Big things are happening with little fanfare at the Woomera Rocket Range in the deserts of South Australia.
While there is no such thing as a traffic jam in that bleak landscape, either on or above it, there is plenty of action going on to tap the potential power of the ultra-high speed scramjet technology.
British, Australian-American and Japanese projects are all scheduled for firings at Woomera this year and US planemaker Boeing has quietly decided to fund research at the University of Queensland's Center of Hypersonics, which famously stole a march on everyone by being the first, in 2002, to actually make a scram jet engine work in flight.
Scram jets are "in theory incredibly simple and in practice quite complex devices" according to Professor Allan Paull, the project leader at the center, which is collaborating with all of the current projects.
"They use velocity to scoop up and compress the air in a manner that allows propulsion to occur at speeds where normal engines, even in Concorde or the fastest military jets, can't function," he says.
Provided they, or the aircraft they are powering at eight times the speed of sound don't melt. The current projects are about getting the engine technology right before designing aircraft that can use it.
As soon as late next month the recently stock-market listed UK defense firm Qinetiq will test its unique design for a hypersonic "scramjet" engine, by firing it back to earth at 11,000kph after it is launched 400km into space atop a research rocket.
In the few seconds before the test flight becomes a crater the engine will attempt to boost its velocity using the scram jet principle.
Qinetiq should be followed into space, and then sharply back from it, by test vehicles from a joint US-Australian defense collaboration and a so far low-key Japanese research project quite distinct from last year's successful rocket launched test flight of a scale model of a proposed supersonic airliner.
However like most of the activities that take place at Woomera, the British mission is low-key even in name.
Qinetiq is simply identifying this mission as the third of a series of the Australian Hyshot scramjet launches even though its rakish quadruple intake design looks very different to the local product.
Hyshot I was a dud, but Hyshot II achieved the world's first scram jet flight back on July 30, 2002, beating the American US$300m Hyper-X program by 21 months in demonstrating the process, and with a budget of a mere US$1.5m.
It was so unbelievably cheap the device became known in aerospace circles as "the scrooge jet," with the Australian researchers buying some of the equipment needed to make it from DIY home improvement stores.
Yet more than low launch costs explain the various national and international scram jet activities that are going on at Woomera.
The Hypersonics Center more than 1,000km away in Brisbane, has the world's original "shock tube" wind tunnels dating back to 1993, built for small change in terms of space budgets, yet considered the best in the world today.
"Shock tubes" generate air flows that can't be achieved in conventional wind tunnels.
"We have a longer practical experience than anyone else," Paull says. "But we emphasize research into unanswered questions more than anything else.
"Some experts claim that using an air breathing scram jet stage in a satellite launch vehicle could increase the payload as much as seven fold. We don't know. We are trying to find out by how much as our own projects continue," he added.
Typical satellite launching rockets, weighing roughly 300 tonnes at ignition, only place around half of 1 percent of that mass into orbit.
Boeing, which never publicly announced its decision late last year to invest unspecified research funds in the Australian hypersonics program, is however quite clear as to why. A spokesman for the company pointed out successful application of the technology would mean planes going so fast they could connect any two points on earth in two hours.
In fact Boeing has been vocal for several years over its intention to "invest in brains" all over the world. The company points to joint research ventures with Russia's Sukhoi design center in Moscow, with multiple heavy industry partners in Japan in making the high-technology 787 Dreamliners out of more carbon fibre and less metal, and with French aerospace component makers to design elements of aircraft that will compete against Airbus.
"If this works," he says, "it will be the most exciting thing to happen to air transport since the first airlines handed out goggles and fur coats to passengers who sat in the slipstream."
However Professor Paull has a more startling view as where the scramjet technology might lead. He says a commercial application, if feasible, will take some decades, and before economies of scale start to bring down ticket prices a different role might be the speedy distribution of donor organs.
"At the moment these are very expensive and time critical medical procedures," he says.
"They are also dependent for that reason on donors limited to a small geographical region. Yet Hyshot technology could allow automated high speed access to donors world wide, saving lives before it becomes sufficiently affordable to save time for long-distance travelers," he added.
Taiwan has experienced its most significant improvement in the QS World University Rankings by Subject, data provided on Sunday by international higher education analyst Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) showed. Compared with last year’s edition of the rankings, which measure academic excellence and influence, Taiwanese universities made great improvements in the H Index metric, which evaluates research productivity and its impact, with a notable 30 percent increase overall, QS said. Taiwanese universities also made notable progress in the Citations per Paper metric, which measures the impact of research, achieving a 13 percent increase. Taiwanese universities gained 10 percent in Academic Reputation, but declined 18 percent
BULLY TACTICS: Beijing has continued its incursions into Taiwan’s airspace even as Xi Jinping talked about Taiwan being part of the Chinese family and nation China should stop its coercion of Taiwan and respect mainstream public opinion in Taiwan about sovereignty if its expression of goodwill is genuine, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday. Ministry spokesman Jeff Liu (劉永健) made the comment in response to media queries about a meeting between former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) the previous day. Ma voiced support for the so-called “1992 consensus,” while Xi said that although the two sides of the Taiwan Strait have “different systems,” this does not change the fact that they are “part of the same country,” and that “external
UNDER DISCUSSION: The combatant command would integrate fast attack boat and anti-ship missile groups to defend waters closest to the coastline, a source said The military could establish a new combatant command as early as 2026, which would be tasked with defending Taiwan’s territorial waters 24 nautical miles (44.4km) from the nation’s coastline, a source familiar with the matter said yesterday. The new command, which would fall under the Naval Command Headquarters, would be led by a vice admiral and integrate existing fast attack boat and anti-ship missile groups, along with the Naval Maritime Surveillance and Reconnaissance Command, said the source, who asked to remain anonymous. It could be launched by 2026, but details are being discussed and no final timetable has been announced, the source
SHOT IN THE ARM: The new system can be integrated with Avenger and Stinger missiles to bolster regional air defense capabilities, a defense ministry report said Domestically developed Land Sword II (陸射劍二) missiles were successfully launched and hit target drones during a live-fire exercise at the Jiupeng Military Base in Pingtung County yesterday. The missiles, developed by the Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology (CSIST), were originally scheduled to launch on Tuesday last week, after the Tomb Sweeping Day holiday long weekend, but were postponed to yesterday due to weather conditions. Local residents and military enthusiasts gathered outside the base to watch the missile tests, with the first one launching at 9:10am. The Land Sword II system, which is derived from the Sky Sword II (天劍二) series, was turned