Does anyone have guesses on how the heat exchanger might work to prevent frost? Perhaps ultrasound?
How about dividing the heat exchanger into two sections? One section cools the air while the other section defrosts, and then alternate.
British aerospace company claims biggest engine advance since the jet
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Re: British aerospace company claims biggest engine advance since the jet
#32Unfortunate title here - British Aerospace was involved in the project some years ago, but Reaction Engines is a distinct company and I believe they exist despite BAe's "assistance"
As an American, I parsed the title as "a British aerospace company..." not "the British Aerospace company..."
As an Englishman, I parsed the title the same way as you did, though I did wonder if it meant BA.
Re: British aerospace company claims biggest engine advance since the jet
#33I'm sure some of you chuckleheads are going to figure out how to use this to OC some poor unassuming Ivy Bridge CPU...
Re: British aerospace company claims biggest engine advance since the jet
#34> This core piece of technology solves one of the constraints that limit jet engines to a top speed of about 2.5 times the speed of sound, which Reaction Engines believes it could double
Is that 2.5 times the speed of sound limit just for jets at low altitude? At high altitude it is certainly not true. Both the SR-71 and MiG 25 did well over Mach 3.
Re: British aerospace company claims biggest engine advance since the jet
#35Elon Musk was specifically asked about this technology when he was at Martin School last week. He didn't hear about it, but he seemed skeptical that it would work better than rockets. His response here: http://youtu.be/c1HZIQliuoA?t=48m55s SpaceX might still be the first one with a re-usable rocket if they finish the Raptor engine in 3 years. Plus, his could actually be used to land on Mars, while this can only be us…
Funny how this stuff works. The hot whiz-bang kid rewriting all the rules can become tomorrow's rent-seeking cronyistic old guard overnight. I wonder if a rocket vs sabre engine war is about to start. I hope so. Easier access to orbit and a 4 hour trip from NY to Tokyo would be pretty amazing.
Re: British aerospace company claims biggest engine advance since the jet
#36This is great news, but it also makes me a bit sad - because all this innovation died down in the 80's when everyone lost interest in the space race. We could be 30 years further down the road already and many of us probably won't live to see people setting foot on Mars.
Re: British aerospace company claims biggest engine advance since the jet
#37From the article: "The company has deliberately avoided filing patents on its heat exchanger technology to avoid details of how it works - particularly the method for preventing the build-up of frost - becoming public." I would think that for something like this, the patent system would actually work fine. Anybody who tries to make this is going to be located in the US, Canada, Western Europe, or Japan. It's not like…
I think "prior art" lends these companies some protection while not having detailed patents filed.
Re: British aerospace company claims biggest engine advance since the jet
#38This guy has been at this in various forms for 30 years. Amazing story and for once not completely fucked up by the British Govt, unlike our aerospace industry after WWII that was world leading.
Re: British aerospace company claims biggest engine advance since the jet
#39Does anyone have guesses on how the heat exchanger might work to prevent frost? Perhaps ultrasound?
My guess is that they inject liquid hydrogen into the hot air, so the cooling is actually done in free "air" rather than on the surface of a traditional metal heat exchanger - that would explain how they cool it so fast and help explain how they prevent frost in the heat exchanger during the cooling. This reformulates the problem into "how do we prevent the injectors from..." a) Melting (liquid hydrogen inside would…
Can't say anything about the plausibility of the scheme you mention, but the diagram in the BBC article contradicts it. There you can see that the primary cooling medium is liquid helium, in a closed circuit and a liquid nitrogen heat exchanger. Obviously the diagram can be just flawed, either as a disguise or unintentionally.
Re: British aerospace company claims biggest engine advance since the jet
#40Sounds like quite a disruptive innovation in the aerospace industry. Always wondered how much it cost to get innovations like this off the ground. $400m funding round sounds pretty serious...
That's the blind, the bet required to play, in aerospace, it's not a lot of money at all by their standards.
That would be the ante - a forced bet affecting all players. Blinds are typically only posted by one or two players.