US Air Force Invests In Hermeus' Hypersonic Aircraft Development (interestingengineering.com) 31
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Interesting Engineering: The U.S. Air Force joins a group of venture capital firms in making a $60 million investment in Hermeus, a Georgia-based startup that is striving to make the world's first reusable hypersonic aircraft, a press statement reveals. The new contract, awarded on July 30, sets ambitious objectives for Hermeus, to be accomplished over the next three years. These include the building of three prototypes of the company's Quarterhorse aircraft and the testing of its full-scale reusable hypersonic propulsion system. If all goes to plan, the Quarterhorse passenger aircraft will be capable of flying at a staggering Mach 5 speeds, starting at 3836 mph (6174 km/h). By comparison, NASA's new supersonic jet, the X-59, will fly at Mach 1.5 and reach top speeds of 990 mph.
As Hermeus' aircraft will eventually be able to fly five times the speed of sound, it will be capable of traveling from New York to London in only 90 minutes -- instead of seven hours it typically takes today's commercial airliners. In order to reach those speeds, Hermeus is developing a proprietary turbine-based combined cycle (TBCC) engine, based on the GE J85 turbojet engine used for a variety of high-speed aircraft including Virgin Galactic's White Knight carrier aircraft and Boom Supersonic's prototype XB-1 aircraft. The first Quarterhorse prototype is set to be unmanned -- much in the same way that Virgin Galactic's first space plane missions were uncrewed, the earliest flight tests will not be piloted so as to eliminate the risk to human life and to allow the company to start its flight testing earlier. According to a 2020 report by Aviation International News, Hermeus has already built and tested a small-scale hypersonic engine prototype and it is now working on a full-scale engine demonstrator of its TBCC engine.
As Hermeus' aircraft will eventually be able to fly five times the speed of sound, it will be capable of traveling from New York to London in only 90 minutes -- instead of seven hours it typically takes today's commercial airliners. In order to reach those speeds, Hermeus is developing a proprietary turbine-based combined cycle (TBCC) engine, based on the GE J85 turbojet engine used for a variety of high-speed aircraft including Virgin Galactic's White Knight carrier aircraft and Boom Supersonic's prototype XB-1 aircraft. The first Quarterhorse prototype is set to be unmanned -- much in the same way that Virgin Galactic's first space plane missions were uncrewed, the earliest flight tests will not be piloted so as to eliminate the risk to human life and to allow the company to start its flight testing earlier. According to a 2020 report by Aviation International News, Hermeus has already built and tested a small-scale hypersonic engine prototype and it is now working on a full-scale engine demonstrator of its TBCC engine.
Why not ask the Russians? (Score:3)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
They are pretty good with exotic ideas.
Re: Why not ask the Russians? (Score:3)
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At least one Putin press conference.
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it would seem, given all the time you spend on creimer, that you have bigger pathological problems than he.
Hold up there. (Score:2)
Why not ask the Russians? They are pretty good with exotic ideas.
Yeah, last I checked, their supersonic nuclear missile [besacenter.org] did less of the "go fast and explode" and more of the "detonate and kill the scientists working on it".
60 million is just a tiny fraction (Score:3)
of what is needed (unless it's SpaceX who can evidently self-fund their way to Mars! :). I see (from the linked article) that they have a small scale (fits on a desktop) engine prototype which is promising but they have a long long way to go :(. At least they're starting with the engine which makes me think of a saying attributed to an Air Force General
- A new plane doesn't make a new engine possible, a new engine makes a new plane possible
Seriously though, who knows when (if ever) this will become something real (and flyable). Will it be for military applications only? That would make some of the requirements significantly easier (like allowing for JATO units). Also what will be its fuel efficiency? My (unfortunate) prediction is that in about 5-10 years when climate change REALLY starts becoming apparent (deadly heatwaves, fires, floods and droughts a regular occurrence), there is going to be a very severe clampdown on air travel that doesn't use renewable fuels or is very efficient :(
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Right, my understanding is that the problem with these ultra high speed planes is not so much the engines, but keeping the damn things from pulling apart at those velocities. The engine is only the start of the engineering task.
That said , if they pull it off, that speed is plenty fast enough to kickstart a ramjet and that gets you the rest of the way to escape velocity for a space plane (Though not sure what happens with any of these things when your airbreathing jet suddenly has no air to breathe, I guess
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- A new plane doesn't make a new engine possible, a new engine makes a new plane possible
In hypersonic flight, as we are talking about here, a plane and an engine are basically the same thing. You can not have one without the other.
Or do you think you can make a new engine and put it on a current air liner?
there is going to be a very severe clampdown on air travel that doesn't use renewable fuels or is very efficient :(
Air travel causes world wide about 2% of the CO2 emissions.
There are plenty of lower fru
Tower this is Hermeus requesting an flyby! (Score:1)
Tower this is Hermeus requesting an flyby!
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Are you referring to this story about the SR-71? https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
60 million down the drain (Score:1)
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Like the first stage of a rocket! (Score:2)
A reusable cheap aircraft would allow orbital launches just with something similar to a second stage of Falcon 9.
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Just a reminder, the first stage of a typical rocket that is the most complex and costly part, typically accelerates the rocket to just below 5 machs.
Which one? That is a very low speed. Saturn V was mach 8 (first of 3 stages) and Falcon 9 is mach 10.
A reusable cheap aircraft would allow orbital launches just with something similar to a second stage of Falcon 9.
*If* you can scale up the Hermeus to carry a 100 ton payload to sufficient altitude for vacuum engines to operate, and at mach 5, that may be useful.
But with only mach 5, payload to orbit will be drastically reduced. It will struggle to compete with the already-existing and reusable Falcon-9 booster, let alone rockets that are under development.
A 747 can carry that much mass subsonic, but the Concorde could
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Why scale it that much? Gang it once you've scaled it as much as is convenient.
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Why scale it that much?
That's what you need to get a decent payload to GTO. 100t is a Falcon-9 upper stage, with a single Merlin engine.
Hypersonic launch could potentially allow around 10t payload to low earth orbit, around half the payload of a launch with re-usable booster rocket.
To replace a first-stage orbital rocket to Boeing will need to enter an un-powered parabolic (ballistic) climb to space before releasing the rocket.
Based on a cruise of mach 5 (1.7km/s) at 29km altitude, I'm estimating it could reach a peak of 60km
Watch out for early plans (Score:2, Interesting)
> As Hermeus' aircraft will eventually be able to fly five times the speed of sound,
This seems very unlikely. The design of the SR-71, which has a maximum speed slightly over 3 times the speed of sound, is a miracle and a nightmare of very expensive trade-offs: a titanium airframe for lightness and strength, fuel tanks that close at high heat but leak on the ground, and a fuel use of roughly 40,000 pounds of fuel/hour of flight. A 747 consumes roughly 15,000 pounds of fuel/hour of flight on a trans-atlan
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Not that I disagree with you, as such, but...
a fuel use of roughly 40,000 pounds of fuel/hour of flight. A 747 consumes roughly 15,000 pounds of fuel/hour of flight on a trans-atlantic flight.
If I were to compare apples to oranges I'd point out:
Hermeus: 40,000 pounds / hour x 1.5 hours = 60,000 lbs.
747 Jet: 15,000 pounds / hour x 7 hours = 105,000 lbs.
i.e. there's quite a bit of headroom in making their 'aircraft-of-the-future' as economical as a 747. Whether they can make is as economical on a per passenger basis would be another question, but it's pretty clear, based on vehicle sales, that there're significant numbers of people who do not view eco
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To discuss "headroom" for design improvements, I'd attempt to compare, say, the efficiency of an SR-71 which is _much_ smaller aircraft, but consumes roughly 3 times as much fuel per hour of flight as one of the largest subsonic aircraft ever built. The SR-71 is a fuel pig, precisely because off its supersonic capabilities. Brilliant developers have already done what they can because more fuel slows the aircraft, and because less fuel needed means more range to safely accomplish the Soviet fly-over spy mis
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> As Hermeus' aircraft will eventually be able to fly five times the speed of sound,
This seems very unlikely. The design of the SR-71, which has a maximum speed slightly over 3 times the speed of sound, is a miracle and a nightmare of very expensive trade-offs: a titanium airframe for lightness and strength, fuel tanks that close at high heat but leak on the ground, and a fuel use of roughly 40,000 pounds of fuel/hour of flight. A 747 consumes roughly 15,000 pounds of fuel/hour of flight on a trans-atlantic flight. Besides being a complete pig for fuel, the only craft that currently achieve such speeds are missiles or spacecraft on rockets, not jet aircraft.
Are we looking at the right number?
As a rough estimate, the Hermeus at mach 5 would travel 6 times further per hour than the 747.
So for the same distance, a one hour Hermeus uses 40,000 pounds and a 747 takes 6 hours and uses 90,000 lbs.
The catch is that the 747 will be carrying many more passengers. The press blurb didn't give a hint about the cabin size, but I'm guessing it'll be a good bit fewer riding the Hermeus.
Read the August edition of Scientific American (Score:3)
It contains a nice summing up of reasons why investment in hypersonic weapons and/or transport is bound to fail.
Passengers? Opinion from SR-71 people. (Score:3)
Pilots and maintenance people from the SR-71 program get together for educational programs around the country. At one of them, they talked a little about the prospects for something even faster.
They figured it was most likely not to have any humans on board, given that the design would already be hard enough without the added constraint of needing a space cool enough not to kill humans.
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In a project like this, you do want the opinion of people who have done this before and were involved in the detailed engineering of a similar craft. But at some point you need to take a step back, and lock the people saying "you can't do that" out of the room, and explore new ideas. Then get the old hands back in the room and pick those ideas apart. Maybe 9 times out of 10 the idea doesn't hold up. But the one time that it does is worth it.
The point being: by all means list
What a jarring juxtaposition! (Score:2)
I read this summary immediately after the one directly above it [slashdot.org]. It was very surreal - a story about big investments in hypersonic aircraft that can only worsen greenhouse emissions, directly after one about a glaring example of the effects of AGW.
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mach 5 (Score:1, Insightful)
If it is, in a way, why aren't the conventinal airplanes?
It is sooo USSA to talk about 'security' when they even cannot do healthcare, currency or their constitution any justice.
Defense aviation needs a SpaceX race (Score:3)
If this is the beginning of a private competitive race that could do for military aviation what it has recently done for civilian space applications, the governmental cost savings could be massive. The excuse used in the past for locking the DoD into a small cluster of cost-plus contractors has always been security. If this problem can be solved, this could free up trillions of dollars that have been adding to the national debt.