RAF to develop hypersonic planes...(?)
Interesting.
Didn't think of that - even missile telemetry would be a problem at high dynamic pressures.
EDIT:
Was able to access further text - see below.
Interest vendors are locked but they're talking turbine based combined cycle.
Isn't that the Skunk Works design where the turbine is in the scramjet freeflow, up until the point the scramjet lights, and then the turbine retracts?
Hmmm - Rocketdyne - the door closes once the scramjet lights...
https://www.popularmechanics.com/mil...ic-jet-engine/
II. TOPIC OVERVIEW a. Objective Develop and validate performance of robust distributed instrumentation in air-platform extreme environments (combined thermal, mechanical, and acoustic loading). b. Description Turbine-based combined cycle (TBCC) vehicles will be flying in conditions that subject their propulsion systems to harsh environments not previously seen by reusable air vehicles. While they fly over narrower regimes, other single-use hypersonic vehicles experience many of the same harsh conditions experienced by TBCC vehicles. Even conventional aircraft may have areas of combined thermal, mechanical, and acoustic loading. For control systems in high-speed systems, the improvement in advanced instrumentation technologies are required to achieve the required performance and operability over the vehicle’s flight trajectory. This wide range of application environments necessitates extensive ground testing, which must also utilize advanced instrumentation technologies to characterize the performance and operability of the vehicles. At the same time, these instruments will need to be robust enough to survive repeated testing in simulated environments, and in operational environments on flight vehicles with low false-alarm rates. Physical understanding and modeling of representative environments is required to provide invaluable insight into the challenge of integrating these instruments into future applications. Sensing modalities addressing key phenomena, including aerodynamics, boundary layer transition, thermal protection system performance, ablative properties, material effects, and scramjet engine operation are desired. Improvements in instrumentation techniques could reduce uncertainty in ground and flight tests, increase safety, and improve design of future air platforms. Conventional instruments suffer from an inability to survive extreme environments and do not provide reliable, distributed data such as pressure, temperature, heat flux, shear, displacement, flow velocity, Mach, equivalence ratio, core flow properties, etc. Proper instrument types that are robust, reliable, have a low packing factor, and are easy to replace are vital to enabling next-generation air platforms and high-speed weapons. This topic seeks to address the above challenges through the construction of innovative distributed instrumentation applicable to high-speed testing and operations. This effort will culminate in a robust instrumentation system (e.g. sensor, wiring, signal processor) to advance testing capabilities and provide more effective decision-making data for both test and/or operational vehicles. The validation data that could be gathered by an instrumentation system resulting from this work would assist in effective operation of next-generation hypersonic vehicles. It is also expected that the instrumentation system developed by this effort will help to improve data gathering in any propulsion system experiencing high thermoacoustic loads (i.e., buried engines in subsonic and supersonic platforms). c. Phase I Develop a distributed instrumentation system design to meet hypersonic propulsion system requirements. Develop instrument design and fabrication techniques. Conduct system-level modeling and analysis and show improvements in propulsion and overall vehicle and/or test article performance. Develop plans for demonstrating the instrumentation system in a relevant environment. Designs capable of advancing hypersonic vehicle research are of particular interest, but designs that facilitate hypersonic research article testing are also desired. Phase I deliverables will include a final report that contains the initial instrumentation system design and preliminary performance results. Phase I payable milestones for this SBO should include: i. Month 2: Report on requirements for instrumentation system architectures, and potential instrumentation system architectures ii. Month 4: Report on acquisition/fabrication feasibility of potential instrumentation architectures; preliminary plans for demonstrating the instrumentation system in a relevant environment iii. Month 6: Phase I Final Report containing initial instrumentation system design and preliminary performance results Proposers interested in submitting a Direct to Phase II (DP2) proposal must provide documentation to substantiate that the scientific and technical merit and feasibility described above has been met and describes the potential commercial applications. Documentation should include all relevant information including, but not limited to: technical reports, test data, prototype designs/models, and performance goals/results. For detailed information on DP2 requirements and eligibility, please refer to section 4.2 and Appendix B of HR001119S0035. d. Phase II Complete development of the instrumentation system and perform ground and/or flight testing of the system. Focus should be on validation of the system in the harsh environments experienced by hypersonic vehicles, but other extreme environment applications may also be considered. Collect instrument performance data and demonstrate utility for hypersonic systems. Phase II deliverables will include a final report that contains the finished instrumentation system and demonstrations results. Phase II payable milestones for this SBO should include: i. Month 2: Technical and financial status update ii. Month 4: Technical and financial status update iii. Month 6: Report on final design of instrumentation system; technical and financial status update iv. Month 8: Technical and financial status update v. Month 10: Technical and financial status update vi. Month 12: Report on status of demonstrating the selected instrumentation system in a relevant environment; technical and financial status update vii. Month 16: Technical and financial status update viii. Month 18: Technical and financial status update ix. Month 20: Technical and financial status update x. Month 22: Technical and financial status update xi. Month 24: Phase II Final Report on finished instrumentation system; demonstrations results xii. Month 26: Option-period technical and financial status update xiii. Month 28: Option-period technical and financial status update xiv. Month 30: Option-period technical and financial status update xv. Month 32: Option-period technical and financial status update xvi. Month 34: Phase II Option Final Report e. Dual Use Applications (Phase III) An innovative sensing and instrumentation system may be an enabler of future supersonic and hypersonic commercial aircraft, enable reusable access to space, and enable the military to develop reusable hypersonic aircraft and expendable weapons.
Didn't think of that - even missile telemetry would be a problem at high dynamic pressures.
EDIT:
Was able to access further text - see below.
Interest vendors are locked but they're talking turbine based combined cycle.
Isn't that the Skunk Works design where the turbine is in the scramjet freeflow, up until the point the scramjet lights, and then the turbine retracts?
Hmmm - Rocketdyne - the door closes once the scramjet lights...
https://www.popularmechanics.com/mil...ic-jet-engine/
II. TOPIC OVERVIEW a. Objective Develop and validate performance of robust distributed instrumentation in air-platform extreme environments (combined thermal, mechanical, and acoustic loading). b. Description Turbine-based combined cycle (TBCC) vehicles will be flying in conditions that subject their propulsion systems to harsh environments not previously seen by reusable air vehicles. While they fly over narrower regimes, other single-use hypersonic vehicles experience many of the same harsh conditions experienced by TBCC vehicles. Even conventional aircraft may have areas of combined thermal, mechanical, and acoustic loading. For control systems in high-speed systems, the improvement in advanced instrumentation technologies are required to achieve the required performance and operability over the vehicle’s flight trajectory. This wide range of application environments necessitates extensive ground testing, which must also utilize advanced instrumentation technologies to characterize the performance and operability of the vehicles. At the same time, these instruments will need to be robust enough to survive repeated testing in simulated environments, and in operational environments on flight vehicles with low false-alarm rates. Physical understanding and modeling of representative environments is required to provide invaluable insight into the challenge of integrating these instruments into future applications. Sensing modalities addressing key phenomena, including aerodynamics, boundary layer transition, thermal protection system performance, ablative properties, material effects, and scramjet engine operation are desired. Improvements in instrumentation techniques could reduce uncertainty in ground and flight tests, increase safety, and improve design of future air platforms. Conventional instruments suffer from an inability to survive extreme environments and do not provide reliable, distributed data such as pressure, temperature, heat flux, shear, displacement, flow velocity, Mach, equivalence ratio, core flow properties, etc. Proper instrument types that are robust, reliable, have a low packing factor, and are easy to replace are vital to enabling next-generation air platforms and high-speed weapons. This topic seeks to address the above challenges through the construction of innovative distributed instrumentation applicable to high-speed testing and operations. This effort will culminate in a robust instrumentation system (e.g. sensor, wiring, signal processor) to advance testing capabilities and provide more effective decision-making data for both test and/or operational vehicles. The validation data that could be gathered by an instrumentation system resulting from this work would assist in effective operation of next-generation hypersonic vehicles. It is also expected that the instrumentation system developed by this effort will help to improve data gathering in any propulsion system experiencing high thermoacoustic loads (i.e., buried engines in subsonic and supersonic platforms). c. Phase I Develop a distributed instrumentation system design to meet hypersonic propulsion system requirements. Develop instrument design and fabrication techniques. Conduct system-level modeling and analysis and show improvements in propulsion and overall vehicle and/or test article performance. Develop plans for demonstrating the instrumentation system in a relevant environment. Designs capable of advancing hypersonic vehicle research are of particular interest, but designs that facilitate hypersonic research article testing are also desired. Phase I deliverables will include a final report that contains the initial instrumentation system design and preliminary performance results. Phase I payable milestones for this SBO should include: i. Month 2: Report on requirements for instrumentation system architectures, and potential instrumentation system architectures ii. Month 4: Report on acquisition/fabrication feasibility of potential instrumentation architectures; preliminary plans for demonstrating the instrumentation system in a relevant environment iii. Month 6: Phase I Final Report containing initial instrumentation system design and preliminary performance results Proposers interested in submitting a Direct to Phase II (DP2) proposal must provide documentation to substantiate that the scientific and technical merit and feasibility described above has been met and describes the potential commercial applications. Documentation should include all relevant information including, but not limited to: technical reports, test data, prototype designs/models, and performance goals/results. For detailed information on DP2 requirements and eligibility, please refer to section 4.2 and Appendix B of HR001119S0035. d. Phase II Complete development of the instrumentation system and perform ground and/or flight testing of the system. Focus should be on validation of the system in the harsh environments experienced by hypersonic vehicles, but other extreme environment applications may also be considered. Collect instrument performance data and demonstrate utility for hypersonic systems. Phase II deliverables will include a final report that contains the finished instrumentation system and demonstrations results. Phase II payable milestones for this SBO should include: i. Month 2: Technical and financial status update ii. Month 4: Technical and financial status update iii. Month 6: Report on final design of instrumentation system; technical and financial status update iv. Month 8: Technical and financial status update v. Month 10: Technical and financial status update vi. Month 12: Report on status of demonstrating the selected instrumentation system in a relevant environment; technical and financial status update vii. Month 16: Technical and financial status update viii. Month 18: Technical and financial status update ix. Month 20: Technical and financial status update x. Month 22: Technical and financial status update xi. Month 24: Phase II Final Report on finished instrumentation system; demonstrations results xii. Month 26: Option-period technical and financial status update xiii. Month 28: Option-period technical and financial status update xiv. Month 30: Option-period technical and financial status update xv. Month 32: Option-period technical and financial status update xvi. Month 34: Phase II Option Final Report e. Dual Use Applications (Phase III) An innovative sensing and instrumentation system may be an enabler of future supersonic and hypersonic commercial aircraft, enable reusable access to space, and enable the military to develop reusable hypersonic aircraft and expendable weapons.
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Hence my (somewhat) understated question mark!
10 million quid research funding? times that by a thousand and I may start to take the story seriously.
The future of Aerospace lies in joint collaboration , so I do wonder what the future holds as the good ship UK plans to set sail on it's own . Hopefully ESA , CERN and even a rethink on Galileo will figure in somebody's policy planning , that's if we even have people in charge who actually know what they are talking about .
"The future of Aerospace lies in joint collaboration"
TBH it's been like that since the mid-70's.................... go-it-alone programs are very scarce outside the USA & China, sucessful go-it-alone programs are even rarer
This sort of announcement is really to
a) get some funds
b) position yourself for the share of partnership talks
TBH it's been like that since the mid-70's.................... go-it-alone programs are very scarce outside the USA & China, sucessful go-it-alone programs are even rarer
This sort of announcement is really to
a) get some funds
b) position yourself for the share of partnership talks
https://www.reactionengines.co.uk/ne...ulsion-systems
The announcement might be PR but it's getting spent with RR and REL and will let them crunch the numbers to see if precoolers could enhance conventional jet engines (perhaps whatever engine the Tempest might use) and, I speculate, to work out what a hypersonic platform based on SABRE might be capable of. This is all based on existing work that's already happening. There have been long-range hypersonic aircraft studies like LAPCAT that have been done already with its SCIMITAR engine. There are multiple studies going on for 2 stage to orbit launchers which are based on combat aircraft-size aircraft first stage using the REL engine. I think this is just another fork in the tree of different applications that are being looked at for the smallest size-SABRE engine. So I don't think 100s of millions are needed at this point.
I forgot to mention that they are also studying a hypersonic business jet. It would be extremely expensive probably but you can imagine that such a development might provide a neat stepping stone to something with a military purpose. A government might not have to pay for the whole thing if it can breathe just enough life into it to get it to the point where there was useful commercial interest.
The Ministry of Defence intends to place a £10M contract to develop hypersonic propulsion systems for increased aircraft performance and capability.Defence Equipment and Support’s Technology Office intends to place a circa 2-year, single sourced contract, of approximate value £10M, for a UK programme to undertake design studies, research, development, analysis and experimentation relating to high-Mach advanced propulsion systems. The contract will be with Rolls-Royce Plc, (RR) and its technology partners, BAE Systems and Reaction Engines and will focus on enabling technologies for increased aircraft performance and capability.
I forgot to mention that they are also studying a hypersonic business jet. It would be extremely expensive probably but you can imagine that such a development might provide a neat stepping stone to something with a military purpose. A government might not have to pay for the whole thing if it can breathe just enough life into it to get it to the point where there was useful commercial interest.
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https://www.reactionengines.co.uk/ne...ulsion-systems
The announcement might be PR but it's getting spent with RR and REL and will let them crunch the numbers to see if precoolers could enhance conventional jet engines (perhaps whatever engine the Tempest might use) and, I speculate, to work out what a hypersonic platform based on SABRE might be capable of. This is all based on existing work that's already happening. There have been long-range hypersonic aircraft studies like LAPCAT that have been done already with its SCIMITAR engine. There are multiple studies going on for 2 stage to orbit launchers which are based on combat aircraft-size aircraft first stage using the REL engine. I think this is just another fork in the tree of different applications that are being looked at for the smallest size-SABRE engine. So I don't think 100s of millions are needed at this point.
I forgot to mention that they are also studying a hypersonic business jet. It would be extremely expensive probably but you can imagine that such a development might provide a neat stepping stone to something with a military purpose. A government might not have to pay for the whole thing if it can breathe just enough life into it to get it to the point where there was useful commercial interest.
The announcement might be PR but it's getting spent with RR and REL and will let them crunch the numbers to see if precoolers could enhance conventional jet engines (perhaps whatever engine the Tempest might use) and, I speculate, to work out what a hypersonic platform based on SABRE might be capable of. This is all based on existing work that's already happening. There have been long-range hypersonic aircraft studies like LAPCAT that have been done already with its SCIMITAR engine. There are multiple studies going on for 2 stage to orbit launchers which are based on combat aircraft-size aircraft first stage using the REL engine. I think this is just another fork in the tree of different applications that are being looked at for the smallest size-SABRE engine. So I don't think 100s of millions are needed at this point.
I forgot to mention that they are also studying a hypersonic business jet. It would be extremely expensive probably but you can imagine that such a development might provide a neat stepping stone to something with a military purpose. A government might not have to pay for the whole thing if it can breathe just enough life into it to get it to the point where there was useful commercial interest.
And please expand on how any hypersonic programme has been developed without direct government investment, research and involvement. It hasn’t. Not will it, too expensive, too much risk for
too little return commercially.
MoD central mind control/corporate comms shouldn’t be tarting a 10 million feasibility study up as investment In a hypersonic equipment programme in which case.
And please expand on how any hypersonic programme has been developed without direct government investment, research and involvement. It hasn’t. Not will it, too expensive, too much risk for
too little return commercially.
Anyhow to be fair they have had some government money anyhow and their project was born out of the ashes of Hotol. So it's really about pushing forward something that never got its chance. Is it worth it? Oh no, we should just sit back, wait for the Americans to invent it and then pay back their development costs by purchasing 1 or 1 1/2 if we can afford it, because as we know - there's no point investing in Engineers or science.
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