Crimson blades
28-09-2003, 19:57
today a new kind of cruise missile engine, called a scramjet, was fired up in the Federation of Crimson Blades. Just like any other cruise missile engine, it used conventional liquid hydrocarbon fuel, but this one was a mite different. In simulated hypersonic conditions, this engine reached MACH 6.5 speeds at 90,000 feet altitude.
This is fast. In fact it is extraordinarily fast...over six times the speed of sound.
All rocket motors (we'll confine ourselves to good old-fashioned chemical rockets for now, like sky rockets, Saturn Vs, Space Shuttle engines, and ICBMs and forget about more exotic kinds) work by burning propellant, which typically consists of a fuel and an oxidizer.
The point here is that rockets carry both their fuel and oxidizer with them. They don't get their oxidizer from the air like typical engines do. This is why rocket engines work in space… where there is no air.
Jet engines carry only fuel, and get their oxygen from their air intakes. All jet engines have to get the air to the fuel, ignite it, and expel the hot exhaust gases out the back. To get the stuff to burn hot enough (so the gases will leave fast enough to generate enough thrust to move the aircraft) you've got to compress the air.
Turbojets compress the air by using big, spinning turbine blades, so they don't have to be moving fast (or even at all) when you start them up – the blades spin, the air gets compressed, the fuel gets injected, the fuel and the compressed air burn, and the exhaust goes blazing out the back (cool, huh?). All jet airliners and combat jets use either turbojets or turbofans.
http://www.spacedaily.com/images/scramjet-darpa-art-bg.jpg
Each missile is 50 million USD, thats right folks! 50 million USD!
OOC: i just had a boom in uranium mining, so this is not really godmodding.
This is fast. In fact it is extraordinarily fast...over six times the speed of sound.
All rocket motors (we'll confine ourselves to good old-fashioned chemical rockets for now, like sky rockets, Saturn Vs, Space Shuttle engines, and ICBMs and forget about more exotic kinds) work by burning propellant, which typically consists of a fuel and an oxidizer.
The point here is that rockets carry both their fuel and oxidizer with them. They don't get their oxidizer from the air like typical engines do. This is why rocket engines work in space… where there is no air.
Jet engines carry only fuel, and get their oxygen from their air intakes. All jet engines have to get the air to the fuel, ignite it, and expel the hot exhaust gases out the back. To get the stuff to burn hot enough (so the gases will leave fast enough to generate enough thrust to move the aircraft) you've got to compress the air.
Turbojets compress the air by using big, spinning turbine blades, so they don't have to be moving fast (or even at all) when you start them up – the blades spin, the air gets compressed, the fuel gets injected, the fuel and the compressed air burn, and the exhaust goes blazing out the back (cool, huh?). All jet airliners and combat jets use either turbojets or turbofans.
http://www.spacedaily.com/images/scramjet-darpa-art-bg.jpg
Each missile is 50 million USD, thats right folks! 50 million USD!
OOC: i just had a boom in uranium mining, so this is not really godmodding.