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Hypersonic Flight
Hypersonic flight is flight through the atmosphere below altitudes of about at Hypersonic speed, speeds greater than Mach 5, a speed where Dissociation (chemistry), 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. Hypersonic vehicles are able to maneuver through the atmosphere in a #Weapons, non-parabolic trajectory, but their aerodynamic heat loads need to be managed. History The first manufactured object to achieve hypersonic flight was the two-stage RTV-G-4 Bumper, Bumper rocket, consisting of a WAC Corporal second stage set on top of a V-2 rocket, V-2 first stage. In February 1949, at White Sands V-2 Launching Site, White Sands, the rocket reached a speed of , or about Mach 6.7. The vehicle, however, burned on atmospheric re-entry, and only charred remnants were found. In April 1961, Russian Major Yuri Gagarin became the first human to travel at hypersonic speed, dur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flight
Flight or flying is the motion (physics), motion of an Physical object, object through an atmosphere, or through the vacuum of Outer space, space, without contacting any planetary surface. This can be achieved by generating aerodynamic lift associated with gliding flight, gliding or air propulsion, propulsive thrust, aerostatically using buoyancy, or by ballistics, ballistic movement. Many things can fly, from Flying and gliding animals, animal aviators such as birds, bats and insects, to natural gliders/parachuters such as patagium, patagial animals, anemochorous seeds and ballistospores, to human inventions like aircraft (airplanes, helicopters, airships, balloons, etc.) and rockets which may propel spacecraft and spaceplanes. The engineering aspects of flight are the purview of aerospace engineering which is subdivided into aeronautics, the study of vehicles that travel through the atmosphere, and astronautics, the study of vehicles that travel through space, and ballistics, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Michael White
Robert Michael White (July 6, 1924 – March 17, 2010) ( Maj Gen, USAF) was an American electrical engineer, test pilot, fighter pilot, and astronaut. He was one of twelve pilots who flew the North American X-15, an experimental spaceplane jointly operated by the Air Force and NASA. As an engineer, he supervised the design and development of several modern military aircraft. On July 17, 1962, he flew the X-15 to an altitude above 50 miles, thereby qualifying as an astronaut according to the United States definition of the boundary of space. Background and career White was born in New York City on July 6, 1924. After graduating from high school, he entered active military service in November 1942 as an aviation cadet in the United States Army Air Forces, and received his pilot wings and commission as a second lieutenant in February 1944. During World War II, he served with the 355th Fighter Group in the European Theater of Operations. He flew P-51 Mustangs from July 1944 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ramjet
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 and can operate up to . Ramjets can be particularly appropriate in uses requiring a compact mechanism for high-speed, such as missiles. Weapons designers are investigating ramjet technology for use in artillery shells to increase range; a 120 mm ramjet-assisted mortar shell is thought to be able to travel . They have been used, though not efficiently, as tip jets on the ends of helicopter rotors. History France Cyrano de Bergerac ''L'Autre Monde: ou les États et Empires de la Lune ( Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon)'' (1657) was the first of three satirical novels written by Cyrano de Bergerac that are considered among the first science fiction stories. Arthur C Clarke credited this book with conceiving the ramjet, and as the first fictional example of rocket-powered ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Free Fall
In classical mechanics, free fall is any motion of a physical object, body where gravity is the only force acting upon it. A freely falling object may not necessarily be falling down in the vertical direction. If the common definition of the word "fall" is used, an object moving upwards is not considered to be falling, but using scientific definitions, if it is subject to only the force of gravity, it is said to be in free fall. The Moon is thus in free fall around the Earth, though its orbital speed keeps it in orbit of the Moon, very far orbit from the Earth's surface. In a roughly uniform gravitational field gravity acts on each part of a body approximately equally. When there are no other forces, such as the normal force exerted between a body (e.g. an astronaut in orbit) and its surrounding objects, it will result in the sensation of weightlessness, a condition that also occurs when the gravitational field is weak (such as when far away from any source of gravity). The ter ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shock Wave
In physics, a shock wave (also spelled shockwave), or shock, is a type of propagating disturbance that moves faster than the local speed of sound in the medium. Like an ordinary wave, a shock wave carries energy and can propagate through a medium, but is characterized by an abrupt, nearly discontinuous, change in pressure, temperature, and density of the medium. For the purpose of comparison, in supersonic speed, supersonic flows, additional increased expansion may be achieved through an expansion fan, also known as a Prandtl–Meyer expansion fan. The accompanying expansion wave may approach and eventually collide and recombine with the shock wave, creating a process of destructive interference. The sonic boom associated with the passage of a supersonic aircraft is a type of sound wave produced by Wave interference, constructive interference. Unlike solitons (another kind of nonlinear wave), the energy and speed of a shock wave alone dissipates relatively quickly with distan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stagnation Point
In fluid dynamics, a stagnation point is a point in a flow field where the local velocity of the fluid is zero.Clancy, L.J. (1975), ''Aerodynamics'', Pitman Publishing Limited, London. The Bernoulli equation shows that the static pressure is highest when the velocity is zero and hence static pressure is at its maximum value at stagnation points: in this case static pressure equals stagnation pressure. The Bernoulli equation applicable to incompressible flow shows that the stagnation pressure is equal to the dynamic pressure and static pressure combined.Clancy, L.J. (1975), ''Aerodynamics'', Pitman Publishing Limited, London. In compressible flows, stagnation pressure is also equal to total pressure as well, provided that the fluid entering the stagnation point is brought to rest isentropically. A plentiful, albeit surprising, example of such points seem to appear in all but the most extreme cases of fluid dynamics in the form of the "no-slip condition" - the assumption that ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hypersonic Weapon Development
Hypersonic flight is flight through the atmosphere below altitudes of about at Hypersonic speed, speeds greater than Mach 5, a speed where Dissociation (chemistry), 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. Hypersonic vehicles are able to maneuver through the atmosphere in a #Weapons, non-parabolic trajectory, but their aerodynamic heat loads need to be managed. History The first manufactured object to achieve hypersonic flight was the two-stage RTV-G-4 Bumper, Bumper rocket, consisting of a WAC Corporal second stage set on top of a V-2 rocket, V-2 first stage. In February 1949, at White Sands V-2 Launching Site, White Sands, the rocket reached a speed of , or about Mach 6.7. The vehicle, however, burned on atmospheric re-entry, and only charred remnants were found. In April 1961, Russian Major Yuri Gagarin became the first human to travel at hypersonic speed, dur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Hyten
John Earl Hyten (born July 18, 1959) is a retired United States Air Force general who served as the 11th vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2019 to 2021. A career space operations and acquisitions officer, he commanded the United States Strategic Command from 2016 to 2019 and the Air Force Space Command from 2014 to 2016. Hyten was born in Torrance, California. After graduating from Harvard University, he received his commission into the U.S. Air Force in 1981. He started his military career in engineering jobs, then went into space and missile operations. He commanded the 6th Space Operations Squadron, 595th Space Group, and 50th Space Wing. After retiring, Hyten joined Blue Origin as a strategic advisor. Early life and education John Earl Hyten was born on July 18, 1959, in Torrance, California as the eldest of Sherwyn and Barbara Hyten's three children. In 1965, his family moved to Huntsville, Alabama, where his father worked on the Saturn V rocket. He grew ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Waverider
A waverider is a hypersonic aircraft design that improves its supersonic lift-to-drag ratio by using the shock waves being generated by its own flight as a lifting surface, a phenomenon known as compression lift. The waverider remains a well-studied design for high-speed aircraft in the Mach 5 and higher hypersonic regime, although no such design has yet entered production. The Boeing X-51 scramjet demonstration aircraft was tested from 2010 to 2013. In its final test flight, it reached a speed of . History Early work The waverider design concept was first developed by Terence Nonweiler of the Queen's University of Belfast, and first described in print in 1951 as a re-entry vehicle. It consisted of a delta-wing platform with a low wing loading to provide considerable surface area to dump the heat of re-entry. At the time, Nonweiler was forced to use a greatly simplified 2D model of airflow around the aircraft, which he realized would not be accurate due to spanwis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hypersonic Weapons Development
In aerodynamics, a hypersonic speed is one that exceeds five times the speed of sound, often stated as starting at speeds of Mach 5 and above. The precise Mach number at which a craft can be said to be flying at hypersonic speed varies, since individual physical changes in the airflow (like molecular dissociation and ionization) occur at different speeds; these effects collectively become important around Mach 5–10. The hypersonic regime can also be alternatively defined as speeds where specific heat capacity changes with the temperature of the flow as kinetic energy of the moving object is converted into heat. Characteristics of flow While the definition of hypersonic flow can be quite vague and is generally debatable (especially because of the absence of discontinuity between supersonic and hypersonic flows), a hypersonic flow may be characterized by certain physical phenomena that can no longer be analytically discounted as in supersonic flow. The peculiarities in hyperso ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Boeing X-51 Waverider
The Boeing X-51 Waverider is an unmanned research scramjet experimental aircraft for hypersonic flight at and an altitude of . 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. ''Waverider'' refers in general to aircraft that take advantage of compression lift produced by their own shock waves. The X-51 program was a cooperative effort by the United States Air Force, DARPA, NASA, Boeing, and Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne. The program was managed by the Aerospace Systems Directorate within the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). Design and development In the 1990s, the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) began the HyTECH program for hypersonic propulsion. Pratt & Whitney received a contract from the AFRL to develo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scramjet
A scramjet (supersonic combustion ramjet) 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 (hence ''ram''jet), but whereas a ramjet decelerates the air to speed of sound, 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. Although scramjet engines have been used in a handful of operational military vehicles, scramjets have so far mostly been demonstrated in research test articles and experimental vehicles. History Before 2000 The Bell X-1 attained Supersonic speed#Supersonic flight, supersonic flight in 1947 and, by the early 1960s, rapid progress toward faster aircraft suggested that operational aircraft wo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
