Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Speed - In a hurry to get to Australia?
And shorter in-flight movies?...
DefenceTalk.com has this story:
"Here’s the promise: two-hour flights from anywhere to the other side of the world, replete with 30 minutes of Space Shuttle-like views while in orbit.
The problem: how to mix fuel in the engine of an efficient, hypersonic space plane invented by Astrox Corporation that travels as fast as Mach 25, or 17,500 miles-per-hour, above the Earth’s atmosphere.
The answer: Through two Maryland Industrial Partnerships Program projects, A. James Clark School of Engineering faculty members Ashwani Gupta and Kenneth Yu, along with graduate student Ram Balar, have successfully designed and tested a combustor for the Astrox space plane, which uses something called an inward-turning scramjet engine.
'Hypersonic space planes could revolutionize the transportation industry, much like jet planes did for subsonic commercial aviation 50 years ago,' said Astrox President Ajay Kothari. 'Seemingly remote parts of the world would be nearly as accessible as a two-hour drive.'"
