1.
Hypersonic speed
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In aerodynamics, a hypersonic speed is one that is highly supersonic. Since the 1970s, the term has generally assumed to refer to speeds of Mach 5. The hypersonic regime is often defined as speeds where ramjets do not produce net thrust. The peculiarity in hypersonic flows are as follows, Shock layer Aerodynamic heating Entropy layer Real gas effects Low density effects Independence of aerodynamic coefficients with Mach number. As a bodys Mach number increases, the density behind a bow shock generated by the body also increases, consequently, the distance between the bow shock and the body decreases at higher Mach numbers. As Mach numbers increase, the change across the shock also increases. A portion of the kinetic energy associated with flow at high Mach numbers transforms into internal energy in the fluid due to viscous effects. The increase in energy is realized as an increase in temperature. This causes the bottom of the layer to expand, so that the boundary layer over the body grows thicker. Although subsonic and supersonic usually refer to speeds below and above the speed of sound respectively. Generally, NASA defines high hypersonic as any Mach number from 10 to 25, among the aircraft operating in this regime are the Space Shuttle and various developing spaceplanes. In the following table, the regimes or ranges of Mach values are referenced instead of the meanings of subsonic and supersonic. The categorization of airflow relies on a number of similarity parameters, for transonic and compressible flow, the Mach and Reynolds numbers alone allow good categorization of many flow cases. Hypersonic flows, however, require other similarity parameters, first, the analytic equations for the oblique shock angle become nearly independent of Mach number at high Mach numbers. Second, the formation of strong shocks around aerodynamic bodies means that the freestream Reynolds number is useful as an estimate of the behavior of the boundary layer over a body. Finally, the temperature of hypersonic flows mean that real gas effects become important. For this reason, research in hypersonics is often referred to as aerothermodynamics, the introduction of real gas effects means that more variables are required to describe the full state of a gas. This means that for a flow, something between 10 and 100 variables may be required to describe the state of the gas at any given time
2.
Unmanned aerial vehicle
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An unmanned aerial vehicle, commonly known as a drone, is an aircraft without a human pilot aboard. UAVs are a component of an unmanned aircraft system, which include a UAV, a controller. The flight of UAVs may operate with various degrees of autonomy, either under control by a human operator, or fully or intermittently autonomously. Compared to manned aircraft, UAVs are often preferred for missions too dull, civilian drones now vastly outnumber military drones, with estimates of over a million sold by 2015. Multiple terms are used for unmanned vehicles, which generally refer to the same concept. The term drone, more used by the public, was coined in reference to the resemblance of navigation. The term has encountered opposition from aviation professionals and government regulators. This term emphasizes the importance of other than the aircraft. It includes elements such as ground stations, data links. A similar term is a vehicle system remotely piloted aerial vehicle. Many similar terms are in use, therefore, missiles are not considered UAVs because the vehicle itself is a weapon that is not reused, though it is also unmanned and in some cases remotely guided. The relation of UAVs to remote controlled model aircraft is unclear, UAVs may or may not include model aircraft. Some jurisdictions base their definition on size or weight, however, a radio-controlled aircraft becomes a drone with the addition of an autopilot artificial intelligence, and ceases to be a drone when an AI is removed. In 1849 Austria sent unmanned, bomb-filled balloons to attack Venice, UAV innovations started in the early 1900s and originally focused on providing practice targets for training military personnel. UAV development continued during World War I, when the Dayton-Wright Airplane Company invented a pilotless aerial torpedo that would explode at a preset time, the earliest attempt at a powered UAV was A. M. Lows Aerial Target in 1916. Nikola Tesla described a fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles in 1915. Advances followed during and after World War I, including the Hewitt-Sperry Automatic Airplane, the first scaled remote piloted vehicle was developed by film star and model-airplane enthusiast Reginald Denny in 1935. More emerged during World War II – used both to train gunners and to fly attack missions
3.
Brazil
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Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. As the worlds fifth-largest country by area and population, it is the largest country to have Portuguese as an official language. Its Amazon River basin includes a vast tropical forest, home to wildlife, a variety of ecological systems. This unique environmental heritage makes Brazil one of 17 megadiverse countries, Brazil was inhabited by numerous tribal nations prior to the landing in 1500 of explorer Pedro Álvares Cabral, who claimed the area for the Portuguese Empire. Brazil remained a Portuguese colony until 1808, when the capital of the empire was transferred from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro, in 1815, the colony was elevated to the rank of kingdom upon the formation of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves. Independence was achieved in 1822 with the creation of the Empire of Brazil, a state governed under a constitutional monarchy. The ratification of the first constitution in 1824 led to the formation of a bicameral legislature, the country became a presidential republic in 1889 following a military coup détat. An authoritarian military junta came to power in 1964 and ruled until 1985, Brazils current constitution, formulated in 1988, defines it as a democratic federal republic. The federation is composed of the union of the Federal District, the 26 states, Brazils economy is the worlds ninth-largest by nominal GDP and seventh-largest by GDP as of 2015. A member of the BRICS group, Brazil until 2010 had one of the worlds fastest growing economies, with its economic reforms giving the country new international recognition. Brazils national development bank plays an important role for the economic growth. Brazil is a member of the United Nations, the G20, BRICS, Unasul, Mercosul, Organization of American States, Organization of Ibero-American States, CPLP. Brazil is a power in Latin America and a middle power in international affairs. One of the worlds major breadbaskets, Brazil has been the largest producer of coffee for the last 150 years and it is likely that the word Brazil comes from the Portuguese word for brazilwood, a tree that once grew plentifully along the Brazilian coast. In Portuguese, brazilwood is called pau-brasil, with the word brasil commonly given the etymology red like an ember, formed from Latin brasa and the suffix -il. As brazilwood produces a red dye, it was highly valued by the European cloth industry and was the earliest commercially exploited product from Brazil. The popular appellation eclipsed and eventually supplanted the official Portuguese name, early sailors sometimes also called it the Land of Parrots. In the Guarani language, a language of Paraguay, Brazil is called Pindorama
4.
Brazilian Air Force
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The Brazilian Air Force is the air branch of the Brazilian Armed Forces and one of the three national uniformed services. The FAB was formed when the Army and Navy air branch were merged into a military force initially called National Air Forces in 1941. Both air branches transferred their equipment, installations and personnel to the new force, the Brazilian Air Force is the largest air force in the Southern hemisphere and the second largest in the Americas after the United States Air Force. Together with these events the Brazilian strategists were also influenced by the theories of Giulio Douhet, Billy Mitchell and Hugh Montague Trenchard. The first public manifest to create a military air service came up in 1928 when an army Major called Lysias Rodrigues wrote an article called An urgent need. Two years later the French Military Mission, working for the Brazilian Army, the idea got more support when a group of Brazilian airmen came from Italy in 1934 and explained the advantages of having a military aviation unified. Also, the Spanish Revolution and the first movements of World War II at the end of the thirties showed the importance of Air power for military strategies, one of the main supporters of the plan to create an independent air arm was the then-president Getúlio Vargas. He organized a study group early in 1940 and the structure of the Ministry of Aeronautics was established the end of that year. This new governmental agency was responsible for the all aspects of the civil and military aviation including infrastructure, formally, the Ministry of Aeronautics was founded on January 20,1941 and so its military branch called National Air Forces, changed to Brazilian Air Force on May,22. The Army and Navy air branches were extinguished and all personnel, aircraft, installations, the Brazilian Air force made important contributions to the Allied war effort in World War II, especially as part of the Brazilian Expeditionary Force on the Italian front. From mid-1942 until the end of the war, the FAB also patrolled the Atlantic, on 31 July 1943 it claimed the German submarine U-199, which was located on the surface, off Rio de Janeiro, at 23°54′S 42°54′W. Two Brazilian aircraft, a PBY Catalina and a Lockheed Hudson, the Catalina, named Ärará, was captained by 2º Ten. -Av. Alberto M. Torres, and hit U-199 with depth charges, forty-nine of the crew were killed, although twelve Germans managed to escape, including the captain. This was possible due to the Catalina’s crew, who threw a lifeboat to the survivors, 1º Grupo de Aviação de Caça, which saw action in Italy, was formed on December 18,1943. The group had 350 men, including 43 pilots, the group was divided into four flights, Red, Yellow, Blue, and Green. The CO of the group and some officers were not attached to any specific flight, unlike the BEFs Army component, the 1º GAVCA had personnel who were experienced Brazilian Air Force pilots. One of them was Alberto M. Torres, who had piloted a PBY Catalina that had sunk U-199, the group trained for combat in Panama, where 2º Ten. -Av. Dante Isidoro Gastaldoni was killed in a training accident, on May 11,1944, the group was declared operational and became active in the air defense of the Panama Canal Zone
5.
Santos-Dumont 14-bis
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The 14-bis, also known as Oiseau de proie, was a pioneer era canard biplane designed and built by Brazilian aviation pioneer Alberto Santos-Dumont. In 1906 near Paris the 14-bis made a powered flight that was the first to be publicly witnessed by a crowd. In June 1905 Gabriel Voisin flew a glider which was towed by a fast boat on the River Seine, the gliders wing and tail were made up of Hargrave cells, a box kite-like structure that provided a degree of inherent stability. This established the Hargrave cell as a configuration not only for kites. These included the Coupe Ernest Archdeacon prize of a trophy and 1500 francs for the first flight of 25 m. Accordingly, Santos-Dumont had a Hargrave-cell biplane powered by an Antoinette engine, the wings, each made up of three cells, were at the back and configured with pronounced dihedral to make the aircraft laterally stable. A movable boxkite-style cell at the nose, pivoted on a universal joint within it and controlled by cables was intended for yaw and this layout would later come to be called a canard configuration. It was constructed from bamboo and pine joined by aluminium sockets and was covered with Japanese silk, the first trials of the aircraft were made at Santos-Dumonts grounds on 22 July 1906 at Neuilly, where it had been assembled. In order to flight conditions, Santos-Dumont attached the aircraft under his latest non-rigid airship. Due to this, the aircraft came to be known as the 14-bis, the aircraft was then transported to the grounds of the Château de Bagatelle in the Bois de Boulogne, where there was more space. The forces imposed by the aircraft pulled dangerously at the envelope, nearly tearing it. Trials resumed on 4 September without great success, and on 7 September after the propeller was damaged a new larger one was fitted. On 13 September 1906 Aéro-Club de France observers gathered to witness an attempt to make a prize-winning flight, the aircraft failed to take off during a first attempt, but during the second it lifted and flew between 4 and 7 metres at an altitude of about 70 cm. The aircraft then landed in an attitude, breaking the propeller. This brief flight did not qualify for any prize, but earned Santos-Dumont an ovation from the crowd, on 23 October, after a series of engine tests and high-speed ground runs, Santos-Dumont made a flight of over 50 m at an altitude of 3–5 m. This earned Santos-Dumont the first of the prizes,3,000 francs for a flight of 25 m or more. This landing damaged the aircraft slightly and it required more repairs, the 14-bis was repaired, and octagonal ailerons were added to the middle of each outermost wing cell, with the surfaces pivoting between the outermost forward struts. The ailerons were operated by cables attached to the shoulders of the pilots flightsuit, on the morning of 12 November 1906 the aviation community of France assembled at the Chateau de Bagatelles grounds to witness Santos Dumonts next attempt
6.
Alberto Santos-Dumont
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Alberto Santos-Dumont was a Brazilian aviation pioneer, one of the very few people to have contributed significantly to the development of both lighter-than-air and heavier-than-air aircraft. The heir of a family of coffee producers, Santos-Dumont dedicated himself to aeronautical study and experimentation in Paris. His conviction that aviation would usher in an era of peace and prosperity led him to freely publish his designs. Santos-Dumont is a hero in Brazil, where it is popularly held that he preceded the Wright brothers in demonstrating a practical airplane. Countless roads, plazas, schools, monuments, and airports in Brazil are dedicated to him and he was a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters from 1931 until his suicide in 1932. Santos-Dumont was born on 20 July 1873 in Cabangu in the Brazilian town of Palmira in the state of Minas Gerais in southeast Brazil and he was youngest of the seven children born to Henrique Dumont, an engineer of French descent, and Francisca de Paula Santos. Santos-Dumonts father managed a plantation on land owned by his wifes family. His extensive use of labor-saving inventions earned him a fortune, Santos-Dumont was fascinated by machinery, and while still a child he learned to drive the plantations steam tractors and locomotives. He also read a great deal of the works of Jules Verne and he wrote in his autobiography that the dream of flying came to him while contemplating the magnificent skies of Brazil from the plantation. In 1891 Santos-Dumonts father was paralyzed by a fall from a horse. He sold the plantation and went to Europe with his wife, in Paris, Santos-Dumont contacted a balloonist with the intention of making an ascent. The price quoted was 1,200 francs for a flight, plus payment for any damage caused. This was a sum of money, and Santos-Dumont decided not to make the flight. If it is bad the money will be lost, If it is good I shall want to repeat it and I shall not have the means. After this he bought a Peugeot automobile, which he took him when he returned to Brazil with his parents at the end of the year. In 1892 the family returned to Europe, but Henriques felt too ill to continue on to Paris from Lisbon and his fathers health deteriorated and he decided to return to Brazil, where he died on 30 August 1892. For the next four years Alberto lived in Paris, studying physics, chemistry, mechanics, and electricity with the help of a private tutor, during this period he sold his Peugeot, replacing it with a more powerful and faster De Dion motor-tricycle. In 1896 he returned to Brazil for a period, but began to miss Paris
7.
Scramjet
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A scramjet is a variant of a ramjet airbreathing jet engine in which combustion takes place in supersonic airflow. This allows the scramjet to operate efficiently at high speeds. During World War II, an amount of time and effort were put into researching high-speed jet- and rocket-powered aircraft. Except for specialized rocket research vehicles like the North American X-15 and other rocket-powered spacecraft, aircraft top speeds have remained level, in the 1950s and 1960s a variety of experimental scramjet engines were built and ground tested in the US and the UK. In 1958, an analytical paper discussed the merits and disadvantages of supersonic combustion ramjets, in 1964, Drs. Frederick S. Billig and Gordon L. Dugger submitted a patent application for a supersonic combustion ramjet based on Billig’s Ph. D. thesis. This patent was issued in 1981 following the removal of an order of secrecy, in 1981 tests were made in Australia under the guidance of Professor Ray Stalker in the T3 ground test facility at ANU. The first successful flight test of a Scramjet was performed by Russia in 1991 and it was an axisymmetric hydrogen-fueled dual-mode scramjet developed by Central Institute of Aviation Motors, Moscow in the late 1970s. The scramjet flight was flown captive-carry atop the SA-5 surface-to-air missile that included an experiment flight support unit known as the Hypersonic Flying Laboratory, Kholod. Then from 1992 to 1998 an additional 6 flight tests of the axisymmetric high-speed scramjet-demonstrator were conducted by CIAM together with France, maximum flight velocity greater than Mach 6.4 was achieved and Scramjet operation during 77 seconds was demonstrated. These flight test series also provided insight into autonomous hypersonic flight controls, in the 2000s, significant progress was made in the development of hypersonic technology, particularly in the field of scramjet engines. The HyShot project demonstrated scramjet combustion on July 30,2002, the scramjet engine worked effectively and demonstrated supersonic combustion in action. However, the engine was not designed to provide thrust to propel a craft and it was designed more or less as a technology demonstrator. A joint British and Australian team from UK defense company QinetiQ, a series of scramjet ground tests was completed at NASA Langley Arc-Heated Scramjet Test Facility at simulated Mach 8 flight conditions. These experiments were used to support HIFiRE flight 2, on May 22,2009, Woomera hosted the first successful test flight of a hypersonic aircraft in HIFiRE. The launch was one of 10 planned test flights, on 22 and 23 March 2010, Australian and American defense scientists successfully tested a hypersonic rocket. It reached a velocity of more than 5,000 kilometres per hour after taking off from the Woomera Test Range in outback South Australia. On May 27,2010, NASA and the United States Air Force successfully flew the X-51A Waverider for approximately 200 seconds at Mach 5, the Waverider flew autonomously before losing acceleration for an unknown reason and destroying itself as planned. The test was declared a success, the X-51A was carried aboard a B-52, accelerated to Mach 4.5 via a solid rocket booster, and then ignited the Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne scramjet engine to reach Mach 5 at 70,000 feet
8.
Fuselage
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The fuselage is an aircrafts main body section. It holds crew, passengers, and cargo, the fuselage also serves to position control and stabilization surfaces in specific relationships to lifting surfaces, which is required for aircraft stability and maneuverability. This type of structure is still in use in lightweight aircraft using welded steel tube trusses. A box truss fuselage structure can also be out of wood—often covered with plywood. Simple box structures may be rounded by the addition of supported lightweight stringers, allowing the fabric covering to form an aerodynamic shape. Geodesic structural elements were used by Barnes Wallis for British Vickers between the wars and into World War II to form the whole of the fuselage, including its aerodynamic shape. In this type of construction multiple flat strip stringers are wound about the formers in opposite spiral directions and this proved to be light, strong, and rigid and had the advantage of being made almost entirely of wood. A similar construction using aluminum alloy was used in the Vickers Warwick with less materials than would be required for other structural types, the geodesic structure is also redundant and so can survive localized damage without catastrophic failure. A fabric covering over the completed the aerodynamic shell. The logical evolution of this is the creation of fuselages using molded plywood, in this method, the exterior surface of the fuselage is also the primary structure. A typical early form of this was built using molded plywood, a later form of this structure uses fiberglass cloth impregnated with polyester or epoxy resin, instead of plywood, as the skin. An example of a larger molded plywood aircraft is the de Havilland Mosquito fighter/light bomber of World War II, no plywood-skin fuselage is truly monocoque, since stiffening elements are incorporated into the structure to carry concentrated loads that would otherwise buckle the thin skin. The use of molded fiberglass using negative molds is prevalent in the production of many modern sailplanes. The use of molded composites for fuselage structures is being extended to large aircraft such as the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. This is the method of constructing an all-aluminum fuselage. First, a series of frames in the shape of the cross sections are held in position on a rigid fixture. These frames are then joined with lightweight longitudinal elements called stringers and these are in turn covered with a skin of sheet aluminum, attached by riveting or by bonding with special adhesives. The fixture is then disassembled and removed from the fuselage shell, which is then fitted out with wiring, controls
9.
Waverider
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To date the only manned aircraft to use the technique was the Mach 3 supersonic XB-70 Valkyrie. The waverider remains a well-studied design for high-speed aircraft in the Mach 5 and higher hypersonic regime, the Boeing X-51A scramjet demonstration aircraft was tested from 2010 to 2013. In its final test flight, it reached a speed of to Mach 5.1, the waverider design concept was first developed by Terence Nonweiler of the Queens University of Belfast, and first described in print in 1951 as a re-entry vehicle. It consisted of a platform with a low wing loading to provide considerable surface area to dump the heat of re-entry. At the time, Nonweiler was forced to use a greatly simplified 2D model of airflow around the aircraft, in the 1950s, the British started a space program based around the Blue Streak missile, which was, at some point, to include a manned vehicle. Armstrong-Whitworth were contracted to develop the vehicle, and unlike the U. S. space program they decided to stick with a winged vehicle instead of a ballistic capsule. Between 1957 and 1959, they contracted Nonweiler to develop his concepts further and this work produced a pyramid-shaped design with a flat underside and short wings. Heat was conducted through the wings to the cool surfaces. In 1960, work on the Blue Streak was canceled as the missile was seen as being obsolete before it could have entered service, work then moved to the Royal Aircraft Establishment, where it continued as a research program into high-speed civilian airliners. This work was discovered by engineers at North American Aviation during the design studies of what would lead to the XB-70 bomber. While working on concepts, he noticed that it was possible to shape the wing in such a way that the shock wave generated off its leading edge would form a horizontal sheet under the craft. In this case, the airflow would not only be trapped horizontally, spanwise, the only area the air above the shock wave could escape would be out the back of the sheet where the fuselage ended. Since the air was trapped between this sheet and the fuselage, a volume of air would be trapped, much more than the more basic approach he first developed. Furthermore, since the surface was held at a distance from the craft, shock heating was limited to the leading edges of the wings. In 1962 Nonweiler moved to Glasgow University to become Professor of Aerodynamics and that year his Delta Wings of Shapes Amenable to Exact Shock-Wave Theory was published by the Journal of the Royal Aeronautical Society, and earned him that societys Gold Medal. A craft generated using this model looks like a wing that has been broken down the center. From the rear it looks like an upside-down V, or alternately, the caret, ^, two to three years later the concept briefly came into the public eye, due to the airliner work at the RAE that led to the prospect of reaching Australia in 90 minutes. Newspaper articles led to an appearance on Scottish Television, hawker Siddeley examined the caret wing waverider in the later 1960s as a part of a three-stage lunar rocket design
10.
Wingspan
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The wingspan of a bird or an airplane is the distance from one wingtip to the other wingtip. For example, the Boeing 777 has a wingspan of about 60 metres, and a wandering albatross caught in 1965 had a wingspan of 3.63 metres, the official record for a living bird. The term wingspan, more technically extent, is used for other winged animals such as pterosaurs, bats, insects, etc. In humans, the term also refers to the distance between the length from one end of an individuals arms to the other when raised parallel to the ground at shoulder height at a 90º angle. Former professional basketball player Manute Bol stands at 77 and owns one of the largest wingspans at 86, the wingspan of an aircraft is always measured in a straight line, from wingtip to wingtip, independently of wing shape or sweep. The lift from wings is proportional to their area, so the heavier the animal or aircraft the bigger that area must be. The area is the product of the times the width of the wing, so either a long. For efficient steady flight, the ratio of span to chord, long-ranging birds, like albatrosses, and most commercial aircraft maximize aspect ratio. Alternatively, animals and aircraft which depend on maneuverability need to be able to roll fast to turn, for them, short-span, broad wings are preferred. The highest aspect ratio wings are aircraft propellers, in their most extreme form as helicopter rotors. In basketball and gridiron football, a measurement is used to determine the players wingspan. This is called reach in boxing terminology, the wingspan of Manute Bol, at 8 feet 6 inches, is the longest in NBA history, and his vertical reach was 10 feet 5 inches
11.
V speeds
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In aviation, V-speeds are standard terms used to define airspeeds important or useful to the operation of all aircraft. Using them is considered a best practice to maximize aviation safety, the actual speeds represented by these designators are specific to a particular model of aircraft. They are expressed by the indicated airspeed, so that pilots may use them directly, without having to apply correction factors. In general aviation aircraft, the most commonly used and most safety-critical airspeeds are displayed as color-coded arcs, the lower ends of the green arc and the white arc are the stalling speed with wing flaps retracted, and stalling speed with wing flaps fully extended, respectively. These are the speeds for the aircraft at its maximum weight. The yellow range is the range in which the aircraft may be operated in air, and then only with caution to avoid abrupt control movement, and the red line is the Vne. Proper display of V speeds is a requirement for type-certificated aircraft in most countries. The most common V-speeds are often defined by a particular governments aviation regulations, in the United States, these are defined in title 14 of the United States Code of Federal Regulations, known as the Federal Aviation Regulations or FARs. In Canada, the body, Transport Canada, defines 26 commonly used V-speeds in their Aeronautical Information Manual. V-speed definitions in FAR23,25 and equivalent are for designing and certification of airplanes, the descriptions below are for use by pilots. These V-speeds are defined by regulations and they are typically defined with constraints such as weight, configuration, or phases of flight, some of these constraints have been omitted to simplify the description. Some of these V-speeds are specific to types of aircraft and are not defined by regulations. Whenever a limiting speed is expressed by a Mach number, it is expressed relative to the speed of sound, e. g. VMO, Maximum operating speed, MMO, V1 is the critical engine failure recognition speed or takeoff decision speed. It is the speed above which the takeoff will continue if a engine fails or another problem occurs. Aborting a takeoff after V1 is strongly discouraged because the aircraft will by definition not be able to stop before the end of the runway, Transport Canada defines it as, Critical engine failure recognition speed and adds, This definition is not restrictive. An operator may adopt any other definition outlined in the flight manual of TC type-approved aircraft as long as such definition does not compromise operational safety of the aircraft. Getting to grips with aircraft performance, flight Operations Support & Line Assistance
12.
Scramjet programs
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Scramjet programs refers to research and testing programs for the development of supersonic combustion ramjets, known as scramjets. This list provides an overview of national and international collaborations. The USA, Russia, India, and China, have succeeded at developing scramjet technologies, when the second X-15 aircraft crashed on flight 74, it was damaged but survived well enough to be rebuilt. North American Aviation rebuilt it as the X-15-A2, among other things, one of the changes was provisions for a dummy scramjet to test if wind tunnel testing was correct. Unfortunately, on the flight of the X-15-A2, the shock waves sent out by the scramjet at Mach 6.7 caused extremely intense heating of over 2,700 °F. This then drilled into the fin and melted large holes. The plane survived but never flew again and they were intended to fit on to the Talos MK12 launcher system or the Terrier MK10 launcher. Testing of engine modules in a direct-connect, and a free-jet, facility took place at a variety of Mach numbers and these included Mach 4, Mach 5.3, Mach 7.8 and Mach 10. Tests showed that acceptable combustion efficiency was achieved with over 20% pentaborane in MCPD. Tests with pure pentaborane showed that a net thrust could be achieved at Mach 7, an accelerative capability equivalent to 11g was observed for Mach 5 flight at sea level. The aircraft was to be a hydrogen fuelled air-breathing space plane, with a low speed accelerator system to bring the aircraft up to Mach 3, at the edge of the atmosphere, a rocket was to take over and provide the final energy for orbital insertion. It was based on a classified DARPA research program called Copper Canyon and this research program suggested that Mach 25 might be possible. Although the more parts of the program were cancelled, NASP provided a large amount of basic research. For example, The NASP reaction model7 for hydrogen combustion in air, is extensively used where computational power is sufficient not to have to use reduced reaction models. On July 30,2002, the University of Queenslands HyShot team conducted the first ever successful test flight of a scramjet, as the craft re-entered the atmosphere, it dropped to a speed of Mach 7.6. The scramjet engine then started, and it flew at about Mach 7.6 for 6 seconds and this was achieved on a lean budget of just A$1.5 million, a tiny fraction of NASAs US $250 million to develop the X-43A. This involved many of the researchers involved in the University of Queensland report in 1995 of the first development of a scramjet that achieved more thrust than drag2. On Saturday, March 25,2006 researchers at the University of Queensland conducted another successful test flight of a HyShot Scramjet at the Woomera Test Range in South Australia
