Posted on 01/12/2018 11:43:02 AM PST by Red Badger
Boeing showed off a scaled concept model of its hypersonic strike and reconnaissance aircraft design.
This week Boeing revealed the first design details of a demonstrator aircraft that would go faster than Mach 5. Boeing hopes to build the hypersonic concept around a combined-cycle engine that incorporates elements of a turbine and a dual ramjet/scramjet. The unveiling came at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics SciTech forum in Orlando, Florida, as reported by Aviation Week Aerospace Daily.
Boeing's model design is similar to one Lockheed Martin is working on. The aerospace industry right now is racing to produce a hypersonic strike and reconnaissance aircraft to replace the famed SR-71 Blackbird.
The design is an early concept that's not yet approved by Boeing for full-scale development. But the model, which shows a twin-tail, highly swept delta wing configuration, represents a feasible hypersonic design, Boeing's head of hypersonic research told Aviation Week Aerospace Daily:
“We asked, ‘What is the most affordable way to do a reusable hypersonic demonstrator vehicle?’ And we did our own independent research looking at this question,” says Kevin Bowcutt, Boeing chief scientist for hypersonics. If the concept is selected for full-scale development, Boeing envisions a two-step process beginning with flight tests of an F-16-sized, single-engine proof-of-concept precursor vehicle leading to a twin-engine, full-scale operational vehicle with about the same dimensions as the 107-ft.-long SR-71.
Boeing will expand on research from its past X-43 and X-51 Waverider experimental aircraft, which were tests of unmanned hypersonic planes, as the company refines a new aircraft design. The X-51 broke the record for sustained air-breathing hypersonic flight when it flew at Mach 5.1 for three and a half minutes before running out of fuel and crashing into the Pacific Ocean on May 1, 2013.
The big difference is that the X-51 was a small test vehicle dropped from a B-52 Stratofortress. It used a rocket booster to achieve Mach 4.8, then jettisoned the booster and used a scramjet to top Mach 5. A hypersonic replacement for the SR-71 would need to take off under its own power, accelerate through Mach 1 and up to above Mach 5, and then slow back down and land, a much more difficult challenge.
To tackle this problem, Boeing and Lockheed Martin are studying turbine-based combined cycle (TBCC) engines along with Orbital ATK and Aerojet Rocketdyne, respectively. A TBCC engine would use a conventional turbojet to achieve speeds up to about Mach 3, the limit for a turbojet, and then transition to a dual ramjet/scramjet, which must be traveling at speeds over Mach 3 to work properly, compressing air from the intake to achieve combustion without an axial compressor. The ramjet/scramjet would then carry an aircraft to speeds over Mach 5. The plane would need to transition back to to the turbojet to slow down and land.
Boeing's project for a "son-of-Blackbird" hypersonic strike and reconnaissance aircraft is in its very early days. Meanwhile, a demonstrator for Lockheed Martin's design was possibly spotted in Palmdale, California, near the Air Force plant where Lockheed's Skunk Works operates. Work on a TBCC engine, funded under DARPA's Advanced Full Range Engine (AFRE) program as well as by NASA and the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, is also still in the early stages.
It is difficult to put a timeline on the research or the potential flight tests, though Lockheed reportedly hopes to fly a single-engine scaled demonstrator known as the flight research vehicle (FRV) in the 2020s. One has to imagine Boeing wants to match Lockheed Martin's development schedule, if not surpass it.
It dawned on me who bought Sikorsky, Lockheed. So is this part of Pratt West Palm that Sikorsky had, because I knew they did stuff down their and now it is a RSC facility / sort of a branch of the Skunkworks?
What an interesting observation! I presume you are a woman and truly perplexed by this phenomenon. I'm a 68 year old man fart, and think this bears some soul searching.
The war-birds of WWII, the SR-71, a Saturn V rocket, and similar things stir deep feelings in me. These are powerful objects, almost religious artifacts. They are beautiful in form, they changed history, and were the products of man's imagination. They bring out feelings of pride, and even jealousy for those who made them and flew them. To touch one seems to allow me some share in their creation and their flights of power and freedom. These are machines that somehow touch a man's soul. Touching them seems like the natural thing to do.
Hey, you guys out there, what do you think about this?
It was the first time his wife went to the show. He was a nice man.
That looks like the old Aurora. What is it? About 20 years old now?
SR71 had Pratt and Whitney J-58s
XB-70 had General Electric J-93s
Old guy’s memory. Thank you for the refresher. Both damn big jet engines.
Well I wasn't thinking about global warming, maybe I'm missing a joke.
Anyway I don't know if you knew, the SR-71 leaked fuel(JP-7) like crazy, they would put big pans like cookie pans underneath when it came back from a mission to catch the special fuel it hadn't used in flight, that is why sometimes when it came back from a mission it would fly around the bases a couple times to use up as much of the fuel it could before landing.
When it took off, they would only fill it up enough to get if off the ground, and then they would refuel it in mid air with a Specialized KC-135Q tankers that were modified to fly faster then normal for refueling, and the SR-71 would slow down to almost stall speed to refuel.
When it flew fast the titanium skin would expand and seal up the leaks. But every flight they would have to calculate how much they needed for refueling, etc. and that is all they would use in the mission. The JP-7 fuel had a high flash point so they didn't have to worry about some one smoking etc. and setting it on fire.
The YF-12 was an interceptor version. It was called the YF-12 to hide the still secret A-12 program.
The nose was modified with the chines trimmed back to allow fitting a radome, had a second seat (A-12 was single seat), and the camera bays were converted to carry missiles.
There were 3 made before the program was cancelled.
The sole remaining YF-12 is at the AF museum at Wright-Patterson AFB
They had different engines.
The SR-71 had P&W J-58’s while the YB-70 had GE YJ-93’s
Yeah, these were mostly RB-57B’s with a couple of C’s. Spent almost a year in the early 70’s at Otis AFB, MA doing a IRAN on them. Never got to work on the D’s (106ft wings, J-57’s) or the F’s (122 ft wings, TF33’s)
The group of B’s we were working on had a bad habit of flying along and the entire tail assembly would just fall off. Ruins your whole day. So we were magafluxing and reinforcing everything.
I remember there was a big round screen displaying a moving map in the back seat.
I don't think they have an annexes or annex anymore, they did when i was stationed their in the 80's. Back then they had two rolls of hangers, now the have 5 rolls of hangers now so they really don't have to have the annexes anymore. In my opinion best to goto the back set of hangers first and work backwards in history, there is just too much to see in the first couple hangers that are WWI and WWII that sort of stuff, depending on what a person is interested then that is where they should start their tour.
WE had the F-16 engine JPL (Jet Jropulsion Lab) across the flightline that tested engines almost every morning at around 3am..
I guess they wanted to make sure that all of us knew they were still awake :p
**Propulsion**
Hey, if I have to be awake on this midshift, EVERYBODY has to be awake for this midshift! :-)
There are quite a few great military museums.
The Naval Aviation one in Pensacola FL is good.
The Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville AL.
National Infantry museum at Ft Benning (soon to be joined by the Armor and Cavalry museum in a few years 2020-2025) in the meantime nearby Patton Park is cool.
The National Museum of the U.S. Army @ Ft Belvoir should be open in two years.
The Field Artillery museum at Ft Sill is nice (they have expanded since I was there 20 some years ago).
The Airborne museum at Ft Bragg is also nice
Te Scramp is launched when the SR75 reaches a speed of 3,000 mph.At that ponint at about 80,000 feet it goes into near space at around mach 15 and can launch packages like sattelites.
Ever wonder why the Cape Canaveral area was discontinued its really not needed any more,with the 74 75 and TR 3B who needs antiquated take your mind off the real deal diversions anymore.
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One can only image The TR3B is a really wild ride. its basically the "airbus" from the earth to the moon to mars.In the early 90's we had just a few today we have over a dozen.ITs responsible for many sightings all over the earth.
Here's some more from the link.
The tactical reconnaissance TR-3B's first operational flight was in the early 90s. Technology assuredly developed from reverse engineering of recovered alien artifacts and programs such as the SR-74 and SR-75 was used in the TR-3B. At least three of the billion dollar plus TR-3Bs were flying by 1994.
The TR-3B vehicle's outer coating is reactive to electrical stimulation and can change color, reflectiveness, and radar absorptiveness, thus making the vehicle look like a small aircraft or a flying cylinder--or even tricking radar receivers into falsely detecting a variety of aircraft, no aircraft, or several aircraft at various locations.
A circular, plasma filled accelerator ring called the "Magnetic Field Disrupter" surrounds the rotatable crew compartment and is far ahead of any imaginable technology. Sandia and Livermore laboratories developed the reverse engineered MFD technology. The government will go to any lengths to protect this technology.
The MFD generates a magnetic vortex field that disrupts or neutralizes the effects of gravity on mass within proximity by 89 percent. This is not antigravity. Anti-gravity provides a repulsive force that can be used for propulsion. The MFD creates a disruption of the Earth's gravitational field upon the mass within the circular accelerator.
The mass of the circular accelerator, and all mass within the accelerator, such as the crew capsule and the nuclear reactor, are reduced by almost 90%. This causes the effect of making a vehicle extremely light and able to outperform and outmaneuver any craft yet constructed--except, of course, those UFOs we did not build. The TR-3 is a reconnaissance platform with an indefinite loiter time. "Indefinite" because it uses a nuclear reactor for power.
Many sightings of triangular UFOs are not alien vehicles but the ultra top secret TR-3B. The NSA, NRO, CIA, and USAF have been playing a shell game with aircraft nomenclature - creating the TR-3, modified to the TR-3A, the TR-3B, and the Teir 2, 3, and 4, with suffixes like 'Plus' or 'Minus' added on to further confuse the fact that each of these designators is a different aircraft and not the same aerospace vehicle. A TR-3B is as different from a Teir 3B as a banana is from a grape. Some of these vehicles are manned and others are unmanned.
The TR-3B's propulsion is provided by three multimode thrusters mounted at each bottom corner of the triangular platform. The TR-3 is a sub-Mach 9 vehicle until it reaches altitudes above 100,000 feet--then God knows how fast it can go!
Beatles still rock!!
All I can think of is the comedian who impersonated Jimmy Stewart singing “Blackbird”, it was hilarious.
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