"The greatest achievement from Flight Two, which the ERB's findings underscored, was that we successfully incorporated aerodynamic knowledge gained from the first flight into the second flight," said Air Force Maj. Chris Schulz, DARPA program manager, in a press release.
The first flight of the aircraft corrected engineers' models regarding the HTV-2's aerodynamic design, which allowed the aircraft to retain aerodynamic stability for the duration of the second flight, he said.
Data the ERB learned from the second flight will inform future design decisions about the properties of thermal protective material for maintaining an aircraft speed of Mach 20 inside the Earth's atmosphere, according to DARPA, which found that thermal modeling and ground testing were not enough to predict what protection the HTV-2 would need in actual flight.
This information "can now be used to adjust our assumptions based on actual flight data and modify our modeling and simulation to better characterize thermal uncertainties and determine how to assess integrated thermal systems," according to Schulz.
Going forward, DARPA will use the findings to achieve the goal of its Office of the Secretary of Defense, Acquisition, Technology & Logistics, Strategic Warfare directorate, which is to create an aircraft that can reach anywhere in the world in less than one hour.
The test duration reminds me of oner of the large rocket motor manufacturers comments after the exit nozzle exited 50 milliseconds into the test, "all test objectives were met"
All they need to do is get some materials from one of those UFO's at Area 51 - problem solved! :)
I guess the point is that you'll never know if you don't try. I'm sure they learned a lot about shockwaves that will probably be useful in other applications, including slower speed craft.
It seems to me that ceramics is the answer here - our current technology can handle 2k-3k degree temperatures. I'm not sure how they would hold up to shockwaves since they can be brittle, but at that speed and temperature they may actually be a bit more flexible.
Flying fast within the atmosphere has its applications - there will be times that going out of the atmosphere simply isn't practical - short range applications, for example. I cannot imagine the sonic properties of something travelling Mach 20, it would certainly not be a stealth vehicle; but when you're going that fast you don't need to be stealth.
Avoiding missles, etc doesn't count if it can't get there and burns up on the way. Far better is skipping off the atmosphere or full space flight, both are far easier to do, have far more range, payload. And they are far safer from countermeasures.
There is not much that can withstand 5000F or so the ship has to endure. If you make it bigger for payload, the drag, heat just increases.
I'm having a hard problem find metals, etc that can withstand just 1500F with a decent lifetime which hasn't been easy. Much less the temps a hypersonic craft has to endure.
Over 2500mph just isn't smart in the atmosphere and this, every test before proves this. No?
So please tell me how far can they go and how much payload can they carry? Enquiring minds want to know?
ervin, thanks for the explanation. I'm surprised that we're still infants in this field after so many decades of aviation history. That's unnerving, especially considering this is a DARPA project.
This is a DARPA project. Being able to fly that fast in the atmosphere means that it can outrun anything shot at it (SAM, bullets, etc.) - so that it could get somewhere fast and drop a payload (bombs, etc.). It could also be used to catch anything in the air (planes, missiles, etc.). It would also be extremely difficult to track or anticipate. Even a laser would have a hard time hitting it, especially if it is making random micro adjustments to its flight path. LA to NY in 12 minutes means that it could get to North Korea in under 30 minutes.
Chuck, I was also guessing that the 100x shockwaves might be an anomaly. I just assumed that we knew a lot more about their potential force after all this time, and could therefore compute the relevant loads.
In the early days of SPICE (circuit simulator), the late Bob Pease had a rant in his weekly column. He published a circuit to simulate in SPICE and pointed out a certain resistor dissipated negative power! He said he couldn't wait to put together the real circuit and watch it get colder by the minute. He speculated on the breakthroughs it would bring to food and beer storage.
Then he got serious and made the point: simulations are a good tool but no substitute for hands-on prototypes. Of course simulation software has made huge advances in all disciplines but Pease's point still rings true today.
I absolutely agree...this was a fantastic accomplishment. After all, the whole point of testing something is to determine potential failure modes. Simulations give us a fantastic set of tools to better predict failure, but there is really no subtitute for an actual real world test. So often, we discover important variables or interactions that were not anticipated by simulation.
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