Collaborate Disseminate
The Bloodhound supersonic car project has bounced back from the brink of bankruptcy to set its sights on the land speed record once again. The vehicle will hit the track in October for the first time since its relaunch, with the team announci… Continue reading Bloodhound LSR supersonic car to return to high-speed testing ahead of 2020 record attempt
If you are a certain age, you probably remember the promise of supersonic transports. The Concorde took less than 4 hours to go across the Atlantic, but it stopped flying in 2003 and ended commercial supersonic passenger flights But back in the 1970s, we thought the Concorde would give way …read more
Continue reading Air-Breathing Rocket Engine Promises Future Space Planes
The history of aviation is full of notable X-Planes, a number of which heralded in new generations of flight. The Bell X-1 became the first aircraft to break the speed of sound during level flight in 1947 with the legendary Charles “Chuck” Yeager at the controls. A few years later the X-2 would push man up to Mach 3, refining our understanding of supersonic flight. In the 1960’s, the North American built X-15 would not only take us to the edge of space, but set a world speed record which remains unbroken.
Compared to the heady post-war days when it …read more
Continue reading Shushing Sonic Booms: NASA’s Supersonic X-Plane to Take Flight in 2021
On October 24th, 2003 the last Concorde touched down at Filton Airport in England, and since then commercial air travel has been stuck moving slower than the speed of sound. There were a number of reasons for retiring the Concorde, from the rising cost of fuel to bad publicity following a crash in 2000 which claimed the lives of all passengers and crew aboard. Flying on Concorde was also exceptionally expensive and only practical on certain routes, as concerns about sonic booms over land meant it had to remain subsonic unless it was flying over the ocean.
The failure of …read more
Continue reading GE’s Engine to Reignite Civil Supersonic Flight
European VC firm 83North (formerly Greylock IL), which since 2008 has focused on backing startups in Europe and Israel, has closed its fourth fund — taking $250M in a raise that it says was both oversubscribed and its largest to date, and bringing its total capital under management to $800M. Read More Continue reading 83North closes $250M fourth fund focused on European, Israeli startups
You might think that if you have a need to measure the speed of a projectile that is too fast for your high-speed camera, you would have to invest in some significantly expensive equipment.
That was the problem facing [Nick Moore], and the solution he arrived at is extremely elegant in its simplicity. He’s arranged a pair of foil tapes in the path of the projectile, as it passes through them they break, and he measures the time between those breaks. The clever bit though lies not in the tapes, but in how he measures the timing. Instead of relying …read more
Continue reading Supersonic Speed Measurement With A Sound Card