NASA budgets $15 million for hypersonic flight

[daredevil]

You're probably familiar with supersonic planes like the SR-71 Blackbird pictured above, which managed to fly at over three times the speed of sound, but imagine this: NASA set aside $15 million to develop a hypersonic plane that could exit our atmosphere at speeds between Mach 5 and Mach 20.

 

The US space agency's not expecting to build it quite that cheaply, of course, and it's not holding out hope for a contractor to build the entire plane just yet -- the organization intends to fund some sixteen smaller science and engineering projects (ranging from "how to build a Mach 8+ engine" to "predicting hypersonic fluid dynamics") and letting would-be government contractors pick and choose. Know how to quantify baseline turbulent aeroheating uncertainty in a hypersonic environment? You've got until November 23rd to get your proposal in.

 

As some have pointed out in comments, hypersonic flight isn't unprecedented -- NASA spent eighteen years developing and testing the X-15 space plane starting in 1951, which reached Mach 6.7 using a rocket engine.

 

[!Chuck4Abuck]

damn , that plane most make a lot of noice !

[NoGooD]

referring to the SR-71- it does...or I should say it did. Of course you only heard the noise about 20 seconds after it passed, assuming it was low enough.

 

Interesting move on NASA's part. Although 15 million is a drop in the bucket, maybe hard times call for a new way of thinking and doing business.

[nani*]

It is clear that everyone can do with money as it pleases, but to me it seems a real cheek that waste of money in such projects, with the economic problem that exists globally. Hypocrisy and interests.

[ajnl]

what about the unmanned X-43 aircraft, using a scram-jet. Able to reach hypersonic speeds because it doesn't have any fan blades in the engine, its just a whole, which compresses the air, and than combustion occurs.

 

http://users.dbscorp...mustain/x43.htm

 

It is clear that everyone can do with money as it pleases, but to me it seems a real cheek that waste of money in such projects, with the economic problem that exists globally. Hypocrisy and interests.

 

its not a waste of money, it furthers understanding of aircraft, especially at these speeds. Which will help in the future.

 

plus 15 million dollars is a drop in the bucket.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiBsD-cafH8

 

[C@n0S]

Hmm we had few of these in 1940 and we beated russia

 

[Term!n@tor]

Know how to quantify baseline turbulent aeroheating uncertainty in a hypersonic environment?

 

it looks like the application of computation fluid dynamics with thermal engineering and probabilistic modeling.

no single person would be able to do it. perhaps nasa should ask those guys at MIT , caltech

[Butterz]

Hmm we had few of these in 1940 and we beated russia

 

 

Copied and pasted from Wikipedia:

 

By March 1940, sheer exhaustion led to the situation where both parties were willing to negotiate for a peace treaty. The Finnish Army was running out of even the most basic material, and the Soviet Union wanted to end the costly war that had become an international embarrassment. Nevertheless, Finland was the loser and in the Moscow Peace Treaty, the Finns had to make significant territorial concessions. The total area lost was 35,000 km² (approximately 9% of the Finnish territory).

 

They called you losers.

[daredevil]

It is clear that everyone can do with money as it pleases, but to me it seems a real cheek that waste of money in such projects, with the economic problem that exists globally. Hypocrisy and interests.

 

Spending money behind the new tech is never bad. Economy is bad due to other reasons. If people wouldn't be spending behind tech research then we would be still in stone era.

[C@n0S]

Copied and pasted from Wikipedia:

 

By March 1940, sheer exhaustion led to the situation where both parties were willing to negotiate for a peace treaty. The Finnish Army was running out of even the most basic material, and the Soviet Union wanted to end the costly war that had become an international embarrassment. Nevertheless, Finland was the loser and in the Moscow Peace Treaty, the Finns had to make significant territorial concessions. The total area lost was 35,000 km² (approximately 9% of the Finnish territory).

 

They called you losers.

 

haha small finland was against really big rus, we defended our country like hell they can write what they want , for me we won

[nani*]

Spending money behind the new tech is never bad. Economy is bad due to other reasons. If people wouldn't be spending behind tech research then we would be still in stone era.

 

For anything im against investing in new technologies. Forward supposed to evolve to better our lives and the environment. I just wanted to make clear that it is cynical to think about the investment of these huge amounts of money directed to x projects, in moments of crisis like we are living. Its just another point of view in this regard.

[PHANTASM]

haha small finland was against really big rus, we defended our country like hell they can write what they want , for me we won

 

Yes Finland was invaded by Stalin's USSR, and the Russian Army was so disorganized, poorly equipped, and badly led that the highly motivated Finns beat them with mostly homemade weapons.

 

In the US we know Finland won. The USSR went home, taking a tiny slice of Finland as a consolation prize for all their trouble.

 

The Russian performance in the Winter War with Finland was so unimpressive that it was one of the reasons Hitler used to justify launching Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the USSR, which led to over 26 million Russian deaths and the eventual defeat of Nazi Germany. The Germans had thought all they had to do was "kick the door in, and the whole house would fall down", as Hitler explained to his generals.

 

 

15 million for aircraft research is nothing, especially in the US. We spend over $600 billion every year on our magnificent military.

 

By way of comparison, in November 2008 the global derivatives market lost $60 trillion in the financial meltdown. $15 million is just lunch money. A typical video game earns more than that.

 

Those SR-71 Blackbirds were awesome machines.

[daredevil]

For anything im against investing in new technologies. Forward supposed to evolve to better our lives and the environment. I just wanted to make clear that it is cynical to think about the investment of these huge amounts of money directed to x projects, in moments of crisis like we are living. Its just another point of view in this regard.

 

Investing in technologies is never bad. Who knows if they are successful, then they will make more $$ in long run by selling tech to other countries.

 

To fix something you need to fix root cause. Root cause of bad economy is this useless wars and other things. They need to stop doing that and they need to learn to stop brown nosing in other countries rules and regulation.

 

War in Iraq: Nothing found.

War in Afghanistan: Nothing found much either.

 

It's funny to me that USA was first giving weapons and $$ privately to Afghanistan to keep silent war against Russia and then slowly Afghanistan turned back on US itself.

 

There goes saying, "As you sow so shall you reap."

[gaoesa]

The Russian performance in the Winter War with Finland was so unimpressive that it was one of the reasons Hitler used to justify launching Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the USSR, which led to over 26 million Russian deaths and the eventual defeat of Nazi Germany. The Germans had thought all they had to do was "kick the door in, and the whole house would fall down", as Hitler explained to his generals.

 

True. In the beginning of the Soviet attack, the finnish army size was about 20 000. Before the war ended, the russians had lost over 1 000 000 soldiers to the Finnish front. Also, Helsinki, the capital of the Finland was one of the 3 capitals that were never invaded by the enemy forces in the Europe. Counting only the countries that were in war and the others were London and Moskov.

 

This didn't come up before but the war was done in 2 parts. First part was the winter war that was a result when the Germans and Russians had divided the the countries and the Russia had the pleasure of attacking Finland. After the Russian were stopped and the middle peace was signed, the Germans wanted to make allies with Finland thinking it will benefit their attack to Russia. Finish felt the Russia will attack again to finish what it had started so an armament process started and an allied treaty was signed. Also, the Germany was the only possible option to make a working treaty.

 

3 days after the operation Barbadossa started, there happened an event that finns felt was an act of aggression by the Russians. Later it is proven that neither Finns or Russians were behind it, and it was probably performed by the Germans who wanted the Finns into the war while Finns were reluctant to attack against Russia. Then started the Continuation War and first finns took over the previously lost land area. The Nordic army that Hitler had sent to Lapland didn't have such success and on few occations, the finns 3'rd army had to rescue them from the hands of the Russians. Finns didn't consider the Lapland significant so they allowed the Germans to do their wars there. The war involving the finns stopped at the old frontier and at some parts little further then the old frontier. Majority of the Finnish army was reluctant to go very deep to the Russian land areas. After 3 years of the trench warfare, the Russians started the grand attack and broke the Finnish defence line. Finns were able to stop this attack, however, and the peace treaty was signed as Russians were in a hurry to get the troops to the german front and to get to the berlin and Finns didn't have any more resources for the war.

 

The signed treaty also included that finns must demobilize the Finnish army and at the same time have war against the Germany and drive them out from the Lapland. This is what is known as juvenile war because at the end of the war, the Nordic army was driven out with an army of no older soldiers then 16 year olds. After the Germans were out from the Finnish soil, the Russian army continued the campaign in Norway.

 

I'm not a historian and therefore there is high chance of inaccuracies in the text. However, it is fairly complete overall description of the wars Finland did during the WW2.

 

The war was technically a defeat, but on the other hand, the alternative would have been the loss of independence. So in that sense, the war was won.

[AntiThought]

Mach 20? May not sound like much but here is the math for you. Lets say it is a high altitude craft traveling at around the same altitude as the SR-71 at 80,000 feet (24,384 meters) and in temperatures of around -50C (-58F). This means it is traveling at roughly:

 

19,744 feet per second which is roughly 3.74 mi/sec. In metric measurements that is about 6,018 meters per second or 6.01 km/sec.

 

If it operated at low altitudes at 60F (15.56C) it would be traveling at roughly:

 

22,368 ft/sec or 4.24mi/sec or 6,817.8m/sec or 6.82 km/sec.

 

 

 

*Difference in air resistance at the different altitudes not included in calculations as I do not know how.