A scramjet is a variant of a ramjet airbreathing jet engine in which combustion takes place in supersonic airflow. As in ramjets, a scramjet relies on high vehicle speed to compress the incoming air forcefully before combustion, but whereas a ramjet decelerates the air to subsonic velocities before combustion, the airflow in a scramjet is supersonic throughout the entire engine. That allows the scramjet to operate efficiently at extremely high speeds.
The X-43 was an experimental uncrewed hypersonic aircraft with multiple planned scale variations meant to test various aspects of hypersonic flight. It was part of the X-plane series and specifically of NASA's Hyper-X program. It set several airspeed records for jet aircraft. The X-43 is the fastest aircraft on record at approximately Mach 9.6.
The P. I. Baranov Central Institute of Aviation Motor Development is the only specialized Russian research and engineering facility dealing with advanced aerospace propulsion research, aircraft engine certification and other gas dynamics-related issues. It was founded in 1930.
The Boeing X-51 Waverider is an unmanned research scramjet experimental aircraft for hypersonic flight at Mach 5 and an altitude of 70,000 feet (21,000 m). The aircraft was designated X-51 in 2005. It completed its first powered hypersonic flight on 26 May 2010. After two unsuccessful test flights, the X-51 completed a flight of over six minutes and reached speeds of over Mach 5 for 210 seconds on 1 May 2013 for the longest duration powered hypersonic flight.
Scramjet programs refers to research and testing programs for the development of supersonic combustion ramjets, known as scramjets. This list provides a short overview of national and international collaborations, and civilian and military programs. The USA, Russia, India, and China (2014), have succeeded at developing scramjet technologies.
Lockheed L-301 was an experimental air-breathing hypersonic aircraft project. It was developed by the NASA and United States Air Force (USAF) organization National Hypersonic Flight Research Facility, with Skunk Works as the prime contractor. In January 1977, the program was "tentatively scheduled to operate two vehicles for eight years and to conduct 100 flights per vehicle." NASA discontinued work on L-301 and NHRF in September 1977 due to budget constraints and lack of need.
Hypersonic flight is flight through the atmosphere below about 90 km at speeds above Mach 5, a speed where dissociation of air begins to become significant and high heat loads exist. Russia is the first country to deploy a hypersonic nuclear missile.
The Ayaks is a hypersonic waverider aircraft program started in the Soviet Union and currently under development by the Hypersonic Systems Research Institute (HSRI) of Leninets Holding Company in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
Reusable Launch Vehicle–Technology Demonstration Programme is a series of technology demonstration missions that has been conceived by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) as a first step towards realising a Two Stage To Orbit (TSTO) re-usable launch vehicle.
The 14-X is a prototype of a Brazilian unmanned hypersonic aircraft (UAV) in development, named after Alberto Santos-Dumont's 14-Bis. [2] This aircraft will be equipped with a scramjet engine, which is integrated in the fuselage and has no moving parts. The operating principle is that, during the flight, air is compressed by the geometry and speed of the vehicle directed to the engine at the bottom of the aircraft. Hydrogen is used as fuel. The vehicle will use the "waverider concept". A wave of friction at the bottom of the aircraft provides sustainability. Both the aircraft and the engine are of a completely Brazilian construction. [1]
HyShot is a research project of The University of Queensland, Australia Centre for Hypersonics, to demonstrate the possibility of supersonic combustion under flight conditions using two scramjet engines, one designed by The University of Queensland and one designed by QinetiQ.
Frederick Stucky Billig was a pioneer in the development of scramjet propulsion.
The HSTDV is an unmanned scramjet demonstration aircraft for hypersonic speed flight. It is being developed as a carrier vehicle for hypersonic and long-range cruise missiles, and will have multiple civilian applications including the launching of small satellites at low cost. The HSTDV program is run by the Indian Defence Research and Development Organisation.
General Applied Science Laboratory (GASL) is an American aerospace company, known as a pioneer of hypersonic propulsion.
Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 (HTV-2) is an experimental hypersonic glide vehicle developed as part of the DARPA Falcon Project capable of flying at 13,000 mph. It is a test bed for technologies to provide the United States with the capability to reach any target in the world within one hour using an unmanned hypersonic bomber aircraft.
The Lockheed Martin SR-72 is an American hypersonic UAV concept intended for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. Lockheed Martin privately proposed it to succeed the retired Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird.
Kholod (Холод) is the name of a project which was originally developed in Russia. The hypersonic rocket uses a scramjet engine and was created to exceed the speed of 5.75 Ma. The prototype consists of a Soyuz TMKB with liquid hydrogen and modified fillings from the SA-5 Gammon missiles. The entire rocket including the four booster rockets is 12 metres (39 ft) long and 750 millimetres (30 in) in diameter. The project led to other Russian hypersonic rockets like the Igla rocket craft and the Yu-71 boost-glide warhead.
Boost-glide trajectories are a class of spacecraft guidance and reentry trajectories that extend the range of suborbital spaceplanes and reentry vehicles by employing aerodynamic lift in the high upper atmosphere. In most examples, boost-glide roughly doubles the range over the purely ballistic trajectory. In others, a series of skips allows range to be further extended, and leads to the alternate terms skip-glide and skip reentry.
RLV-TD is India's first uncrewed flying testbed developed for the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO)'s Reusable Launch Vehicle Technology Demonstration Programme. It is a scaled down prototype of an eventual two-stage-to-orbit (TSTO) reusable launch vehicle.
The Avangard, previously known as Objekt 4202, Yu-71 and Yu-74, is a Russian hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV), that can be carried as a MIRV payload by the UR-100UTTKh, R-36M2 and RS-28 Sarmat heavy ICBMs. It can deliver both nuclear and conventional payloads.
