China's hypersonic aircraft engine based its design on the scrapped and rejected a proposal from a Chinese-born engineer of NASA way back in the 90s.
A group of researchers in China have already unveiled a prototype and tested its hypersonic flight engine, as per the report by Interesting Engineering.
It turns out that the radical redesign of the hypersonic flight engine is based on an abandoned project of NASA over 20 years ago already.
Hypersonic Aircraft Engine Design from NASA's Scrapped Project
The hypersonic engine design was first introduced by a former engineer of NASA or the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Ming Han Tang, back in the late 1990s.
It is worth noting that Tang used to be the chief engineer of the hypersonic program of the United States space agency, according to the news story of South China Morning Post.
While Tang was still leading the US hypersonic program, he proposed a radical design of super-fast aircraft, which was then known as the Two-Stage Vehicle or TSV X-plan design.
The proposal of the former NASA engineer has become the center of the Boeing Manta X-47C program back then.
However, the US government decided to scrap the ambitious project of the Chinese engineer even before testing of the design commenced.
The government attributed the sudden termination of the project due to its hefty costs to produce. Not to mention that there were some technical issues that the project also faced.
Hypersonic Aircraft Engine Design
The design of the TSV X-plane that Tang proposed to NASA back in the 90s is notable as it goes beyond how hypersonic aircraft are made.
Instead of having the engine of the aircraft on its underside, like any similar hypersonic plane, Tang's radical design included two separate engines on each side of the aircraft.
On top of that, the two engines work differently at lower speeds. Both of them would function as if they were any turbine jet engine.
On the other hand, it could shift to a hyper-speed mode that allows that aircraft to accelerate in an impressive performance, which is five times the speed of sound.
China's Hypersonic Aircraft
This time around, Chinese researchers based their hypersonic engine design on the more than 20-year-old proposal.
The researchers were able to do so as the blueprint for the Boeing Manta X-47C program had already been declassified by NASA back in 2011.
The group that works on the prototype of the new hypersonic engine design is composed of Profession Tan Huijun of the Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics and his colleagues.
Elsewhere, back on Sept. 26, China proposed a hypersonic missile that could wipe out both electricity and communication lines in just ten seconds.
Meanwhile, the US is also working on its hypersonic missile projects.
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Written by Teejay Boris
