New Atlas 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.
Hypersonic missiles capable of flying well in excess of five times the speed of sound promise to revolutionize warfare and aviation in general in a manner not seen since the sound barrier was broken in 1947. 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 tricky bit is how to get the vehicle into the hypersonic range where it can cruise under its own power or fly as a Mach 5+ glider. For the ATLAS program, GE Aerospace has come up with the latest in Solid-Fuel Ramjet (SFRJ) technology that seems to operate almost by magic.
Ramjets look more like a conjuring trick than technology until you figure out how they work. Look inside a ramjet engine, and all you’ll see is an empty tube. Switch it on when it’s on the ground and all you’ll get is the same hollow tube with jet fuel squirting into it, achieving nothing.
That’s because a ramjet operates on a different principle from a conventional jet engine.
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…
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