A small group of scientists is quietly bunkering down this week for potentially one the biggest developments in aerospace history.
An international consortium, led by University of Queensland researchers, is attempting a scientific and engineering miracle on October 25 at the Woomera Protected Area, 500km north of Adelaide.
The HyShot experiment involves the world’s first flight tests using supersonic combustion. UQ researchers already hold the record for being the first group reported in the open literature to “fly” a scramjet in a UQ ground test facility in 1993.
At the heart of the Australian space odyssey, it is hoped the experiments will validate information already captured in UQ`s T4 ground shock tunnel, one of the few facilities on earth capable of conducting ground based scramjet experiments for flight Mach numbers of the order of 7.6 or higher.
The results are eagerly anticipated by the international scientific community. Following a six-hour countdown, blastoff is scheduled for about 12 noon on October 25, all going well. A second flight is planned for October 30.
Scramjets are oxygen-breathing engines that work at hypersonic speeds, giving off water as the only by-product and only needing some hydrogen to run.
First proposed in the 1950s, they have never been tested in actual flight. The Australian tests will be very fast, at almost Mach 7.6, or 7.6 times the speed of sound. They will not be measured in kilometres per hour, but kilometres per second.
If the scramjet works in flight, it will be one of the major technological advances since Chuck Yaeger became the first person to break the sound barrier on October 14, 1947.
William Heiser and David Pratt in their classic textbook Hypersonic Airbreathing Propulsion (AEIAA, 1994) explained the significance of hypersonic airbreathing engines:
This remarkable capability will complete the work on aviation begun by the Wright brothers in 1903 by making possible flight at virtually any speed and altitude, including the astounding prospect of escaping the sensible atmosphere of the Earth and coasting into a nearby permanent orbit. Perhaps more importantly for society, this will complete the shrinking of the planet that began with the jet age...
While scramjets do raise the possibility of Sydney to London flights in two hours, they are set to revolutionise the launch of small space payloads, such as communications satellites, by substantially lowering costs. Scramjets are much lighter than conventional engines that produce the same power. They have the added benefit that they do not even have to carry most of their propellant as they use oxygen from the atmosphere.
The current high costs of space travel are the result of the difficulty of the first and most important step, that of leaving the surface of the Earth and achieving a stable orbit above the atmosphere. These costs will remain high while science depends on expendable rocket propulsion which has inherently low efficiency and requires multistaging, very large rockets and small payloads.
Science has stretched, squeezed, and liposuctioned to the absolute limit existing technologies, which may be phased out in the next 10 to 20 years, so the race is on for the next generation of space vehicles. The scramjet engine has the potential to offer the technological breakthrough which may revolutionise the situation, by using atmospheric oxygen compressed during the ascent.
The HyShot program will help underscore Australia’s position at the forefront of hypersonic technological research. If successful, it will open the door to a new way of flight testing.
The $1.5 million program is working within a small budget in international space terms. The program led by UQ’s Dr Allan Paull has resulted from three years of scrounging and cobbling together of scientific and engineering partnerships, and the goodwill of universities, governments and scientists in Australia, the U.K., the U.S., Germany, France, Korea and Japan. It may be a scroungejet, as well as a scramjet, but if nothing else, financial adversity has inspired ingenuity.
“Ours is a low cost alternative, and we’ve had to develop all sorts of ancillary equipment on the cheap. We’ve bought a lot of bits and pieces off the shelf from automotive shops such as glues and silastics at $2 to $3 a pot,” Dr Paull said.
According to Dr Paull, a feature of the flight tests is that they have been planned with scientific value and merit as their over-riding objectives, and are not intended to be influenced by political considerations or the need to protect commercial interests.
Dr Paull said for such a program to be actually initiated and led by a University team, rather than a government or commercial body was unique, and indicated the international standing of UQ’s Centre for Hypersonics.
In the U.S., NASA’s more complex Phase 1, Hyper-X, X-43A scramjet mission has different objectives, and is funded in the vicinity of $185 million. NASA’s first flight ended in mishap on June 2, but it has many more tests in the wings, so to speak. The HyShot program is not sure where funding for the next flights will come from, if further testing is needed.
The UQ HyShot team includes Dr Allan Paull (Project Leader), Dr Hans Alesi (Chief Engineer), Dr Susan Anderson (International Program Coordinator), PhD student Judy Odam (Software Design), masters student Myles Frost (ground testing), Neil Griffith, Rob Low, (Mechanical Workshop), Barry Allsop, and John Peters (Electrical Workshop). Dr Paull`s 73-year-old father Bert is also assisting with wiring problems on the project.
The Australian scramjet flights will be commanded by ARDU (Aircraft Research and Development Unit, Australian Defence) at Woomera. ARDU is providing the expertise to run the complex program as well as the personnel to operate equipment vital to the campaign’s success. In addition, DSCW (Defence Corporate Support, Woomera) who control the Woomera range, have also provided opportunities to liaise with Aboriginal and pastoral interests and have provided much needed support with information for using the range.
The HyShot project uses the expertise and financial support of consortium partners such as Astrotech Space Operations, DTI and GASL, QinetiQ, NASA Langley Research Center, The DSTO (Defence Science and Technology, Organisation), Seoul National University, the DLR (German Aerospace Center), NAL (National Aerospace lab. Japan), AFRL (Air Force Research Laboratory, USA), and Australian Space Research Institute (ASRI). Australian firms, Alesi Technologies, NQEA, AECA, Luxfer Australia. BAE Systems Australia assists by providing operational and logistic support.
Funding has also been secured from the Department of Industry, Science and Resources, the Australian Research Council and assistance and support from the UK Ministry of Defence. Engineers from Oxford University who contributed to the aerodynamic testing will join British Ministry of Defence and QinetiQ staff at the HyShot flights.
Media contacts: Peter McCutcheon telephone 07 3365 1088 or Jan King, UQ Communications, telephone 0438 320274.
Websites
Stories: www.uq.edu.au/news/hyshot
HyShot pix are available at: http://photos.cc.uq.edu.au/HYSHOT/
