The 800,000 HP ramjet from the 60's

surprisingly found something interesting in the youtube comment section.

news.google.com...,393005

the engine takes in almost a ton of air a second

if they had this in the 60s who knows what they have now

Scramjets.

a reply to: Phage

Thanks Phage, I was wondering if ramjet was the same as scramjet.

I remember watching I think the footage you posted on the NASA channel live a several years ago.

So I guess they are not the same

I think I vaguely remember the university of Queensland successfully launching a scramjet over a decade ago. So whats the technical snag on getting it to work? I would have thought that at least ten years of research would have at least resulted in a commercial/military prototype.

a reply to: tinner07


They are similar in that they both lack the compressor stages, shaft, and turbine stages of gas-turbine engine. The main difference would be the speed of the airflow through the engine. Air in a ramjet is slowed to subsonic speed before combustion, where in a scramjet airflow throughout the engine is supersonic.

Technical snags include maintaining combustion in a supersonic airflow, cooling issues, and the somewhat limited range of practical applications for such an engine. Keep in mind with no compressor or turbine, this engine produces 0 thrust at rest, it needs to be traveling at Mach 4-5 before can even be turned on. NASA has created a working prototype( X-51A Waverider ), but it needed to be ferried up to altitude by a B-52, dropped then accelerated by a solid rocket booster to Mach 4.8 and ONLY then could the scramjet be engaged.