Hypersonics and the Aviation Frontier

Aviation has grown through reliance upon engines, and three types have been important: the piston motor, turbojet, and rocket. Hypersonic technologies have made their largest contributions, not by adding the scramjet to this list, but by enhancing the value and usefulness of rockets. This happened when these technolo­gies solved the re-entry problem.

This problem addressed critical issues of the national interest, for it was essential to the success of Corona and of the return of film-carrying capsules from orbit. It also was a vital aspect of the development of strategic missiles. Still, if such weapons had proven to be technically infeasible, the superpowers would have fallen back on their long-range bombers. No such backup was available within the Corona program. During the mid-1960s the Lunar Orbiter Program used a high-resolution system for scanning photographic film, with the data being returned using telem­etry.88 But this arrangement had a rather slow data rate and was unsuitable for the demands of strategic reconnaissance.

Success in re-entry also undergirded the piloted space program. In 40 years of effort, this program has failed to find a role in the mainstream of technical activity akin to the importance of automated satellites in telecommunications. Still, piloted flight brought the unforgettable achievements of Apollo, which grow warmer in memory as the decades pass.

In a related area, the advent of thermal-protection methods led to the develop­ment of aircraft that burst all bounds on speed and altitude. These took form as the X-15 and the space shuttle. On the whole, though, this work has led to disappoint­ment. The Air Force had anticipated that airbreathing counterparts of the X-15, powered perhaps by ramjets, would come along in the relatively near future. This did not happen; the X-15 remains sui generis, a thing unto itself. In turn, the shuttle failed to compete effectively with expendable launch vehicles.

This conclusion remains valid in the wake of the highly publicized flights of SpaceShipOne, built by the independent inventor Burt Rutan. Rutan showed an uncanny talent for innovation in 1986, when his Voyager aircraft, piloted by his brother Dick and by Dicks former girlfriend Jeana Yeager, circled the world on a single load of fuel. This achievement had not even been imagined, for no science – fiction writer had envisioned such a nonstop flight around the world. What made it possible was the use of composites in construction. Indeed, Voyager was built at

Rutan’s firm of Scaled Composites.89 Such lightweight materials also found use in the construction of SpaceShipOne, which was assembled within that plant.

SpaceShipOne brought the prospect of routine commercial flights having the performance of the X-15. Built entirely as a privately funded venture, it used a simple rocket engine that burned rubber, with nitrous oxide as the oxidizer, and reached altitudes as high as 70 miles. A movable set of wings and tail booms, rotat­ing upward, provided stability in attitude during re-entry and kept the crafts nose pointing upward as well. The craft then glided to a landing.

There was no commercial follow-on to Voyager, but today there is serious inter­est in building commercial versions of SpaceShipOne that will take tourists on brief hops into space—and enable them to win astronauts’ wings in the process. Rich­ard Branson, founder of Virgin Airways, is currently sponsoring a new enterprise, Virgin Galactic, that aims to do just that. He has formed a partnership with Scaled, has sold more than 100 tickets at $200,000 each, and hopes for his first flight late in 2008.

And yet__ The top speed of SpaceShipOne was only 2,200 miles per hour, or

Mach 3-3. Rutans vehicle thus stands today as a brilliant exercise in rocketry and the design of reusable piloted spacecraft. But it is too slow to qualify as a project in hypersonics.90

Is that it, then? Following more than half a century of effort, does the re-entry problem stand as the single unambiguous contribution of hypersonics? Air Force historian Richard Hallion has written of a “hypersonic revolution,” but from this perspective, one may regard hypersonics less as an extension of aeronautics than as a branch of materials science, akin to metallurgy. Specialists in that field introduced superalloys that extended the temperature limits of jet engines, thereby enhanc­ing their range and fuel economy. Similarly, the hypersonics community developed lightweight thermal-protection systems that have found use even in exploring the planet Jupiter. Yet one does not speak of a “superalloy revolution,” and hypersonics has had similarly limited application.

There remains the issue of the continuing effort to develop the scramjet. This work has gone forward as part of an ongoing hope that better methods might be devised for ascent to orbit, corresponding perhaps to the jet airliners that drove their piston-driven counterparts to the boneyard. Access to space holds undeniable importance, and one may speak without challenge of a “satellite revolution” when we consider the vital role of such craft in a host of areas: weather forecasting, naviga­tion, tactical warfare, reconnaissance, as well as telecommunications. Yet low-cost access remains out of reach and hence continues to justify work on advanced tech­nologies, including scramjets.

Still, despite 40 years of effort, the scramjet continues to stand at two removes from importance. The first goal is simply to make it work, by demonstrating flight to orbit in a vehicle that uses such engines for propulsion. The X-30 was to fly in

this fashion, although present-day thinking leans more toward using it merely in an airbreathing first stage. But at least within the next decade the most that anyone hopes for is to accelerate a small test vehicle of the X-43 class.91

Yet even if a large launch vehicle indeed should fly using scramjets, it then will face a subsequent test, for it will have to win success in the face of competition from existing launchers. The history of aerospace shows several types of craft that indeed flew well but that failed in the market. The classic example was the dirigible, which was abandoned because it could not be made safe.92

The world still remembers the Hindenburg, but the problems ran deeper than the use of hydrogen. Even with nonflammable helium, such airships proved to be structurally weak. The U. S. Navy built three large ones—the Shenandoah, Akron, and Macon—and quickly lost them all in storms and severe weather. Nor has this problem been solved. Dirigibles might be attractive today as aerial cruise ships, offering unparalleled views of Caribbean islands, but the safety problem persists.

More recently the Concorde supersonic airliner flew with great style and panache but faltered due to its high costs. The Saturn V Moon rocket proved to be too large to justify continued production; it lacked payloads that demanded its heft. Piloted space flight raises its own questions. It too is very costly, and in the light of experi­ence with the shuttle, perhaps it too cannot be made completely safe.

Yet though scramjets face obstacles both in technology and in the market, they will continue to tantalize. Hallion writes that faith in a future for hypersonics “is akin to belief in the Second Coming: one knows and trusts that it will occur, but one can’t be certain when.” Scramjet advocates will continue to echo the defiant words of Eugen Sanger: “Nevertheless, my silver birds will fly!”93

[1]Official flight records are certified by the Federation Aeronautique Internationale. The cited accomplishments lacked this distinction, but they nevertheless represented genuine achievements.