Hypersonic reconnaissance aircraft
A conceptual design of a hypersonic reconnaissance aircraft for the U.S. Navy is discussed. After eighteen weeks of work, a waverider design powered by two augmented turbofans was chosen. The aircraft was designed to be based on an aircraft carrier and to cruise 6,000 nautical miles at Mach 4;80,000 feet and above. As a result the size of the aircraft was only allowed to have a length of eighty feet, fifty-two feet in wingspan, and roughly 2,300 square feet in planform area. Since this is a mainly cruise aircraft, sixty percent of its 100,000 pound take-off weight is JP fuel. At cruise, the highest temperature that it will encounter is roughly 1,100 F, which can be handled through the use of a passive cooling system.
Bulk, Tim↗