gravity with a vertical assention should have been dismissed even back in the 60s considering how an energy waste it is compared to a more progressive trajectory. It's beyond me to think of all the fuel and material wasted every time a shuttle is sent in space. The concept behind the current shuttle is "genius mathematics and technology serving the idea worthy of Viking's brain in it's subtility".

Thanks for the news though.

 

[James]

That's very cool.

Here's a minutely longer report :

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2002/07/item20020730140728_1.htm

 

[slo crostic]

That's excellent news, especially after the last attempt