Based on the renderings (as there are no actual photos of this thing, other than the blurry-ass pic of what appears to be a rocket taking off vertically) it’s nowhere near the size of a 747. It actually looks rather like an elongated SR-71, which makes me very skeptical that it can actually hit Mach 6.5 because ramjet engines have a hard limit due to something called “physics”. That fact, plus the rocket-like takeoff, are why I think this is more like the X-15 and can’t sustain its top speed for long.
So I have no idea what the blurry ass rocket pic is supposed to be, maybe it was a test vehicle for just the engine, maybe SCMP misattributed it, maybe the team dumped the whole “I-shaped configuration” thing.
Presumably any ram or scram-jet engine will require a rocket engine or other assist, assuming it’s not a hybrid like the SR-71.
Based on the renderings (as there are no actual photos of this thing, other than the blurry-ass pic of what appears to be a rocket taking off vertically) it’s nowhere near the size of a 747. It actually looks rather like an elongated SR-71, which makes me very skeptical that it can actually hit Mach 6.5 because ramjet engines have a hard limit due to something called “physics”. That fact, plus the rocket-like takeoff, are why I think this is more like the X-15 and can’t sustain its top speed for long.
The rendering in interestingengineering article is a stock image. An older SCMP article gives a much weirder rendering which matches the whitepaper the lead researcher published on I-shaped hypersonic configurations.
So I have no idea what the blurry ass rocket pic is supposed to be, maybe it was a test vehicle for just the engine, maybe SCMP misattributed it, maybe the team dumped the whole “I-shaped configuration” thing.
Presumably any ram or scram-jet engine will require a rocket engine or other assist, assuming it’s not a hybrid like the SR-71.
Nice, thanks for this extra background! My first thought was scramjet too, but it would be nice of them to mention how it takes off and lands.
The original rendering looks awesome, in a bonkers sci-fi kind of way.