"As an example, the proposed A2 hydrogen hypersonic airliner is bigger than an Airbus A380 superjumbo, yet it can carry barely a third as many passengers because it is mainly a vast cylindrical hydrogen tank"

So it's basically a hypersonic zeppelin? Hindenburg we go again...

Reformed Band Name!

Blew up because a static spark set fire to the fabric covering the airship. Though that is a matter of debate, and I guess the static spark could have set fire to the hydrogen cells themselves.

Airships are making a comeback, certainly they are more efficient and greener than a scramjet, which is a waste of damn time for commercial use. The ability to get a few rich f**ks from London to New York an hour or so quicker is hardly a goal worth pursuing. Ditto Branson and his useless spaceship program.

Still to cheap to admit defeat and hire the boys from Queensland University from down under in Oz to fix their stupid boffins copycat engines basic design flaws , assorted mistakes and errors in getting it to work correctly !

Anyway,

describing DAPRA as the "warboffinry bureau with deep pockets and a revolving door to the mad scientists' asylum" is sheer brilliance. Congrats, Mr. Page.

High Supersonic speed tunnels do not use fans as a more conventional low speed tunnel would. Instead they work on a pressure difference between a very high pressure vessel and a very low pressure vessel. As a result you tend to have a system that will have a run time of say up to a minute (about as long as the contraption worked, co-incidence?) rather than continuously. Essentially the faster you want a wind tunnel the shorter time it is going to run for.

On the missile front, that is not too far beyond the performance MDBA get out of the throttle able solid rocket motor fitted to the Meteor (see your local Wikipedia for more [probably inaccurate] details).

It didn't hit the enemy so it must have worked perfectly!

58 Seconds?

By Nick Palmer

Posted Thursday 7th February 2008 15:16 GMT

"The scramjet engine did not operate as expected and after approximately 58 seconds of flight, the vehicle impacted the ocean."

So...given the likely altitude at which the poor unsuspecting little blighter was released, is the "flight" in question akin to the "flight" demonstrated by a brick released from a block of flats...?

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This is very unlikely - 60 seconds is about what it would take to drop 1.5 miles. (Keep in mind that terminal velocity is about 120 MPH.) That is not very high.

Without knowing why it failed(telemetry and all that) there are really no conclusions to be drawn as yet. They really can't do this stage of the development of an engine like this on a test stand. This is they way the game is played. This is what R&D is like.

@george I would suggest you read a good book on Hypersonic Compression Ram Air jet engines and come back and rephrase your answer !

The main rocket booster appears to be of the same size and shape as that of a surplus Hercules Rocket Motor as was used in the now out of service AIM54C Phoenix missile which had a burn time of 90 seconds to reach a peak altitude of 90,000 ft and hit a Mach 5 terminal velocity !

Enough of this dumb and stupid lecture , I'll get my coat .

Fantastic work! Replace hydrogen with hydrocarbons... I think that's another nail in the myth of a hydrogen economy then ;-)

If we had that attitude, we wouldn't have subsonic airliners either. Or ships.

Stop being such a jealous tart.

Actually, Terminal velocity depends on several factors,including the speed of the connection to the mainframe and the typing skills of the operator...

On the serious side, streamlining an object does not increase its terminal velocity; not streamlining it may reduce it though.