The idea of hypersonic aviation is becoming more and more clear every year.
And although many studies in the field of hypersonics still remain at the experimental stage, the Hermeus startup team has no intention of giving up on its goal of giving the world a hypersonic passenger aircraft!
Today we’ll be telling you about the Quarterhorse project - an unmanned hypersonic aircraft, which is an important step for all mankind towards hypersonic travel.
And although many studies in the field of hypersonics still remain at the experimental stage, the Hermeus startup team has no intention of giving up on its goal of giving the world a hypersonic passenger aircraft!
Today we’ll be telling you about the Quarterhorse project - an unmanned hypersonic aircraft, which is an important step for all mankind towards hypersonic travel.
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00:00The idea of hypersonic aviation is becoming more and more clear every year, and although
00:05many studies in the field of hypersonic still remain at the experimental stage, the Hermia
00:10startup team has no intention of giving up on its goal of giving the world a hypersonic
00:15passenger aircraft.
00:18Today we will be telling you about the Quarter Horse Project, an unmanned hypersonic aircraft
00:23which is an important step for all mankind towards hypersonic travel.
00:32For most people, hypersonic aircraft, like hypersonic weapons, represent a technological
00:36breakthrough for the 21st century where science fiction becomes part of our reality.
00:41However, like the vast majority of such instant miracles of science, hypersound has more than
00:4750 years of development behind it.
00:49In fact, for some time, hypersonic technologies gathered dust in the depths of secret laboratories
00:55due to indifference on the part of the military, but today they play a significant role against
01:00the backdrop of a fragile balance in the geopolitical arena which has brought world superpowers
01:05to an even fiercer rivalry.
01:08Historically, starting with rocket launch experiments and North America's X-15 rocket
01:13plane in 1959, hypersonic speed was achieved using a rocket engine without any alternative.
01:19The poor fuel efficiency limited the practical use of rockets to propel aircraft over long
01:24distances.
01:25The proportion of fuel that rocket-powered aircraft had to carry could be as high as
01:2990%, leaving little mass available to accommodate the design features and technologies needed
01:35to ensure commercial aircraft level reliability and safety.
01:40Simply put, it's difficult to imagine who in their right mind could approve a bus project
01:45with 90% of the weight being gasoline.
01:48Most modern hypersonic air-breathing machines, such as a ramjet engine or scramjet, are quite
01:53capable of putting long-distance hypersonic travel into practical use.
01:58Their main advantage is their relatively high fuel efficiency, measured in terms of a thrust
02:03performance parameter called specific impulse.
02:06It's the engine thrust divided by fuel consumption.
02:09And although turbojet, ramjet and scramjet engines are equivalent as forms of jet propulsion,
02:14each of them has a number of fundamental differences.
02:18Rocket engines can reach speeds from a standstill of up to Mach 2, but are not capable of maintaining
02:23speeds of Mach 5 or more.
02:26At the same time, ramjets and scramjets can easily overcome the speed barrier of Mach
02:305, but cannot operate stably at low speeds, providing aircraft with safe takeoff and landing.
02:36By the way, this is why the lion's share of hypersonic inventions are not reusable.
02:41For example, modern hypersonic missiles first rise to altitude and gain speed using a conventional
02:46rocket engine, and then either glide back to the ground at hypersonic speed, or turn
02:51on a scramjet engine for hypersonic propulsion.
02:55So why not combine turbojet and ramjet, the Hermia's team thought, and started working
02:59on their own Chimera engine.
03:01By the way, this name was not chosen by chance.
03:04After all, like its ancient Greek namesake, Chimera is also a hybrid.
03:08It's a turbine-based combined-cycle TBCC engine capable of switching between two modes, turbojet
03:15and ramjet, allowing the quarter-horse to take off and land safely at low speeds and
03:20maintain stable flight at hypersonic speeds.
03:23And to keep the quarter-horse from overheating, the Chimera has a pre-cooler that lowers the
03:27temperature of the air entering the turbojet engine, allowing Hermia's to squeeze a lot
03:32more performance out of the engine before it switches to scramjet mode.
03:36Considering that the Pentagon is currently developing hypersonic weapons using combined-cycle
03:41engines, it's especially impressive that the startup Hermia's, albeit with government
03:46assistance, managed to design, build and successfully test its own engine in 21 months, spending
03:52only $18 million on it.
03:55As the basis of its TBCC, Hermia's chose the J85 turbojet engine from General Electric,
04:01which was previously used in the Northrop F-5 Freedom Fighter Light Fighter and Northrop
04:06T-38 Talon Trainer.
04:09Before everyone even had time to be surprised by the first version, just one year later
04:13news had already appeared about a new iteration of the Hermia's engine, Chimera 2.
04:19This time, the team decided to take as a basis the more powerful Pratt & Whitney F-100, installed
04:24in the well-known American fighters McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle and General Dynamics F-16
04:31Fighting Falcon, and which had recently celebrated not only 50 years of faithful service, but
04:36also over 30,000 flight hours.
04:38But the new product will no longer be the Quarter Horse, but the next brainchild of
04:42Hermia's, the Dark Horse, a larger, reusable hypersonic aircraft that the company is developing
04:47to solve U.S. defense and national security problems.
04:51A speed of Mach 5 or more is remarkable, but only if your aircraft's body can withstand
04:56such extreme temperatures.
04:58After all, Hermia's intends not only to break the speed records of the legendary Lockheed
05:03SR-71 Blackbird, but also to reach its altitude of 80,000 to 85,000 feet, which you definitely
05:10shouldn't try without a reliable glider.
05:12Here the team had to really rack their brains analyzing what high-temperature metal and
05:17ceramic materials they would need.
05:20Potential candidates included advanced titanium and nickel alloys, as well as superalloys
05:25that are structurally functional at temperatures ranging from 1,000 to 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
05:31Although some believe that nickel is too heavy for airframe construction, if we're talking
05:35about speeds greater than Mach 6, then the choice here lies in the field of carbon-ceramic
05:40composite materials, whose temperature capabilities extend up to 3,100 degrees Fahrenheit for
05:46reusable devices and 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit for single-use applications.
05:52Hermia's found the answer in purchasing Velo 3D Sapphire and Sapphire XC industrial 3D
05:59calibrated to print complex parts from the heat-resistant, corrosion-resistant Inconel
06:04718 nickel-chromium alloy that can withstand temperatures from 423 to 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit.
06:11This solution also reduced the team's costs when creating parts for their Chimera engine.
06:16According to Hermia's engineers, they used other modern materials for the Quarter Horse
06:20components, but most of the airframe is made of good old titanium.
06:25The Quarter Horse's sleek, streamlined design resembles a sharp blade fused to the body
06:30like a blackbird, and its 40-foot length is comparable to the previously mentioned 46-foot
06:35Northrop T-38 Talon.
06:37However, the planned tests will almost certainly force the company to make at least minimal
06:41adjustments to the appearance of the device in the future.
06:45Let's check them out.
06:46Last year turned out to be extremely productive for the startup, as it immediately began testing
06:50the Quarter Horse Mk0 ground stand used to check the main systems and their integration
06:56into the aircraft.
06:57The prototype was built in just six months and successfully passed all planned goals
07:02as part of testing Air Force Arnold Engineering Development Complex, AEDC, at Tullahoma, Tennessee
07:08in just 37 days.
07:11Among them were demonstrating human factor evaluations and pilot-in-the-loop steering
07:15and controls, demonstrating proper state of the vehicle and flight deck during loss
07:20link, evaluating radiofrequency, RF, latency, and ground handling qualities of the integrated
07:26systems, demonstrating remote command and control taxing.
07:31Having completed testing in early 2024, Mk0 became the first of four planned test vehicles
07:37for the Quarter Horse program, and by March of 2024, Hermeis presented the next prototype
07:42Mk1 with the task of remote takeoff and landing.
07:46It took the team about seven months to assemble it and only 21 days to run all the test tasks.
07:52But this time, instead of AEDC, tests were carried out on Edwards Air Force Base, culminating
07:57in taxi tests at 150 miles an hour with full afterburner.
08:02The team has two more prototypes ahead, Mk2 and Mk3.
08:06Moreover, the first one is already actively being built at the Hermeis plant in Atlanta,
08:11Georgia.
08:12It is expected to receive the Pratt & Whitney F-100 engine instead of the GE J85 found in
08:18the Mk1.
08:19The main goal of Mk2 will be to break the sound barrier and demonstrate autonomous supersonic
08:24flight below Mach 3.
08:26Hermeis has not yet shared technical details about the Mk3, except for the fact that there
08:31is a test version of Chimera 2.
08:33But according to the roadmap published by the company, the task of the fourth prototype
08:37will be to demonstrate turbojet-to-ramjet mode transition in flight and break the all-time
08:43airspeed record held by the SR-71 Blackbird, which the team has been striving for for so
08:49long.
08:50Responsible for test management, flight deck created by a startup from scratch to support
08:54off-grid standalone operations in austere environments where seats are prepared for
08:58the pilot, payload operator, four operational analysts and several observer seats.
09:04All this fits in a special high-performance computing center, HPCC, with an isolated climate
09:10control zone, providing reliable protection for critical flight equipment.
09:14Externally, it looks like an ordinary transport container, due to which it is easily deployed
09:19in any part of the world.
09:22All of these efforts, including the Dark Horse, should lead us to the Halcyon, a hypersonic
09:26passenger aircraft capable of over 125 trans-oceanic routes.
09:31For example, one Halcyon flight from New York to London would take about 90 minutes, which
09:36sounds crazy by the standards of the current airliners we are used to.
09:40The first flight of this engineering marvel is scheduled for 2029, but for now, the path
09:45to Halcyon is blocked by 2025 and 2026 testing of the Quarter Horse Mk2 and Mk3 prototypes.
09:53But given the pace of development at Hermes, for some reason we have no doubt that these
09:57guys will bend over backwards to do everything efficiently and quickly too.
10:03You think the team will be able to present their magnum opus Halcyon in the next decade
10:07or will it take much longer?
10:09Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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