Will Contribute To Flight Test And Vehicle Design
Boeing's Phantom Works has secured
a key role in a $54 million hypersonics research program called
HIFiRE, for Hypersonic International Flight Research
Experimentation, jointly established by the USAF Research
Laboratory (AFRL) and Australia's Defence Science and Technology
Organization (DSTO).
Under a recently-signed agreement enabled by a Queensland
Government award, Boeing will work with the DSTO and The University
of Queensland on three critical flight tests and will contribute to
the design of a free-flying WaveRider-type hypersonic vehicle that
will be used in two of those flight tests.
"We're very pleased to have this opportunity to continue our
successful research in hypersonic flight," said Bob Krieger, Boeing
chief technology officer and president of Phantom Works. "Boeing
has been at the forefront of hypersonics research with successful
programs like the X-43A Hyper-X vehicle, and this collaboration
will provide new knowledge about hypersonic flight that could open
new frontiers in aerospace."
"Boeing has a rich legacy of many decades in hypersonics
research, and we look forward to this new cooperative effort with
our Australian partners," said George Muellner, president of Boeing
Advanced Systems.
Plans for the HIFiRE program call for 10 total flight tests over
five years at Woomera in South Australia. The three flight tests
that are the primary focus of the Boeing collaboration with
Australian partners will be the fourth, seventh and eighth in the
schedule. Sequentially, they will be of a WaveRider-type vehicle as
an unpowered glider; a scramjet engine alone; and the
WaveRider-type vehicle powered by the same scramjet engine.
As ANN reported, Boeing's
collaboration in the HIFiRE project stems from a prior
collaboration in scramjet development with the DSTO, the Government
of Queensland and The University of Queensland. Each of the parties
is making cash and in-kind contributions to build advanced scramjet
prototypes and undertake prolonged flight tests at speeds of more
than Mach 8, or 5,450 miles per hour.
The University of Queensland Centre for Hypersonics was the
first in the world to successfully achieve verified supersonic
combustion of a scramjet in flight, launching its Supersonic
Combustion Ramjet (Scramjet) in 2002 under the HyShot Flight
Program.
The Boeing/ATK X-43A Hyper-X vehicle, powered by a scramjet
engine, recorded the fastest speeds ever achieved in flight by an
air-breathing vehicle (Mach 6.83 or about 4,600 miles per hour and
Mach 9.68 or about 6,600 miles per hour) in two successful flight
tests in 2004.
The DSTO leads the Australian portion of the HIFiRE program,
which involves researchers from The University of Queensland, the
Australian National University, the University of New South Wales
at the Australian Defence Force Academy, and the governments of
Queensland and South Australia. The AFRL leads US participation,
with contributions from NASA, US industry and US universities.
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