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.
All but about 4 or so. NASA has one or two for research and the AF kept a couple for special uses..................
Better plan to spend an entire day at W-P — including the Museum Annexes Believe me, it’s worth it!
There is also a 1967 A-12 at the Intrepid Museum in Manhattan, NYC right on the West Hudson River. You can walk right up to it.
https://www.intrepidmuseum.org/AircraftCollection
I got to see an SR-71 up close at an air show in SoCal (at the now defunct Norton AFB). Near the end of the show, it did a slow pass down the runway, lit the afterburners and was GONE! An awesome sight.......
Thanks. I'll do that.
When I was in the Air Force at Offutt we had an Air Show and one showed up.
We saw it take off the next day. After it rotated and lifted it’s wheels, it accelerated horizontally at about 200-300 feet until it got just past the end of the runway. Then it went vertical until it disappeared.
Consider that the SR-71 was designed 50 years ago, it is inconceivable that there hasn’t been a successor developed and flown in the last five decades.
Cool. That is quite the collections of planes at the Intrepid.
Was privileged to see a pre-dawn takeoff from the flight line near the T/O end of the runway. The climb was so rapid that the U-2 was up into the sunlight -- seemingly before it reached the other end of the runway!
Jaw-dropping -- until I saw a RB-57F takeoff...
I saw one this summer at the USS Alabama memorial. Reached up and touched it. Way cool.
I just want to know one question, Is the son a leaker like his dad. ;-)
Actually, it is understandable when you consider there is no longer a Clarence “Kelly” Johnson around to develop that successor.
This historical static display is located next to the Air Force Flight Test Museum at Edwards Air Force Base. Created by the USAF Museum Program, this park allows visitors close view of several aircraft and was officially dedicated on September 27th, 1991.
The remarkable stories of how these aircraft were developed are told in "Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed" by Ben R. Rich.
That looks more like a lifting body test vehicle. One that is strapped to a B52 and dropped from high altitude to test the flight dynamics.
Used to the lifting body used in the shuttle program flying into the Edwards recovery runway in the early 70s.
Of course not. That would cause more global warming................
Yes...and no.
There is only so much that can be done with aeronautics and material strengths and friction heat.
Make no mistake, the SR-71 was probably the most revolutionary plane ever built, INCLUDING the Wright Flyer.
all done without CAD programs, using slide rules.
The successors have been developed and flown. Their operating altitude is 200 miles, not 20 miles, and their speed is 18,000 mph, not 3,000 mph.
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