2 major science breakthroughsFollow

yay lasers! shrrrrrerrrrreerrrrZAP!

Yeah, but what about....umm....laser-powered cars!

Sounds like exactly what they used to tell both Hewlett and Packard. Those Wright guys with their "wing" monstrosity and let's not even talk about Edison with his "light bulb." I mean, that's never going to replace gas powered lights.


No, sounds exactly like what they used to tell Charles Redheffer. That didn't stop people from pouring a metric *** ton of money into his project, though.

I don't have a problem with funding research at all. I have a problem with funding USELESS research.

Let's say this thing works perfectly in ten years, which would in itself be a fuc[b][/b]king miracle. The problem is even if it you got it working perfectly it would cost about $4 per ICBM to retrofit them to defeat it.

It doesn't work. It's a bad idea. It's a bad CONCEPT. It's not a good concept that no one can think of a use for yet. It's bad all around.

It's a huge waste of money.

The first jet engine to run on a test stand quickly ran out of control and caught on fire. Causing much damage and a loss of precious wartime funds.
...Its a good thing they never bothered to try and build more stable jet engines. Its just a waste of time, money, and effort.

Who wants to fly across the atlantic in 4 hours anyway?
Steamships work just fine.
/sarcasm

In the case of a scramjet, the holy grail is to develop one engine that can go from zero to hypersonic speeds. similar to the sr-71 engines, only for even higher altitudes.

The end result will be faster air travel and cheaper space travel (unless youve got a better idea of how to get up there).

The only way to learn how is to build a few engines and test. In this case, the test is worth more than the model.
Having the plug exlode mid flight means nothing since all that data came home and we already knew how it was built.

Why waste money to recover it? its done what it was supposed do.

Later on, they will graduate to recoverable craft and eventually manned ships. But youve got to give em some time to do all that.

Yeah. That's the long term "holy grail". Honestly though, right now, they just want to see if they can make it work without losing control or having the motor fly apart.

It's not really that important to have a single "engine" that can go from zero to hypersonic, but having an "engine system" that can. As Kao said, the more likely and practical approach is to have intake baffles that shift from one engine mechanism to another mid flight. Trying to make a single engine that can manage both low altitude low speed travel, and high altitude super high speed travel is extremely hard. But if we can make small and efficient engines that can handle different parts, then we can fit them both onto an airframe and get a single craft that can do all of that. That's really the realistic short term goal.

Once that's done, then the final step is to get a third engine that can push into space (rocket of some kind presumably). 90% of the difficulty of getting into orbit is velocity, not necessarily altitude. That's why developing a practical scramjet has enormous space applications. If we can accelerate from normal jet speeds (1-2 mach), up to very high hypersonic speeds (10+ mach), and do it with minimal fuel cost (scram jet uses the air, so it's cheap), then we've got most of that velocity accomplished without having to carry tons of rocket fuel. The efficiency in cost and increase in payload potential using that mechanism is vast.

sweet. I just love lasers in general. kick *** totem.

Russia is already developing an ICBM that will be able to circumvent our missile defense system.



It's so easy to defeat it's ludicrous.

They possibly already have.

Hey! I don't have to be an aerospace engineer to understand that having 2 efficient engines and switching from one to the other will be easier to do then building one "uber engine" that does it all. I do watch the Discovery on occasion... ;)


Belive it or not, this one particular time I was just fuc[b][/b]king with you.

Yes, that is one of the primary reasons the Air Force is moving slowly away from human-on-board piloted aircraft. A remotely piloted or robotically controlled machine can withstand G-forces which would kill a person. And with the advent of hypersonic missles, reaction times are so small that it makes death a certainty if humans are at the controls.

Totem

Or we could use it to make lots of popcorn!


Didn't we learn anything from Real Genius?

Great movie. And this was just about the only post in this thread I understood. I r teh st00pid.

Val Kilmer