First successful flight by a proper scramjet plane

[The corporate]

Mach 7!! now that is impressive.

http://www.nasa.gov/missions/research/x43-main.html

[WetWired]

I was told by a friend that worked with them that the SR-71 opperated as a scramjet at high speeds. What's so special about this thing?

[Rurouni Storm]

7 times the speed of sound. You don't find that impressive?

[Dark Fire]

To put that into perspective, the highest speed the SR-71 is claimed to go that the government will back up is Mach 3. This is over twice that.

[arrrse]

SR71 was ramjet not scramjet.

Supersonic Combustion Ramjet.

SR71 has shockcones at the front of the engine that use the shock to slow the air coming into the engine down to subsonic speed & the pressure of forward movement to compress the air.

Scramjets have the inlet designed to keep the air moving through at supersonic speed.

Anyways, this is no real leap forward, its just an enabling technology for 'global reach' 'full spectrum dominance' 'first strike' high speed missiles to be used against anyone who 'threatens US dominance' :sour:

Launched from a b52 at 40,000 ft, piggy backed to 95,000 ft on a rocket designed for launching small military satelites, 12ft long, engine fired for about 10sec.

[Red_Hex]

thats right. this is a bigger better missile. more fabulously destructive and effective at killing than ever before because its so much faster.

we've had supersonic civilian jets. they were too expensive. i cant see hypersonic jets being any cheaper.

[Rurouni Storm]

Originally posted by Red_Hex

we've had supersonic civilian jets. they were too expensive. i cant see hypersonic jets being any cheaper.

Supposedly, they're going to use the technology for space vessels, but who wants to bet the military makes a jet out of this first?

[GrandpaTrout]

I expect you guys know far more about this than I do, but I thought the advantage of a scramjet was that it did not need to carry oxygen. At least until it reached orbital heights. A less expensive shuttle for moving a few people would be very welcome.

No moving parts would also be very nice for an engine design.

Hmmm. What advantages would this craft give over a ballistic missile? Don't they reenter at mach 14 or something insanely high? It is not the sort of device that would be ground hugging like a cruise missile.

[Vagamus]

The advantage of a missle moving at that speed is unanimous. No nation that actively opposes up (and even some who don't) cannot defend against something that fast. The ground impact from such a weapon would almost negate the need for a warhead.

A cruise missle may be intelligent, may hug ground, but a damned shilka or a stinger can down one... both are relatively abundant.

Like you said, the only things that could do this kind of thing before are ICBM's. Huge, bulky, expensive, aging weapons that didn't need to be accurate, so are average to hit within half a mile of their targets. (The reason our nukes have higher yields, for these "grey" zones on target package.) Far from a tactical weapon. When those lovely little wars with the afghans and the iraqis occurred, they thought about using some of the non-nuclear icbm's (which, somehow, we have) to hit targets. The accuracy concern was big time in that discussion.

This missle could hit a target with atleast the tomahawk's precision, at ultrasonic speeds. No bunker, no fortress, could withstand the impact of one of these. You'd have to build a bunker that is quite a few miles beneath the surface.

Given the fact that they can frag a bunker up to a kilometer below the surface with a 60 year old 2000 pound modified dumb bomb, i'd say this thing could hit atleast twice that. The deepest bunker on the planet belongs to us, and its only 4.5 miles deep, into a mountain.

If ya can't use nukes or wmd's, the next best thing is to be precise and piercing.

China claims to have facilities that can withstand direct nuclear strikes, those may actually stop one of these ultrasonic missles, but the shockwave alone from the impact might as well kill anything on the other end within quite a distance. As i said, they wouldn't really need a warhead at these speeds... its like detonating a concussive implosive right on someone's armor. It'd almost be a man made quake.

If you've ever watched even a small bomb explode during a demonstration, or sat next to an artillery gun, you know it rattles you around a lot. Thats not much mass at all being ejected, and even at that, the muzzle velocities in most cases are never beyond mach 2. Most explosives, save for c4. don't break a mach 4ish range for expansion. Thats still not much actual volume moving, nor is it solid mass collision. Take the idea behind thermobarics (which takes deliberate use of slow expansions to create an enormous overlapping concussive implosive wave) and you're still no where near as devistating as a solid mass collision on a target at mach 7.

Only thing that comes close to givin an idea of how destructive this might be a rail gun. I've see the results of a rail gun shot at an old m103. A "low yield" rail gun, that had to be mounted, and supported by itself... using a projectile no bigger than a lawn dart through this apc. The damage was quite fascinatiing. An enormous dent with a small ripped hole on the entry, and another one out the back, but the difference in pressure ripped 5 inches of steel armor into a bloom, and then sucked it almost right back in the tank. The APC looks like a crushed soda can, and was found about 50 feet from where it had originally stood, on its top, almost torn to shreds.

A projectile no larger than a lawn dart, at speeds just above mach 8 did that. It was done on the ground of course, so there are speed differences, but the point is... it has massive damage potential. Its so fast no one would know its coming, they'd be dead before they could retaliate, and you could deny the use of such a weapon if needed. It would literally disintigrate upon impact, there probably would be nothing signature left.

Perfect first strike weapons.

The ruling government, the C3 centers, the power grid, the silos themselves, all of it could be struck all at one, in less than a 5 minute period of time potentially. Perfect terror weapons as well.

Of course... thats gathering the military will want them, and they aren't being developed solely to replace the space shuttles. ;)

[The corporate]

Can you say 'Kinetic Harpoons'?

[arrrse]

When those lovely little wars with the afghans and the iraqis occurred, they thought about using some of the non-nuclear icbm's (which, somehow, we have) to hit targets. The accuracy concern was big time in that discussion. I thought that was just a rumor & a hell of a scary one.
I know that some icbms have been converted to cicbms.
How ironic would it have been to see high explosive armed mirvs landing on Baghdad in the opening of a 'war against wmd'? :bulb:

Given the fact that they can frag a bunker up to a kilometer below the surface with a 60 year old 2000 pound modified dumb bomb I thought that was about 100m tops & they have custom uranium penetrators for further.

BTW, dubya is actively working towards 'mini' nukes intended for frequent use in bunker busting and 'decapitation strikes'.
This is an extremely bad idea.

[Red_Hex]

tnw? tactical nuclear weapons? i thought we already had them. obviously not

[Vagamus]

Originally posted by arrrse
I thought that was just a rumor & a hell of a scary one.
I know that some icbms have been converted to cicbms.
How ironic would it have been to see high explosive armed mirvs landing on Baghdad in the opening of a 'war against wmd'? :bulb: They actually fitted some with large scale thermobaric weapons, and then the regular high explosives type thing. Also had a few fitted with a type of EMP high explosives device that would actually have more use.

It wasn't a rumor, it was in the original open war plan, to the point that the possible strike zones and error corrective cones were created over target packages.

The idea was of course scratched, but not because it was considered a "WMD" strike, but rather the accuracy of the weapons, and the possible political fallout from hitting civilian targets.

I thought that was about 100m tops & they have custom uranium penetrators for further. Penetration in the actual ground is limited, i don't recall exactly how far. the actual destruction of bunkers is done by the explosive charge itself, and the effects on the bunker. The 1km range is a "Claim", which i've never seen solid test information about. I don't take it for face value, I was mainly makin a point.

BTW, dubya is actively working towards 'mini' nukes intended for frequent use in bunker busting and 'decapitation strikes'.
This is an extremely bad idea. Yeah. We've had these for a while now. The Los Alamos facility has done nothing but develop them since we signed the treaty to cease research and development of high grade nuclear weaponary. Its a yield cap, not a warhead cap, so they continue to develop the current arsenal for use in vessels as small as a 2000 pounder.

[GrandpaTrout]

Conventional tipped ICBMs. What a lovely thought. I can just imagine what all the other nations tracking systems would have done when a volley of those launched out of the Midwest and climbed for orbit....

Some ideas are just not good for the overall survival of the species, no matter how well they might work on paper.

Here is an interesting slate article on the topic if mini-nukes:

http://slate.msn.com/id/2091531/

[DrCR]

Originally posted by The corporate
Mach 7!! now that is impressive.

http://www.nasa.gov/missions/research/x43-main.html


A friend of mine is a project manager or some 'higher-up' position in the X43 project. He showed me and some of my friends around NASA's Dryden base in Cal. a couple of years ago. I got to talk with him about it and see the dark room (secure area), but obviously, I could not go inside. :D

Pretty cool stuff if you asked me. Got to see the dry river bed runway, peer into a SR-71 cockpit, see some of the 'lifting bodies' of yore, see the delta winged F16 NASA worked on a while back (capable of well over Mach2, but you might not read that in books (at least, I didn't)), the 747 that transports the re-entered shuttle to Flordia, see one of the F22 prototypes from a distance and other cool stuff like that, but just seeing 'parking lots' (or whatever you call them) chock full of fighter aircraft was enough to give you goosebumps. :haha:
I'll never forget the experience.



DrCR



___________

[arrrse]

I always liked the f16xl.
More weapons, more speed, more fuel, looked cool but at the expense of some maneuverability.

It was in competition against the prototype f15e for a multirole/ground attack fighter for the USAF I think.

Much as I ***** about the crap motives behind it, I'd sure love to have a first hand look at all that tech :D

GrandpaTrouts' link is what I was talking about re mini-nukes

[Indictus Ira]

Hmm, kinetic weapon, that just makes me want to cry, don't we have enough ways to kill each other, or won't we stop till we can detonate the stars or even collapse the universe, assuming we survive long enough to figure out how to do those sorts of things.

Otherwise I think this is a rather cool development. :)