I ask you to build tractors, but you build rockets?

Gobi Desert, desert base.

A H-6H was parked at the take-off position, with a strange thing hanging under the belly of the aircraft.

Its front half is a small delta-wing aircraft, with a WCR09 combined power engine, fuel tank and simple control section installed inside.

After the first WCR09 combined power engine was manufactured, in response to the strong request of the military, Xinyuan did not fly it by itself. Instead, it moved to the desert base, and researchers here designed a small airframe for the test flight.

The triangular aircraft code-named W-1 is a pure verification aircraft, just to test whether the performance of WCR09 meets the standards.

In order to simplify the design, there is even only a disposable landing gear, which cannot be used for takeoff. When landing, two skids are extended for landing, and they can be replaced after grinding.

After all, it is a verification of an aircraft that can fly at 10 times the speed of sound. It would be troublesome to get a serious landing gear, so I might as well not do it now.

It was already January, but it was not yet time for vacation at the desert base. Lin Ju stood in the warm control room, where monitoring data on W-1 from many aspects was summarized.

As the test command was issued, the H-6H taxied and took off, flying all the way to an altitude of 12,000 meters above the center of the northwest desert. The operator pressed the button, and the explosive bolt on the pylon holding W-1 was disconnected, and the W-1 was thrown down. .

The turbofan part of WCR09 started immediately. The 9 tons of thrust was too abundant for the W-1, which weighed less than 5 tons. The speed exceeded Mach 2 in a few minutes after turning on the afterburner, and it was still rising.

At the same time, the height of W-1 also continued to rise, reaching an altitude of 30,000 meters at Mach 2.8, and there was still power left, so it was still climbing.

Finally, when the turbofan part reached its limit, the W-1 altitude had reached 43,000 meters and the speed was Mach 3.13!

For the first time, the desert base felt the technological advancement of WCR09. It was a turbofan, not a turbojet, that could work normally at an altitude of 40,000 meters. Normal aircraft engines would have stalled long ago.

Although the thrust is a little smaller, this high-altitude and high-speed performance is indeed born for the air and sky.

Immediately afterwards, the ramjet engine part showed that the starting conditions had been reached, and the ground immediately ordered to enter hypersonic mode.

In the air inlet of WCR09, the movable partition that originally closed the ramjet part slowly folded downwards, and the turbofan engine began to reduce thrust. High-speed thin air poured into the ramjet engine inlet and decelerated through the trumpet-shaped air inlet, but the airflow speed Still faster than the speed of sound.

In the combustion chamber, the atomized composite fuel is sprayed out and then ignited.

With a detonation, the scramjet engine ignited successfully!

The air inlet of the turbofan engine is completely closed, and the thrust is completely provided by the ramjet.

There is no need to directly increase the engine power to the maximum on the ground, because W-1 does not have that much fuel to accelerate a little bit.

From Mach 3.2 to Mach 6, WCR09 was driven by the scramjet engine in just 40 seconds!

The speed of the airflow is getting higher and higher, but these violent airflows become controllable after passing through the simple but extremely precisely designed air inlet, and finally enter the combustion chamber where they are mixed with fuel and ignited to explode into thrust.

The principle of the ramjet engine is actually very simple. It is an air pipe with a fuel nozzle and an igniter inserted in the middle. That's it.

Airflow enters, fuel is injected, ignition occurs, and thrust is generated. It's that simple.

Traditional jet engines must first decelerate the airflow to subsonic speed through the air inlet, and then decelerate it layer by layer through the compressor blades, so that the air pressure and airflow state in the combustion chamber can be stabilized and ignited to generate thrust. Ramjet engines do not need anything, just A pipe.

The only difference lies in the design of the air inlet of this pipe and the design of the combustion chamber. As long as the angle of the air inlet is changed, various types of rotary detonation ramjet engines, sub-combustion ramjet engines, etc. can be produced. Amazing, right?

But such a simple design represents a supercomputer's day and night fluid dynamics simulation. Under hypersonic airflow, any small change will have a huge impact on the engine's operating conditions.

Of course, there is also the huge noise when the ramjet engine is working.

In the land of Western Xinjiang and Mongolia, people heard loud rumbling sounds from the sky. It was the sound of W-1 breaking through the 8 times speed of sound barrier and generating strong shock waves that were transmitted to the ground.

Even at an altitude of more than 40,000 meters, people on the ground can feel their ears ringing.

People raised their heads and watched curiously for a while, and finally an orange-white bright spot appeared, dragging a long white trail to draw curved lines in the sky, and finally the trail spread to form a spiral.

At the desert base, Dou Ping slapped himself hard on the face:

"The insulation must have failed, W-1 is finished!"

Researchers on the ground rushed out of the control room and saw W-1, which had lost control and turned into a meteor.

It will eventually fall somewhere in the desert at super high speed and become a large piece of debris.

Guo Shen adjusted his glasses:

"It should be that the gap in the skid was not handled well and it overheated. It is normal that the W-1 was designed in a hurry. What is the final flight speed in the normal state?"

"Let me see... 47,700 meters, speed... Mach 10.6! Let me go!"

Dou Ping looked at the last data obtained and shouted in surprise.

Without rockets, the scramjet engine flew above Mach 10!

Other researchers were also very shocked. Although WCR09's indicators were high, no one expected that the first flight would be so fierce. This is truly a powerful flying brick!

Guo Shen looked as expected:

"Then the Xuehu can enter the formal design. Since you are responsible for the airframe design, let us do the air inlet. Now I also have some ideas about the aerospace plane. Maybe I can integrate the rocket part into it."

Dou Ping shook his head: "You Xinyuan are really too radical. We plan to use a triangular body for the Xuehu aircraft, with four engines placed on the belly. How about that?"

"This is your business. As long as the WCR09 tests well, my mission is basically completed. What about the materials? The W-1 uses missile warhead paint. If the Snowbird uses this, the cost will be unaffordable."

"No idea."

Dou Ping is very single, because near-space vehicles are also atmospheric interior spacecraft. It would be too troublesome and expensive to install insulation tiles like the space shuttle, so we still have to take the traditional skinning route.

The current material selection preparation for the base is to choose between titanium alloy and high-grade stainless steel, but titanium alloy Lucia is a big country in production and resources, China does not have many, and high-grade stainless steel is not much more difficult than titanium alloy, and it can be used for one year. Thank God when the time comes.

Guo Shen didn't speak, but he was very clueless.

The H2 space shuttle is ready to abandon the route of attaching insulation tiles and integrate the insulation tiles with the fuselage to meet the life span of at least 100 takeoffs and landings. Xinyuan is still working hard on research and development.

This new integrated skin design can also be used in aerospace aircraft. It is hard to say whether the desert base will be ready by then.

A few days later, news of UFOs and meteors suddenly appearing in the western region appeared in many places. The spokesman said that the official knew nothing about it, but Aramco believed that it was a missile test.