This study was undertaken in response to a request by the U.S. Air Force that the National Research Council (NRC) examine whether the technologies that underlie the concept of a hypersonic, air-launched, air-breathing, hydrocarbon-fueled missile with speeds up to Mach 81 can be demonstrated in time to be initially operational by 2015. To conduct the study, the NRC appointed the Committee on Review and Evaluation of the Air Force Hypersonic Technology Program, under the auspices of the Air Force Science and Technology Board.

An essential new account of some of the most valuable research and development in international military history. Roy F. Houchin II shows how the roots of US Air Force hypersonic research and development are grounded in Army Air Force General Henry H. 'Hap' Arnold's identification of the need for advanced airpower weapon systems to meet the anticipated postwar enemy threat. The technology for a smooth transition to military spaceflight seemed within reach when Bell Aircraft Corporation executive Walter Dornberger (the former commander of Nazi Germany's V-2 rocket research) made an unsolicited proposal to William E. Lamar (the chief of Wright Aeronautical Development Center's New Development Office of the Bomber Aircraft Division at Wright-Patterson AFB, OH) for a hypersonic boost-glide weapon system. Visionaries like Arnold, Dornberger, and Lamar believed a hypersonic boost-glider would represent the ultimate expression of the US Air Force's doctrine by performing strategic bombardment and reconnaissance more successfully any other type of vehicle. As this aspiration reached maturity in Dyna-Soar, the service's leadership never gave up their beliefs. This book shows how the struggle to persuade the secretary of defence and his advisors, who did not share the Air Force's vision for a military spaceplane, illustrates the ebb and flow of an advanced technology program and its powerful legacy within American society.

The goals of the NASA Hypersonic Research Engine (HRE) Project, which began in 1964, were to design, develop, and construct a high-performance hypersonic research ramjet/scramjet engine for flight tests of the developed concept over the speed range of Mach 4 to 8. The project was planned to be accomplished in three phases: project definition, research engine development, and flight test using the X-15A-2 research airplane, which was modified to carry hydrogen fuel for the research engine. The project goal of an engine flight test was eliminated when the X-15 program was canceled in 1968. Ground tests of full-scale engine models then became the focus of the project. Two axisymmetric full-scale engine models, having 18-inch-diameter cowls, were fabricated and tested: a structural model and combustion/propulsion model. A brief historical review of the project, with salient features, typical data results, and lessons learned, is presented. An extensive number of documents were generated during the HRE Project and are listed. Andrews, Earl H. and Mackley, Ernest A. Langley Research Center...

This report presents a summary of the results, obtained during the period of 1955 to 1960, of studies of hypersonic flow problems carried out at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. The problesm investigated are: (1) Effect of free stream vorticity on laminar boundary layer flow, (2) Hypersonic flow field around blunt bodies, (3) Real gas effects in hypersonic flows, (4) An inverse problem in hypersonic viscous flow, (5) Some studies of unsteady hypersonic flow phenomena, and (6) Hypersonic leading edge problem. Considerable progress has bee made in the understanding of these problems. These results are summarized in the present report. In the study of the real gas effects in hypersonic flows, considerable further work is necessary for a basic understanding of the nonequilibrium flow effects.