 | |
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Aerospace |
| Founded | 2018 |
| Founder | AJ Piplica (CEO) Skyler Shuford (COO) Glenn Case (CTO) Mike Smayda (CPO) |
| Headquarters | Atlanta, Georgia |
Number of locations | 2 |
| Website | hermeus |
Hermeus Corporation is an American startup company designing a hypersonic airliner.
The company was founded in 2018 [1] with initial funding led by Khosla Ventures. [2]
In March 2022, the company raised a $100 million series B investment round led by Sam Altman. [3] Other investors included Founders Fund, In-Q-Tel, and existing investors Khosla Ventures, Canaan Partners, and Bling Capital.
The aircraft under development is planned to fly at Mach 5 with a range of 4,600 miles (7,400 km). [4] The company claims to have designed, built, and successfully tested a Mach 5 engine prototype in only 9 months. [5] In August 2020, Hermeus received a $1.5 million contract from the United States Air Force to develop their proposed aircraft and function as a possible Air Force One. [6]
They are building the supersonic Quarterhorse Mk 2 with an advanced engine based on the Pratt & Whitney F100. Quarterhorse Mk 2 is expected to hit speeds greater than Mach 2.5.
The engine to be used in the Hermeus aircraft adds a precooler to a standard Pratt & Whitney F100 [ clarification needed ]. The precooler lowers the temperature of incoming air, preventing the melting of engine parts and allowing the engine to be more efficient. [7]
The next-generation Chimera engine includes a ramjet, which was successfully tested in November 2022. [8] It will power the Quarterhorse Mk 3, which will reach speeds close to Mach. Until reaching sufficient speed, Chimera routes incoming air around the turbojet and the ramjet takes over. [9] [8]
Hermeus is initially focused on the Quarterhorse design program: [10] [11]
The Quarterhorse development schedule has four stages: [12]
Next comes Darkhorse, an uncrewed hypersonic military jet intended for mass production. After Darkhorse, the plan is to create Halcyon, a hypersonic passenger jet. [10]
Chimera is a pre-cooled, full-range, air-breathing, turbine combined cycle (TBCC) hypersonic engine combining a pre-cooled turbine with a ramjet. At low speeds Chimera operates as a turbine, while at higher speeds the engine transitions to ramjet mode. The precooler helps bridge the gap between these modes increasing the performance of the turbine. [10] Chimera begins to bypass the incoming air around the turbojet at around Mach 3, and the ramjet takes over completely. Hermeus demonstrated achieving this in tests in November 2022. [13]
In 2021, Hermeus secured $60 million in funding from the U.S. Air Force and from venture capital sources to support the Quarterhorse flight test program. A non-flying Quarterhorse MK 0 prototype will be used to validate systems including electrical, hydraulic, pneumatic, aviaonics, steerinng and propulsion. [14] In August 2024, Hermeus completed low-speed taxi tests. [15] The testing was completed in 37 days from the time the MK 0 prototype arrived at the test facility. [16]
A jet engine is a type of reaction engine, discharging a fast-moving jet of heated gas that generates thrust by jet propulsion. While this broad definition may include rocket, water jet, and hybrid propulsion, the term jet engine typically refers to an internal combustion air-breathing jet engine such as a turbojet, turbofan, ramjet, pulse jet, or scramjet. In general, jet engines are internal combustion engines.
A ramjet is a form of airbreathing jet engine that requires forward motion of the engine to provide air for combustion. Ramjets work most efficiently at supersonic speeds around Mach 3 and can operate up to Mach 6.
A jet aircraft is an aircraft propelled by one or more jet engines.
A supersonic transport (SST) or a supersonic airliner is a civilian supersonic aircraft designed to transport passengers at speeds greater than the speed of sound. To date, the only SSTs to see regular service have been Concorde and the Tupolev Tu-144. The last passenger flight of the Tu-144 was in June 1978 and it was last flown in 1999 by NASA. Concorde's last commercial flight was in October 2003, with a November 26, 2003 ferry flight being its last flight.
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 using shock cones, a scramjet has no shock cone and slows the airflow using shockwaves produced by its ignition source in place of a shock cone. This allows the scramjet to operate efficiently at extremely high speeds.
The NASA X-43 was an experimental unmanned 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 developed in the late 1990s. It set several airspeed records for jet aircraft. The X-43 is the fastest jet-powered aircraft on record at approximately Mach 9.6.
SABRE was a concept under development by Reaction Engines Limited for a hypersonic precooled hybrid air-breathing rocket engine. The engine is designed to achieve single-stage-to-orbit capability, propelling the proposed Skylon spaceplane to low Earth orbit. SABRE is an evolution of Alan Bond's series of LACE-like designs that started in the early/mid-1980s for the HOTOL project.
The Republic XF-103 was an American project to develop a powerful missile-armed interceptor aircraft capable of destroying Soviet bombers while flying at speeds as high as Mach 3. Despite a prolonged development, it never progressed past the mockup stage.
A precooled jet engine is a concept that enables jet engines with turbomachinery, as opposed to ramjets, to be used at high speeds. Precooling restores some or all of the performance degradation of the engine compressor, as well as that of the complete gas generator, which would otherwise prevent flight with high ram temperatures.
The Nord 1500 Griffon is an experimental ramjet-powered interceptor aircraft designed and built by French state-owned aircraft manufacturer Nord Aviation. The Griffon was developed to become a Mach 2 follow on to the supersonic Nord Gerfaut research aircraft. Development of the aircraft began in earnest after the receipt of a letter of intent in 1953 for a pair of unarmed research aircraft. The design featured an innovative dual propulsion turbojet-ramjet configuration; the former being used to takeoff and attain sufficient speed to start the latter.
The General Electric YF120, internally designated as GE37, was a variable cycle afterburning turbofan engine designed by General Electric Aircraft Engines in the late 1980s and early 1990s for the United States Air Force's Advanced Tactical Fighter (ATF) program. It was designed to produce maximum thrust in the 35,000 lbf (156 kN) class. Prototype engines were installed in the two competing technology demonstrator aircraft, the Lockheed YF-22 and Northrop YF-23.
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.
A variable cycle engine (VCE), also referred to as adaptive cycle engine (ACE), is an aircraft jet engine that is designed to operate efficiently under mixed flight conditions, such as subsonic, transonic and supersonic.
The air turborocket is a form of combined-cycle jet engine. The basic layout includes a gas generator, which produces high pressure gas, that drives a turbine/compressor assembly which compresses atmospheric air into a combustion chamber. This mixture is then combusted before leaving the device through a nozzle and creating thrust.
Hypersonic flight is flight through the atmosphere below altitudes of about 90 km (56 mi) at speeds greater than Mach 5, a speed where dissociation of air begins to become significant and high heat loads exist. Speeds over Mach 25 have been achieved below the thermosphere as of 2020.
The Reaction Engines Limited LAPCAT Configuration A2 is a design study for a hypersonic speed jet airliner intended to provide long range, high capacity commercial transportation.
The Leduc 022 was the prototype of a mixed-power French interceptor built in the mid-1950s. Designer René Leduc had been developing ramjet-powered aircraft since before World War II and had flown a series of experimental aircraft, the Leduc 0.10 and Leduc 0.21, throughout the 1950s before he was awarded a contract for two examples of a short-range supersonic interceptor armed with two air-to-air missiles (AAMs).
An airbreathing jet engine is a jet engine in which the exhaust gas which supplies jet propulsion is atmospheric air, which is taken in, compressed, heated, and expanded back to atmospheric pressure through a propelling nozzle. Compression may be provided by a gas turbine, as in the original turbojet and newer turbofan, or arise solely from the ram pressure of the vehicle's velocity, as with the ramjet and pulsejet.
The Lockheed Martin SR-72, colloquially referred to as "Son of Blackbird", is an American hypersonic UAV concept intended for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) proposed privately in 2013 by Lockheed Martin as a successor to the retired Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird. In 2018, company executives said an SR-72 test vehicle could fly by 2025 and enter service in the 2030s.
Space Engine Systems Inc. (SES) is a Canadian aerospace company and is located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. The main focus of the company is the development of a light multi-fuel propulsion system to power a reusable spaceplane and hypersonic cruise vehicle. Pumps, compressors, gear boxes, and other related technologies being developed are integrated into SES's major R&D projects. SES has collaborated with the University of Calgary to study and develop technologies in key technical areas of nanotechnology and high-speed aerodynamics.
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