New turbine engine tests planned

Rolls-Royce and Williams International are planning to test new turbine engine designs that will be used for long range supersonic cruise missiles, and potentially for a combined cycle hypersonic engine. The program is called supersonic turbine engine for long range (Stelr). It's an offshoot of the Histed program. The goal of the program is for a missile that can cruise at maximum mach for one hour.

Rolls-Royce has already operated their engine at Mach 2-2.5 for "more than 2 hours". They plan to increase that to Mach 3-3.2 soon. The design parameters call for an engine that can travel Mach 3.2 for 1 hour, or travel 2,000 miles during that time.

Developers hope to ground test a turbine engine at Mach 3.2 in the coming months, paving the way for long-range supersonic cruise missiles as well as potentially laying the foundation for a viable combined-cycle hypersonic propulsion system.

Testing of high-speed engines is being conducted separately by Rolls-Royce Liberty Works and Williams International under the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory’s (AFRL) supersonic turbine engine for long-range (Stelr) program. A follow-on effort to the joint AFRL and Darpa (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) high-speed turbine engine demonstration (Histed) program, Stelr is targeted at the development of Mach 3-plus weapons and vehicles. These include long-range standoff missiles, air-launched cruise missiles, unmanned air vehicles and advanced cruise missiles capable of sustaining flight at maximum Mach number for 1 hr.

aviationweek.com...

a reply to: Zaphod58
The size is not too small to use it on a TBBC aircraft ?

a reply to: darksidius

Right now it's only for a missile. It's part of one of the programs to develop a TBCC engine eventually though.

a reply to: Zaphod58
In the same time if they put three of this type of engine on a airframe you may have something the size of a little fighter , with one bigger dual mode ramjet may be you can build a tactical supersonic/hypersonic UAV with modest size.

a reply to: darksidius

Putting three engines on something would add more weight, meaning you need more thrust to get the same performance, which means more engines, which means more weight, which means more thrust.....

a reply to: Zaphod58
The equation of hypersonic look very, very hard to resolve, don't know if a day we will se something else of a missile with this capacity.

It's actually a phenomenal achievement and I would certainly like to understand the size of such an engine. It must be small.

On a different note. A faster than light engine would mean the retaliatory missile arrives before the belligerent missile is sent. Think about it!

a reply to: paraphi

Not that small. The Rattlrs platform was the size of an SR-71 engine and nacelle. A lot of that was just engine. It's been improved a good bit using new materials, and technologies, but it's not going to be a lot smaller. To get that kind of power and speed means a fairly big engine. Not good for upscaling into a large platform, but thanks to the requirements, it could be used in a small ISR platform they said.

Does anybody here other than Zap have a clue about Physics?

a reply to: JIMC5499

Yes. And the one post gave me shivers of the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation. Reminded me I haven't played KSP in awhile.

originally posted by: cmdrkeenkid
a reply to: JIMC5499

... Reminded me I haven't played KSP in awhile.

I have never played that but watching other people trying to play looked funny as hell.