New hydrocarb X-51 scramjet ready for flight US jet-engines'n'rockets colossus Pratt & Whitney says it has successfully completed ground testing of its new hypersonic scramjet engine prototype, which can run on ordinary hydrocarbon fuel at Mach 6. The company believes that the radical hyperjet is now ready to fly on the X-51 "WaveRider" test flights planned to begin next …
"DARPA*, the renowned Pentagon crazyscience bureau whose nuttiness can only be properly expressed in terms of a conceptual Tardis-style hyperdimensional fruitcake, able to hold many times more nuts than can fit within its apparent measurements."
ROTFLMFNO
"DARPA, the renowned Pentagon crazyscience bureau whose nuttiness can only be properly expressed in terms of a conceptual Tardis-style hyperdimensional fruitcake"
I've been enjoying the exaggerated descriptions of DARPA but I think you may be reaching the very peak of available hyperbole here! Where does we go now? You may need to read some E.E. 'Doc' Smith - a true master of excess!
This brings in several El Reg correspondence themes:
What is the carbon footprint of anyone using this thing? I'm pressured to turn off my computer monitor when I leave my desk at lunchtime.
Will this help in the War on Tourists? Would it have prevented 9/11, 7/7 or any other number?
Will it stop nasty American border-controllers from looking at my alien hard drive?
If I think about it I'm sure I can bring in DNA testing of schoolkids, Paris Hilton, ID and (a new theme) the Credit Crunch.
"DARPA*, the renowned Pentagon crazyscience bureau whose nuttiness can only be properly expressed in terms of a conceptual Tardis-style hyperdimensional fruitcake, able to hold many times more nuts than can fit within its apparent measurements"
Are you sure your reffering to DARPA and not some new breakfast ceral.
Mine's the one with the pockets that don't work until high speed
I am sitting in my hypersonic bomber, and ground troops call in an airstrike. I fly over and suddenly notice that the bombs are attached to the top of my aircraft. Its a good thing my aircraft can do a barrel roll or I would never be able to by those allies^W journalists^W people.
I am sitting in my supersonic fighter and a boat load of Somali pirates are rowing towards towards my carrier. They suddenly appear on my radar as they leap into the sky. A launch a missile and illuminate the pirates with my radar so the missile can stay on course. Its a good thing my fighter can do a barrel roll because my radar won't point upwards and those pirates are gyrating all over the sky.
I am in my space plane on my way to moon base alpha when all of a sudden there is a massive nuclear explosion at the base. There is a big heat shield on the belly of the plane. Luckily I can do a barrel roll and duck and cover behind that.
Seriously, is there a reason for a modern aircraft to be able to do a barrel roll?
Can any one paste some light on this,
If I'm going at mach 6 or 7, and I want to turn, say to go back home, or to change target, how many miles would I cover before I have completed the turn, or would it be 'quicker' to go around the world and try again ?
Now is that the ultimate 'touch and go' ?
"DARPA*, the renowned Pentagon crazyscience bureau whose nuttiness can only be properly expressed in terms of a conceptual Tardis-style hyperdimensional fruitcake, able to hold many times more nuts than can fit within its apparent measurements"
I think the DARPA might be my favrot orgisnation now
As in, pork barrel?
More seriously, I believe the aforementioned manoeuvre is there as a test of flight control, demonstrating that the craft, an addition to being faster than a very fast thing indeed, can also be controlled in flight.
Hopefully the in-flight breakfast will consist of scrambled-eggs, and not the inedible fare offered by American Airlines?
From my RAF Days I remember an SR-71 trying to land in the UK didn't slow down in tome and had to make a U turn to get to Mildenhall.
It took most of Europe as it was still doing Mach 3 at the time
If an Aircraft can Barrel Roll it has the capability to launch Nuclear Weapons as they are released as the aircraft launches as it rolls through Vertical as it turns away (Runs away from the blast).
Conventional warheads are released while the aircraft is level.
= Mine is the one with the Tactical Air Launch manual in the pocket
Isn't it interesting that ARPA (renamed DARPA in 1993) is the organization that originated the means for you to spew your invective.
"DARPA*, the renowned Pentagon crazyscience bureau whose nuttiness can only be properly expressed in terms of a conceptual Tardis-style hyperdimensional fruitcake, able to hold many times more nuts than can fit within its apparent measurements."
Perhaps the "nuts" from the "hyperdimensional fruitcake" should protect you from the "crazyyscience" called the Internet that sprang from their ARAPANET.
Arch Lineberger
Because after reading: "DARPA*, the renowned Pentagon crazyscience bureau whose nuttiness can only be properly expressed in terms of a conceptual Tardis-style hyperdimensional fruitcake, able to hold many times more nuts than can fit within its apparent measurements." My keyboard and monitor are rather damp with coffee. I think you may have hit critical mass when it comes to describing DARPA but I look forward to future descriptions.
Oh and Arch Lineberger, here is a dollar go buy a sense of humor and lighten up for fucks sake.
a silly question perhaps but can these ramjets go fast enough to escape gravity allowing for the space between enough air to ramjet and real space ?
what is the distance you need to cover to do it and if not as i suspect how much conventional rocket fuil would be needed to boost such a craft from these ramjet speeds to get to gio stationary orbit.
i guess the hypothetical question is, can this new ramjet help to make cheaper space flights in combination with other tech such as the virgin one uses to go up and come back down safely perhaps!
I appreciate air shows and the aircraft paraded and flown at them, I have my douts that this plane doing a barrel roll wouldb e of much use or appreciated, especially at mach6+ , even if your eyes were quick enough to catch it, which I doubt, I am certain that your 1.3 megapixel Nokia cam would probably self destruct in a fit of pique.
Let's not forget that they invented(or at least envisioned) cloud computing back in the late fifties/early sixties(look up Multics sometime). While they do have more misses then hits, some of those hits were at the edge of the net. So your "hyperdimensional fruitcake" is a necessity to how we live(though the term would probably be misinterpreted here).
The main reason why Liquid Hydrogen fuel was mooted for hypersonic aircraft, was it was used to combat kinetic heating, as the Cryogenic fuel was heated by the airframe, thus dissipating heat & converting it back into it's gaseous state, before reaching the scramjet for combustion...
JP-7 was the fuel used on the SR-71 Blackbird, & was specially refined to have a high flash point, for the Blackbird's J58 "Turbo-ramjet" engines to use...
NASA is finally ready to launch its unmanned Orion spacecraft and put it in the orbit of the Moon. Lift-off from Earth is now expected in late August using a Space Launch System (SLS) rocket.
This launch, a mission dubbed Artemis I, will be a vital stage in the Artemis series, which has the long-term goal of ferrying humans to the lunar surface using Orion capsules and SLS technology.
Earlier this week NASA held a wet dress rehearsal (WDR) for the SLS vehicle – fueling it and getting within 10 seconds of launch. The test uncovered 13 problems, including a hydrogen fuel leak in the main booster, though NASA has declared that everything's fine for a launch next month.
NASA has chosen the three companies it will fund to develop a nuclear fission reactor ready to test on the Moon by the end of the decade.
This power plant is set to be a vital component of Artemis, the American space agency's most ambitious human spaceflight mission to date. This is a large-scale project to put the first woman and first person of color on the Moon, and establish a long-term presence on Earth's natural satellite.
NASA envisions [PDF] astronauts living in a lunar base camp, bombing around in rovers, and using it as a launchpad to explore further out into the Solar System. In order for this to happen, it'll need to figure out how to generate a decent amount of power somehow.
Sadly for NASA's mission to take samples from the asteroid Psyche, software problems mean the spacecraft is going to miss its 2022 launch window.
The US space agency made the announcement on Friday: "Due to the late delivery of the spacecraft's flight software and testing equipment, NASA does not have sufficient time to complete the testing needed ahead of its remaining launch period this year, which ends on October 11."
While it appears the software and testbeds are now working, there just isn't enough time to get everything done before a SpaceX Falcon Heavy sends the spacecraft to study a metallic-rich asteroid of the same name.
Rocket Lab has sent NASA's Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE) spacecraft on its way to the Moon atop an Electron rocket launched from New Zealand.
The launch had been subject to a number of delays, but at 09.55 UTC today, the Electron lifted off from Rocket Lab's Launch Complex 1 on the Mahia Peninsula of New Zealand.
US military researchers are trying to turn in-flight refueling tankers into laser-shooting "airborne energy wells" for charging drones, and they want the public's help to figure out how.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) published a request for information (RFI) from anyone willing and able to contribute their tech, with a few caveats. It needs to fit on existing in-flight refueling tankers (the newer KC-46 and Cold War-era KC-135, specifically) and be able to deliver 100kW of power.
Militaries around the world have been using in-flight refueling for decades to extend aircraft patrols and long-range missions. With a history of development stretching back to the 1920s, the practice has since developed into a standard part of operating an air fleet powered by aviation fuel.
NASA engineers had to work fast to avoid another leak affecting the latest Artemis dry run, just hours after an attempt to reboost the International Space Station (ISS) via the Cygnus freighter was aborted following a few short seconds.
The US space agency on Monday rolled the huge Artemis I stack back to its Florida launchpad having worked through the leaks and problems that had beset its previous attempt at fueling the beast in April for an earlier dress rehearsal of the final countdown.
As propellant was loaded into the rocket, controllers noted a hydrogen leak in the quick-disconnect that attaches an umbilical from the tail service mast on the mobile launcher to the core stage of the rocket.
Pic When space junk crashed into the Moon earlier this year, it made not one but two craters on the lunar surface, judging from images revealed by NASA on Friday.
Astronomers predicted a mysterious object would hit the Moon on March 4 after tracking the debris for months. The object was large, and believed to be a spent rocket booster from the Chinese National Space Administration's Long March 3C vehicle that launched the Chang'e 5-T1 spacecraft in 2014.
The details are fuzzy. Space agencies tend to monitor junk closer to home, and don't really keep an eye on what might be littering other planetary objects. It was difficult to confirm the nature of the crash; experts reckoned it would probably leave behind a crater. Now, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has spied telltale signs of an impact at the surface. Pictures taken by the probe reveal an odd hole shaped like a peanut shell on the surface of the Moon, presumably caused by the Chinese junk.
The SOFIA aircraft has returned to New Zealand for a final time ahead of the mission's conclusion later this year.
The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) is a modified Boeing 747SP aircraft, designed to carry a 2.7-meter reflecting telescope into the stratosphere, above much of Earth's infrared-blocking atmosphere.
A collaboration between NASA and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), development began on the project in 1996. SOFIA saw first light in 2010 and achieved full operational capability in 2014. Its prime mission was completed in 2019 and earlier this year, it was decided that SOFIA would be grounded for budgetary reasons. Operations end "no later than" September 30, 2022, followed by an "orderly shutdown."
Interview NASA has set late August as the launch window for its much-delayed Artemis I rocket. Already perched atop the booster is the first flight-ready European Service Module (ESM). Five more are in the pipeline.
Airbus industrial manager Siân Cleaver, whom The Register met at the Goodwood Festival of Speed's Future Lab, has the task of managing the assembly of the spacecraft, which will provide propulsion, power, water, oxygen and nitrogen for the Orion capsule.
Looking for all the world like an evolution of the European Space Agency's (ESA) International Space Station (ISS) ATV freighter, the ESM is not pressurized and measures approximately 4 meters in length, including the Orbital Maneuvering System Engine (OMSE), which protrudes from the base.
Pondering what services to switch off to keep your laptop going just that bit longer? NASA engineers can relate, having decided the Mars InSight lander will go out on a high: they plan to burn through the remaining power to keep the science flowing until the bitter end.
The InSight lander is in a precarious position regarding power. A build-up of dust has meant the spacecraft's solar panels are no longer generating anywhere near enough power to keep the batteries charged. The result is an automatic shutdown of the payload, although there is a chance InSight might still be able to keep communicating until the end of the year.
Almost all of InSight's instruments have already been powered down, but the seismometer remains active and able to detect seismic activity on Mars (such as Marsquakes.) The seismometer was expected to be active until the end of June, at which point it too would be shut-down in order to eke out the lander's dwindling supply of power just a little longer.
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