You dont run this wind tunnel. You fire it. With the help of air pumped to 160 times atmospheric pressure and a highly explosive combination of hydrogen, oxygen, and a megawatt generator, the tunnel, set in a suburban Long Island business park, can reproduce the hellacious conditions an aircraft would encounter while traveling 20 miles above Earth at 5,300 mph― Mach 8―a speed at which the violent airstream packs enough energy to soften and melt solid nickel alloys. Bolted to a massive copper support in the center of this torture rig is the focus of the HyTech project: a 6-foot-long, 200-pound prototype of a NASA- and Air Force-developed jet-fuel-powered scramjet (supersonic-combustion ramjet) engine called GDE-1 that could, by 2008, propel a small unmanned airplane to 5,000 mph and beyond. Such hypersonic capabilities―particularly when powered with conventional jet fuel―could eventually lead to a new generation of long-range bombers, fast-reaction cruise missiles, and a space launch system that could cut the cost of propelling astronauts and payloads into space to one-hundredth of today's prices.
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