[Graeme]

Revolutionary jet engine tested

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A') new jet engine designed to fly at seven times the speed of sound appears to have been successfully tested. The scramjet engine, the Hyshot III, was launched at Woomera, 500km north of Adelaide in Australia, on the back of a two stage Terrier-Orion rocket.

It is hoped the British designed Hyshot III will pave the way for ultra fast, intercontinental air travel.

A scramjet - or supersonic combustion ramjet - is mechanically very simple. It has no moving parts and takes all of the oxygen it needs to burn hydrogen fuel from the air.

In the first instance these would probably be used to launch satellites into low-Earth orbit but many have speculated that they could also allow passenger airlines to fly between London and Sydney in just two hours.

[Comp_Lex]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A') scramjet - or supersonic combustion ramjet - is mechanically very simple. It has no moving parts and takes all of the oxygen it needs to burn hydrogen fuel from the air.

[Heineken]

Now we can accelerate globlization! That's the ticket!

[EnergySpin]

Guys read the BBC story a litl bit more carefully.
The Project Manager of the jetscram project said that engineering the thingy into something that commercial airlines may use will be a challenge.
It is being targetted towards the "low orbit" satellite market.

By the way, check out the diagram of the experimental test flight. This invention is essentially a projectile

[mrflora]

The scramjet idea has been around for decades. The U.S. tried to build an intercontinental scramjet aircraft (the National Aerospace Plane) in the '80's (remember Reagan's "Orient Express"?). A couple of billion was spent and the results were vast piles of viewgraphs and some nice artwork.

Scramjets are attractive as engines for single-stage-to-orbit launchers, but they have severe problems. A better concept, I think, is the Skylon/SABRE launcher:

http://www.reactionengines.co.uk

The SABRE engine uses atmospheric oxygen, cooled and compressed and fed into a rocket engine burning liquid hydrogen. Above a certain altitude the air intakes are closed and the vehicle behaves like a pure rocket, burning onboard oxygen. This design seems capable of putting a significant payload (~12 tons) into orbit with a single-piece, fully-reusable vehicle capable of taking off from existing runways.

Regards,
M.R.F.

[jato]

Good luck! Even the mach 2 Concord was ultimately unsuccessful for commercial aviation.

[gego]

It takes all the oxygen it needs out of the atmsophere to burn the hydrogen so it carries hydrogen only as fuel.

If the hydrogen is made from a gas then it is nonrenewable, plus when it is made no oxygen is released into the atmosphere. Do this enough and we all suffocate from lack of oxygen.

If the hydrogen is made from water, then oxygen is released into the atmosphere, but electricity is required in the process, so we are back to the problem that we must generate electricity and since additional electricity is mostly from coal and natural gas, has this really helped the fundamental problem that we are living off our savings and not what we can sustainably produce.

[mrflora]

Well, hydrogen production for orbital launches has nothing to do with solving the peak oil problem per se. What it does is facilitate cheap access to space, which could potentially lead to lunar solar power stations.

BTW, hydrogen can be produced by high-temperature fission reactors via a thermochemical process that is more efficient overall than electrolysis.

Regards,
M.R.F.

[Aedo]

All that work for a 6 second test

[whereagles]

Better than the zillions for 2 secs of controlled nuclear fusion at JEP a couple of years ago

[gg3]

MRF: Hydrogen production as byproduct of nuclear power, sounds good (presumably this can be run during offpeak hours, or can it use "waste heat" from the reactor during daytime operations also?).

Question is, any progress on containing hydrogen in gas form? Last time I checked, hydrogen tends to escape through the walls of containers due to the H atom being small enough to slip through other materials like water going through a cloth bag. If someone can solve that issue, my skepticism about H as an energy storage medium will be markedly reduced.