China's Hypersonic Engine At 16 Times Sound Speeds Can Bring You Anywhere In The World Within 2 Hours

Scientists in China say they have built a hypersonic jet engine that can fly 16 times as fast as sound. This means an aircraft housing such an engine can fly to any place around the world within a couple of hours.

The engine is called “sodramjet,” and the scientists conducted a test flight in a wind tunnel in Beijing, China. The prototype generated excellent thrust, operational stability, and fuel efficiency.

Leading the project is Professor Zonglin Jiang from the Institute of Mechanics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Their findings were published last Saturday.

According to the researchers, we could use such engines in reusable trans-atmospheric planes that take off horizontally from the airport runway and accelerate into the Earth orbit, which then re-enter the atmosphere and land at the airport.

The name “sodramjet” is actually short for standing oblique detonation ramjet engine, the prototype was tested at a speed of 9 times the sound speed in the wind tunnel. In theory, the engine could push an aircraft to a speed 16 times that of sound, but we need further testing to confirm this. Jiang said that the wind tunnel being built in China is the only one that can handle this test.

The team show confidence that sodramjet can become one of the first hypersonic-speed engines to use in commercial flights.

It’s worth noting that scientists have previously tried to build engines like this. The United States created the scramjet that was predicted to work better than regular engines at hypersonic speeds. But they did not move further with the design of the scramjet.

Come back to the story of the sodramjet, a hypersonic aerodynamics researcher said that the test might have been actually carried out a while ago. China keeps this project a secret because it could be used by the military while peer-reviewed papers are checked carefully.

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