Michael Braukus

Headquarters, Washington, DC August 27, 1998

(Phone: 202/358-1979)

Keith Henry
Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA
(Phone: 757/864-6120)

Kirsten Williams
Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, CA
(Phone: 805/258-2662)

Anthony Castrogiovanni
GASL, Inc., Ronkonkoma, NY
(Phone: 516/737-6100 x128)

Lowell Keel
MicroCraft, Inc., Tullahoma, TN
(Phone: 615/455-2617 x235)

RELEASE: 98-154

FIRST HYPERSONIC PROPULSION HARDWARE DELIVERED

A revolutionary new engine that ultimately may reduce

the cost of putting payloads in orbit has been delivered to
NASA for testing.

The 30-inch long "scramjet" engine was fabricated by

GASL, Inc., Ronkonkoma, NY, for the Hyper-X program, an
ambitious research effort to demonstrate hypersonic
propulsion technologies in flight.

The engine is the first program hardware to be completed

and will be used in high-speed ground tests at NASA's Langley
Research Center, Hampton, VA.

An identical engine being fabricated now will be mated

to its flight vehicle in
February 1999 and delivered to NASA's Dryden Flight Research
Center, Edwards, CA, leading to the first flight of the
program in early 2000.

The contract for flight and ground hardware is

implemented for NASA by a team led by MicroCraft, Tullahoma
TN, and including Boeing, Seal Beach, CA, and Accurate
Automation, Chattanooga, TN. A second contract, to Orbital
Sciences Corp., Dulles, VA, will provide rockets to boost the
research vehicles to test altitude.

Langley manages the five-year, approximately $170

million Hyper-X program, and Dryden is responsible for
vehicle fabrication and flight tests.

Three flights are planned -- two at Mach 7 and one at

Mach 10 (seven and ten times the speed of sound). The flight
tests will be conducted within the Western Test Range off the
coast of southern California. Each of three planned vehicles
will be flown once.

Hyper-X vehicles, which have been designated X-43, will

be boosted to their test point on the first stage of a
modified Orbital Sciences Corp. Pegasus booster rocket and
will be launched by NASA's B-52 from an altitude of 19,000 to
43,000 feet, depending upon the mission. For each flight,
the booster will accelerate the X-43 to Mach 7 or 10 at
altitudes up to 100,000 feet, where it will separate from the
booster and fly under its own power. Mach 7 is approximately
5,000 mph at sea level. Mach 10 is approximately 7,200 mph
at sea level.

Hyper-X program managers hope to demonstrate "air-

breathing" engine technologies that could ultimately be
applied in vehicle types from hypersonic (Mach 5 and above)
aircraft to reusable space launchers. By comparison, the
high-flying SR-71 reconnaissance airplane, which flies more
than Mach 3, is the fastest air-breathing aircraft to date.

Although prior flight experiments conducted by the

Russians using a rocket booster have demonstrated air-
breathing engine operation at Mach 5 to 6 conditions, the X-
43 will be the first free-flying demonstration of an
airframe-integrated, air-breathing engine and will extend the
flight range to Mach 10.

Extending air-breathing technologies to much greater

speeds requires the development of scramjet engines, the type
that will propel the research vehicles. Unlike a rocket,
which must carry its own oxygen for combustion, an air-
breathing aircraft burns oxygen in air scooped from the
atmosphere. Air-breathing hypersonic vehicles therefore can
be lighter and should carry more cargo/payload than
equivalent rocket-powered systems.

A ramjet engine operates by subsonic combustion of fuel

in a stream of air compressed by the forward speed of the
aircraft itself, as opposed to a conventional jet engine, in
which the fan blades of the compressor section compress the
air. A scramjet (supersonic-combustion ramjet) is a ramjet
engine in which the airflow through the entire engine remains
supersonic (faster than Mach 1 or the speed of sound). The
fuel for the X-43 will be hydrogen.
- end -

Images of the Hyper-X/X-43 vehicle and additional

information can be obtained at the following URLs:

STILLS:
http://lisar.larc.nasa.gov/LISAR/BROWSE/hyperx.html
ANIMATION: http://lava.larc.nasa.gov/BROWSE/hyperx.html
FACT SHEET: http://oea.larc.nasa.gov/PAIS/Hyper-X.html