SPACE
NEWS FROM SPACE SYMPOSIUM: Hypersonic Jet Project Reaches Major Milestone
Art: Reaction Engines
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — A British company that is partly developing a section of a hypersonic engine at a spaceport in Colorado has carried its first hot live-fire test since setting up shop here.
The SABRE engine is envisioned as part of an aircraft that can takeoff on a runway and switch to “rocket mode” taking it up to speeds of Mach 5. It is being developed by Reaction Engines partly in the United Kingdom and partly in Colorado. The pre-cooler is being tested at a facility at the Colorado Air and Space Port east of the Denver International Airport.
The first test carried out at the new building recently was a success, said Adrian Tansing, contracts and international trade manager at Reaction Engines. The pre-cooler functioned at Mach 3.3 temperatures. The company is calling it “a pivotal moment in the advancement of air-breathing, high-speed propulsion.”
The technology takes the energy it has taken out of the air and injects it into the engine to drive the machinery, so it is regenerating what would otherwise be wasted heat. The temperature inside the engine reaches 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit. Since overheating has been a major problem developing hypersonic technology, the pre-cooler is essential. It reduces the temperature by 1,300 degrees.
“The pre-cooler basically tricks the engine into thinking it is subsonic,” Tansing said this week at the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
The test used a General Electric J79 engine and diesel fuel as a heat source. It hit 800 degrees, which is about the equivalent of a SR-71 Blackbird high-altitude spy aircraft, she noted.
The stationary test facility can match the temperatures and other conditions found in flight. A separate facility in the United Kingdom will develop the engine core. Much of the technology has been proven, company officials have said, but the pre-cooler hasn’t.
Next will be tests with Mach 4.2 analogous temperatures, then the ultimate goal of Mach 5.4. The engine is expected to operate in air-breathing mode to Mach 5.4, then switch to rocket mode.
The system has attracted investment funds totaling 100 million pounds from BAE Systems, Boeing HorizonX Ventures, Rolls-Royce, the U.K. government and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Topics: Space
Comments (2)
I find this news strange. It seems to imply that no work has been done with hypersonic and scramjet engine technology when lots of work has already been done from Waverider to X-Planes to “Donuts on a string” Pulse-jet Propulsion. Is the news saying that none of those previous X-Plane engines were successful, or were there other engineering challenges that prevented hypersonic planes from taking flight routinely?
Krashnovians at 12:03 PM
Other Hypersonic technologies that have been tested essentially have required a rocket motor to reach ramjet speeds. This technology appears to use more standard turbine technology to reach sustainable high mach speeds, then switching over to rocket mode when reaching such altitude that oxygen is no longer present. Interesting, in addition, the engine uses the liquid oxygen rocket propellant ALSO as the coolant for the "pre-cooler" that enables higher speed operation of the non-rocket turbine engine.
BC at 11:56 AM