An Australia-based international team hopes by 2012 to fly a Mach 8 scramjet experiment to examine combustion and thrust by 2012.
Russell Boyce, Defence Science and Technology Organisation chair at the University of Queensland's school of engineering, says the team of Australian, Italian, Japanese and US universities has raised about A$6 million ($5.5 million) in cash, plus in-kind man-hours and test facilities to match the A$5 million of government funding it hopes to have approved in time to begin work in early 2010.
Of the project's A$11 million budget, two-thirds will go towards the flight cost and the remaining third will be spent on ground-based research.
The plan is to fly with basic inlet and nozzle designs and focus on combustion chamber performance and thrust-versus-drag measurements.
The US Air Force Office of Scientific Research is likely to provide technical oversight and will chair the experiment's critical design review, acting as independent technical experts. Australia is already involved with the US HiFire programme, which will make up to 10 hypersonic flights examining the fundamental science behind travelling faster than M5.
The Australian government has recently established a new space policy and special department to co-ordinate government activity and a $40 million science programme that includes beyond M5 flight studies.
Boyce says the M8 project "is also about capacity building to create a talent pool for a future [Australian] space industry".
Source: Flight International