The hypersonic rivalry hots up – great when it materialises

The hypersonic rivalry hots up – great when it materialises

Don’t just laugh. Sure Icarus paid with his life as possibly the first to try to fly and the world that knew laughed.

I sat many times as a very young schoolboy with many other youngsters along with accompanying parents/teachers at the Scientific Research Institute and listened in awe and viewed sketches on paper and a ‘Blackboard’ (what is that you may ask?) and listened to an Englishman talk in depth about space, space travel, rockets, satellites including geo stationary ones and space stations. Yes Peenmunde had been shut at the end of WWII and those scientists that were now safely in the US had continued work on research into rockets, etc.
Yet no space rocket had been fired, no human as yet launched into space and here was Arthur C. Clarke extolling the definite possibilities to us kids and our parents.

Interestingly we did not laugh instead in our respective college labs we tried to understand his teachings/lectures.

Hence this post is about seeing into the future and believing that hypersonic travel is likely to happen. (I hope in my lifetime)

After all people laughed at Concorde, it happened (sadly also gone) and I have met and shaken the hands of many who helped design including the techs (acknowledged as the unsung heroes of the project) who built tiny models in wood (seen many of then at RAE) for traditional wind tunnel testing (no Computer simulation then).

I believe in the work of Reaction Engines and LAPCAT – http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/lapcat.html
“…to reduce long-distance flights, e.g. From Brussels to Sydney, to less than 2 to 4 hours. Achieving this goal intrinsically requires a new flight regime for commercial transport with Mach numbers ranging from 4 to 8.”

Here on Day 1 of the Paris Air Show another project
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e67035fc-9a95-11e0-bab2-00144feab49a.html?ftcamp=crm/email/2011620/nbe/Aerospace/product#axzz1PnflUKbK
“Futuristic Zehst primed for 2050 take-off
By James Boxell
Published: June 19 2011 23:35 | Last updated: June 19 2011 23:35
With a shape that strongly resembles the now defunct Concorde and a promise to reduce journey times between Paris and Tokyo to 2½ hours, the EADS “Zehst” is designed to grab headlines….

…The Zehst (zero emission high-speed transport) – a joint project with Japan – will take off using regular turbofan engines before rocket boosters kick in to send the aircraft soaring to a 32km altitude. Standard passenger jets travel at 11km high….

….EADS says all of the necessary technology is available, but an unmanned prototype is unlikely before 2020.

The only shame is that the first commercial flights are not anticipated until 2050 at the earliest.”

I like it – R&D is alive and well and the accounting standards directly concerned with R&D and IP was the title of my recent dissertation.😎

Shame that all the huge expense and possible ‘brain power’ being lost in global terrorism and vengeance (both it’s perpetration and prevention) cannot be instead channelled for the good of humanity.🙁