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Old November 19th 04, 08:10 PM
Robert Briggs
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Peter Duniho wrote:
Don French wrote:


... and attributed that speed to the scramjet, not the rocket.
That was just wrong. The speed was almost entirely a result of the
rocket's velocity and had nothing to do with the scramjet.


Todd already pointed out the fallacy of that statement. The fact that the
scramjet *accelerated* to the maximum speed clearly shows that the scramjet
is, in fact, the *entire* source of the speed. It produced enough thrust
to maintain Mach 10.


Peter, your grasp of the physics of the matter seems to be substantially
better than Don's (not that that is difficult), but I don't buy the bit
about "the scramjet [being] the *entire* source of the speed".

If that were *truly* the case, there would have been no rocket and not
thundering great bomber involved.

What the flight *does* demonstrate is that once *other means* have been
used to get the aeroplane to the scramjet's working speed range *then*
the scramjet can accelerate further and maintain Mach 10 while its fuel
lasts.

The flight is a *proof-of-concept* for something which would require at
least one non-scramjet engine type to make a self-contained system.