AECD TUNNEL 9
Aerospace Testing Alliance Outside Machinist Everett Fulmer inspects the Defense Advanced Research projects Agency’s Falcon Combined-cycle Engine Technology (FaCET) scramjet test article in the center’s Aerodynamic and propulsion Test unit test cell prior to a test. (Photo by Rick Goodfriend)
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Ypersonics And scramjets are the current buzzwords on the lips of journalists, scientists, military and civilian leaders and almost anyone who follows the latest technological advancements in flight. headlines like “u.s. Air force scramjet test sees spaceships in future” and “Rise of the space planes, hypersonic weapons and spaceships in future” and “DARPA eyes sM-3 for hypersonic strike” followed the recent successful flight demonstration of a hypersonic X-51A Waverider vehicle.
Technological advancements on projects like the X-51 do grab people’s attention, acknowledged Dan Marren, site director of Hypervelocity Wind Tunnel 9 at AEDC’s remote site in Silver Spring, Md. However, he pointed out that the future of hypersonic flight is already taking shape, literally, in the unique ground test facility he manages, and at AEDC’s Aerodynamic and Propulsion Test Unit (APTU) and High-Enthalpy Arc-Heated Facilities in middle Tennessee. “AEDC’s mission is to provide high quality test and evaluation of next generation systems that will fight and win wars,” he said. “Our efforts in the 1970s and 1980s, with the National Aerospace Plane, Space Shuttle, re-entry space vehicles and others, have paved the way for the cutting-edge work this country is doing now. The fantastic success of the first X-51 flight in May was actually the realization of years of painstaking hard work by countless people behind the scenes. Programs have come and gone never to fly, but since the intellectual capital has been passed down through the decades we eventually arrive at successes like X-51. “AEDC’s hypersonic test capabilities together with other national capabilities have contributed to the recent string of successful experimental flight vehicles in significant ways. The rigorous testing in Tunnel 9, the von Kármán Gas Dynamics Facility (VKF), the Aerodynamic and Propulsion Test Unit and High-Enthalpy Arc-Heated Facilities has led to significant advancements in engine and airframe technology,” he said. “The work of engineers and those who support their efforts, through the data and analysis they provide, has resulted in high temperature 2010 | WIND TUNNEL INTERNATIONAL
Carson McAfee, ATA outside machinist and foreman, makes a control surface change to the sub-scale model of the X-51 WaveRider during a break in aerodynamic testing at AEDC’s von Karman Gas Dynamics Facility in 2006. (AEDC file photo)
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