Nasa wonder plane finally cleared for take-off just as funding is

A REVOLUTIONARY new type of aircraft that could lead to flights between Glasgow and Sydney in only two hours, will be tested in America tomorrow.

Nasa will fly its X-43A hypersonic vehicle, or "scramjet" as it is better known, on Monday afternoon, aiming to make aviation history as it hurtles to 10 times the speed of sound, the highest velocity ever reached by an air fuelled engine.

The scramjet has an engine that - unlike space rockets - burns oxygen, and scientists hope the technology will be used for airplane flights at ultra-high speeds.

Because scramjets will be able to fly without carrying most of their fuel on board they will be smaller, leaner and faster than current rockets, leading to exciting commercial potential. Passenger aircraft may be able to climb way above the earth and skip along the edge of the atmosphere, slashing travel times between the world's major cities.

However, even if the scramjet succeeds in its mission to reach Mach 10 the project will still be grounded, thanks to a Nasa funding call. The decision puts the future of hypersonic travel, with its considerable commercial potential, in the hands of America's competitors. Australia is also developing its own hypersonic vehicle that has already reached Mach 7.6.

"Closing the project will cut off an avenue of potential for the US," said David Reubush, deputy programme manager for the Hyper-X Programme Office. He said funding had been diverted by Bush's plan to cheer up America with manned moon trips and the a new mission to Mars. Up to (pounds) 6 billion will be diverted from other Nasa projects to fund the programme. "They have decided that we are far too long-term for what they want to be done," he said.

Management is focussed on the other trips and on the limited time it has to complete them, Reubush said. "It doesn't have the luxury of worrying about what the rest of the world is doing." There are schedule and budget pressures to achieve what the President has said he wants, he added. "In truth, the future of hypersonics in the US looks pretty bleak."

Australia, however, will carry out three further scramjet trials in the autumn. Dr Allan Paull, head of the Hypersonic research at Queensland University, said he was bemused by Nasa's decision to discontinue funding. His group's tests have proven that the technology is "perfectly feasible". "It would be silly to cut funding when they have finally got a success. But that doesn't mean that they won't do it."

He said they were building up to a Mach 10 flight next September and had ambitions to take the technology even further. "We are continuing with the ground test programme and hope to extend it so that we can contemplate accelerating eng-ines between Mach 8 and 12."

Under Nasa's $250 million Hyper-X programme, engineers at Langley Research Centre in Virginia and the Dryden Flight Research Centre in California, designed and built three aluminium scramjet aircraft, each one 12 feet long and weighing about 2,800lbs. However, the first flight was aborted in 2001 when things didn't go according to plan.

But the second, on March 24 this year, reached Mach 6.83, smashing the world speed record for air-breathing engines previously held by a jet-powered missile. The highest speed by manned aircraft was achieved by the US spy plane SR-71, or "blackbird", which could break Mach 3.

Monday's flight will test the limits of scramjet technology. The temperatures reached by the plane will be much higher than before: the leading edge of the aircraft's nose will reach about 3700F, 1600 hotter than the March flight.

Luat Nguyen, deputy manager of the programme that designed the X43a, said the idea was to demonstrate new technologies. "We've done that. This is the first scramjet to work, and it is the only one at this point." He said it was a big challenge to get the engine to work at Mach 10 speed. "You want it to be robust enough to give us the level of performance we're looking for, and at Mach 10, the constraints are a little narrower."

About 50 miles off the California coast, a B-52 will drop the scramjet 40,000 feet above the earth. The booster rockets will then fire up, bringing the vehicle up to almost Mach 10. At a height of about 110,000 feet the scramjet will ditch its rockets, the cowl covering its air intake will flip off, and its revolutionary engine will ignite.

Scramjets work on the same principle as all jet engines: they burn fuel in compressed air and aim the expelled gases to the rear to push the aircraft forward at lightning speeds. Nasa said that igniting the scramjet's fuel at supersonic speeds was a feat comparable to "lighting a match in a hurricane". For this to work, virtually the entire aircraft becomes an enormous scoop, opening to receive the air and compressing it before injecting a chemical called Silane, which ignites in the presence of air. Hydrogen fuel is added once the flame is lit.

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