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GE Aerospace flies hypersonic engine with no moving parts
What has zero moving parts, yet can blast an aerial vehicle to velocities beyond Mach 5? The answer is the recently flight-tested Atmospheric Test of Launched Airbreathing System (ATLAS) powered by a new solid-fueled ramjet built by GE Aerospace.
Not only could it turn flights from London to Sydney into an afternoon jaunt instead of a 22-plus-hour ordeal, it could also make current air defenses obsolete as vehicles blast by before defenders would even detect them. The kind of engines that power an airliner uses a series of fans and turbine impellers to draw in air and compress it on the way to the combustion chamber, where it mixes with fuel and burns to generate thrust. According to GE Aerospace, the flights were necessary because wind tunnels couldn't provide the complex factors found in the real world, including vibrations and temperature stresses.
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