Hypersonics is the study of flight at speeds where aerodynamic heating dominates the physics of the problem. Typically this is Mach 5 and higher. Hypersonics is an engineering science with close links to supersonics and engine design.

Within this field, many of the most important results have been experimental. The principal facilities have been wind tunnels and related devices, which have produced flows with speeds up to orbital velocity.

Why is it important? Hypersonics has had two major applications. The first has been to provide thermal protection during atmospheric entry. Success in this enterprise has supported ballistic-missile nose cones, has returned strategic reconnaissance photos from orbit and astronauts from the Moon, and has even dropped an instrument package into the atmosphere of Jupiter. The last of these approached Jupiter at four times the speed of a lunar mission returning to Earth.

Work with re-entry has advanced rapidly because of its obvious importance. The second application has involved high-speed propulsion and has sought to develop the scramjet as an advanced airbreathing ramjet. Scramjets are built to run cool and thereby to achieve near-orbital speeds. They were important during the Strategic Defense Initiative, when a set of these engines was to power the experimental X-30 as a major new launch vehicle. This effort fell short, but the X-43A, carrying a scramjet, has recently flown at Mach 9.65 by using a rocket.

Atmospheric entry today is fully mature as an engineering discipline. Still, the Jupiter experience shows that work with its applications continues to reach for new achievements. Studies of scramjets, by contrast, still seek full success, in which such engines can accelerate a vehicle without the use of rockets. Hence, there is much to do in this area as well. For instance, work with computers may soon show just how good scramjets can become.

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The NASA History Series
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NASA History Division
Office of External Relations
Washington, DC
September 2007
NASA SP-2007-4232

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements. . vii
Introduction. . .. ix
Abbreviations and Acronyms. .. .. .. . .. . .. . .. . xv
Chapter 1: First Steps in Hypersonic Research. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
German Work with High-Speed Flows. . 2
Eugen Sänger. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
NACA-Langley and John Becker. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Chapter 2: Nose Cones and Re-entry. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
The Move Toward Missiles. . 23
Approaching the Nose Cone. . 29
Ablation. . . 36
Flight Test. . . 42
Chapter 3: The X-15. . 55
Origins of the X-15. . . 56
The Air Force and High-Speed Flight. . 61
X-15: The Technology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
X-15: Some Results. . . 80
Chapter 4: First Thoughts of Hypersonic Propulsion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Ramjets As Military Engines. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .91
Origins of the Scramjet. . . 98
Combined-Cycle Propulsion Systems. . . 107
Aerospaceplane. . 112
Chapter 5: Widening Prospects for Re-entry. . 133
Winged Spacecraft and Dyna-Soar. . . 133
The Technology of Dyna-Soar. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
Heat Shields for Mercury and Corona. . . 151
Gemini and Apollo. . 154
Chapter 6: Hypersonics and the Space Shuttle. . 165
Preludes: Asset and Lifting Bodies. . . 165
Asset Flight Tests. . . 167
Reusable Surface Insulation. . . 174
Designing the Shuttle. . 178
The Loss of Columbia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
Chapter 7: The Fading, the Comeback. . . 197
Scramjets Pass Their Peak. . 199
Scramjets at NASA-Langley. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
The Advent of NASP. . . 211
The Decline of NASP. . . 218
Chapter 8: Why NASP Fell Short. . 229
Aerodynamics. . 229
Propulsion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238
Materials. . . 244
Chapter 9: Hypersonics After NASP. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
The X-33 and X-34. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
Scramjets Take Flight. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
Recent Advances in Fluid Mechanics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
Hypersonics and the Aviation Frontier. . . 282
Bibliography. . 289
NASA History Series. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Thomas A. Heppenheimer has been a freelance writer since 1978. He has written extensively on aerospace, business and government, and the history of technology. He has been a frequent contributor to American Heritage and its affiliated publications, and to Air & Space Smithsonian. He has also written for the National Academy of Sciences, and contributed regularly to Mosaic of the National Science Foundation. He has written some 300 published articles for more than two dozen publications.

He has also written twelve hardcover books. Three of them–Colonies in Space (1977), Toward Distant Suns (1979) and The Man-Made Sun (1984)-have been alternate selections of the Book-of-the-Month Club. His Turbulent Skies (1995), a history of commercial aviation, is part of the Technology Book Series of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. It also has been produced as a four-part, four-hour Public Broadcasting System television series Chasing the Sun.

Under contract to NASA, Heppenheimer has written that agency’s authorized history of the Space Shuttle, in two volumes. Volume 1, The Space Shuttle Decision (1999), has been reissued in paperback by the Smithsonian Institution Press and has been selected as an Outstanding Academic Title. The present book reflects his longstanding activity in hypersonics, for which he has written three technical reviews for Pasha Publications.

He holds a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering from the University of Michigan, and is an associate fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He has also held research fellowships in planetary science at the California Institute of Technology and at the Max Planck Institute in Heidelberg, Germany.

About the Cover: Hypersonic Plane by Leslie Bossinas. Artist’s concept of an aerospace plane showing aero-thermal heating effects caused by friction as the vehicle flies hypersonically through the atmosphere. The National Aero-Space Plane program provided technology for space launch vehicles and hypersonic cruise vehicles. This vehicle with advanced airbreathing engines would have the capability to take off horizontally from and land on conventional runways, accelerate to orbit, and cruise hypersonically in the atmosphere between Earth destinations. (NASA Art Program, Image 86-HC-217).

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