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Destination Tomorrow - Episode 4

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Subido el 28 de mayo de 2007 por EducaMadrid

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NASA Destination Tomorrow Video containing five segments as described below. NASA Destination Tomorrow Segment explaining how new tire tread designs and road surfaces are tested at the Aircraft Landing Dynamics Facility. NASA Destination Tomorrow Segment exploring new, lightweight materials called composite materials. The video describes NASA's use of these materials in new space craft parts that are tougher and safer than conventional materials. NASA Destination Tomorrow Segment explaining the history of the flexible wing and the existence of the hang glider. NASA Destination Tomorrow Segment exploring NASA's Hyper-X program that is working on experimental engine designs that could propel commercial planes into space and make conventional rockets a thing of the past. NASA Destination Tomorrow Segment describing wind tunnels and how aircraft designers use them to understand airflow.

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My Outro For My 20th Birthday 00:00:00
Coming up on Destination Tomorrow, NASA's HyperX program brings a trip to space a little 00:00:30
closer with new scramjet engine designs. We'll also see how NASA engineers are developing 00:00:41
new light-weight materials that are stronger than steel. And we meet a retired NASA engineer 00:00:46
whom many consider to be the father of modern hang gliding. All this and more next on Destination 00:00:52
Tomorrow. Hello everyone, I'm Steele McGonigal. And I'm Kara O'Brien, and welcome to Destination 00:00:57
Tomorrow. This program will uncover how past, present, and future research is creating today's 00:01:07
knowledge to answer the questions and solve the challenges of tomorrow. Today, flights into space 00:01:11
are usually reserved for trained astronauts, but a new technology being developed by NASA may 00:01:16
someday allow anyone the opportunity to travel into space. NASA's HyperX program is working on 00:01:21
experimental engine designs that could eventually propel commercial planes into space. This new 00:01:27
technology may make conventional rockets a thing of the past. Tonya Saint-Romain finds out more 00:01:31
about this fascinating new program. Have you ever dreamed of going to your local airport and getting 00:01:36
on a cross-country flight that would take you minutes instead of hours? Or getting on a flight 00:01:45
that would actually take you into space? This may seem like an unrealistic idea now, but in the near 00:01:49
future, these dreams may actually become reality. NASA researchers in the HyperX program office are 00:01:55
working on a new vehicle. It's called the X-43. The vehicle will demonstrate technology that could 00:02:02
someday allow aircraft to travel at incredible speeds, even fly into space. The X-43 has a 00:02:09
revolutionary new type of air-breathing engine called a scramjet that may enable future spacecraft 00:02:16
to take off and land like an airplane instead of blasting off like a conventional rocket. The 00:02:22
scramjet engine may also be used by commercial airlines, and that would significantly reduce the 00:02:27
amount of travel time between destinations. I spoke with NASA manager Vince Rausch to find out 00:02:33
more about the X-43 and the scramjet engine. Tonya, the X-43 is a revolutionary new kind of 00:02:39
airplane. What we want to do with this is prove that hypersonic flight with an air-breathing engine 00:02:45
is possible. Hypersonic flight means flying more than five times the speed of sound. Today, most 00:02:50
airplanes fly below the speed of sound or subsonically. This airplane, the X-43, which you see here full 00:02:55
scale inverted in the wind tunnel, uses a new kind of engine to do that called a scramjet or supersonic 00:03:01
combustion ramjet. Vince, what makes the scramjet so special compared to a typical engine? Well, the 00:03:07
scramjet is very much like a jet engine as far as how it operates. However, if you look at a typical 00:03:12
jet engine on today's airliners, what you see are fan blades in the front that compress the air 00:03:18
before it goes into the combustor section where it's mixed with fuel and burned to produce thrust. 00:03:22
The scramjet engine, such as this one, uses the forward velocity of the vehicle as it moves forward 00:03:26
in the air to ram the air into the engine so it can do away with those fan blades. It then mixes 00:03:32
the fuel, burns it, and produces a thrust. That's much more efficient at the higher velocities that 00:03:38
this engine operates at than using compressor blades. What's the technology that's going to 00:03:42
make this plane fly into space? The technology primarily is that this engine, because it doesn't 00:03:47
have moving parts, is designed to operate over a wide speed range, can actually fly theoretically up 00:03:53
to 25 times the speed of sound, which is orbital velocity. What we want to do with this vehicle is 00:03:58
show that one of these engines actually works in flight, something that's never been done before. 00:04:03
So we're really excited about taking this to flight, show that it works, and then from there go to 00:04:07
bigger vehicles to show that we can actually make space access vehicles that fly like airplanes. 00:04:11
The scramjet engine is very different from conventional rocket engines. In order to break 00:04:16
free from the Earth's gravitational field, vehicles like the space shuttle use a fuel mixture of 00:04:21
hydrogen and oxygen to propel the vehicle forward. Unfortunately, the oxygen and hydrogen must be 00:04:26
carried in the vehicle, which significantly increases the weight, making it very expensive 00:04:32
and inefficient to fly to space. Since the scramjet engine actually scoops oxygen into the 00:04:37
engine from the atmosphere, it doesn't need the extra tanks to carry the heavy oxygen propellant. 00:04:43
The scooped air, which is traveling above the speed of sound relative to the vehicle, 00:04:48
is heated up as it reaches the combustion section of the engine. It's then mixed with hydrogen and 00:04:52
burned quickly to provide thrust. This process allows the vehicle to move faster and faster, 00:04:57
reaching orbital velocity, enabling the vehicle to break the gravitational fields and fly into space. 00:05:03
We have a long history here at NASA Langley of doing scramjet research. In fact, over the last 00:05:09
40 years, we've built and tested over 20 engines. We've run 5,000 tests. If you ran these tests 00:05:14
end-to-end, we would actually have enough test time to fly five times around the globe. 00:05:20
Unfortunately, there's some things that we can't duplicate on the ground in a facility such as this 00:05:24
that we have to take to flight. So now what we're ready to do is take engines such as this scramjet 00:05:28
engine to flight. All right, let me get this straight. The X-43 uses an air-breathing engine. 00:05:33
What makes it different from other vehicles that fly into space like the Space Shuttle? 00:05:38
The Space Shuttle uses rocket engines, obviously, instead of an air-breathing engine. 00:05:42
What we want to do is take the cost of the Space Shuttle, which is about $10,000 a pound today, 00:05:46
and by using an air-breathing vehicle such as a follow-on to the X-43, drop that price down to a 00:05:51
couple of hundred dollars a pound. That would mean that you and I could take a space trip, 00:05:57
something that I'd very much like to do in the future. It would also, by operating like an 00:06:01
airplane, take off and land on a runway. It would be much more flexible, much more reliable, 00:06:05
and obviously much safer. So we want to really take airplane technology and apply it to space 00:06:10
launch technology. And the scramjet is kind of a mix of both. And we're very excited about the 00:06:15
potential for the future and what we're about in this program is starting to prove that that 00:06:20
potential is really there. Vince, I know the X-43 is still in the initial test phase, 00:06:25
but when might you and I expect that we could actually hop on one of these planes and fly 00:06:30
into space? Tonya, we have a lot of work to do before we get to that point. The X-43 is the 00:06:34
first step. Beyond the X-43, we hope to have an X-43C, which would be slightly larger, 00:06:40
and then going from there into fully reusable systems where we test them many, many times. 00:06:46
I would say that realistically, we're talking about being able to make a decision on building 00:06:51
a real airplane using the scramjet technology in the 2025 timeframe. Currently, the world's 00:06:55
fastest air-breathing aircraft, the SR-71, cruises slightly above Mach 3. The HyperX 00:07:02
research vehicle will have the ability to fly at Mach 10, or 10 times the speed of sound, 00:07:07
which is roughly 2 miles per second. Up next, testing shuttle tires at 250 miles an hour 00:07:12
on the ground. But first, did you know that the X-15 was the first winged aircraft to investigate 00:07:18
piloted hypersonic flight? From June 1959 to October 1968, the X-15 set the world speed record 00:07:23
at Mach 6.7, or 4,520 miles per hour. It also set the altitude record of 354,200 feet, 00:07:31
and earned astronaut wings for five of its pilots. 00:07:39
The term stronger than steel used to be synonymous with great strength. But today, 00:07:44
many manufacturers are using new lightweight materials called composite materials rather 00:07:49
than steel. This is because composite materials are generally stronger, lighter, and much more 00:07:54
resistant to extreme temperatures than steel. NASA is using composite materials to make new 00:08:00
spacecraft and aircraft parts that are tougher and more efficient than conventional parts. 00:08:05
Derek Leonidoff takes us to the Advanced Materials and Processing Branch at NASA Langley 00:08:10
to find out more. 00:08:15
Have you ever heard the term composite materials? Even though most people don't know exactly what 00:08:21
they are, there is no doubt that these materials are being used by most of us every day. More and 00:08:26
more of the goods we use, like tennis rackets, golf clubs, cars, and even planes, are made with 00:08:30
these materials. But do you know what a composite material is, or how one is made? Well, I spoke 00:08:36
with researchers at NASA who are developing new composite materials that are not only lighter and 00:08:42
safer than existing materials, like steel, but also stronger. These researchers are also working 00:08:47
with radical new materials called nanotubes that are thousands of times smaller than a human hair, 00:08:53
but they may revolutionize the way future materials are made. A composite is really a 00:08:59
generic term which describes a material that is composed of one or more parts, and those parts 00:09:04
are combined together in a way that you end up with the final material that has better properties 00:09:11
than any of the individual components. An example of a composite that we see every day is a tree. 00:09:17
A tree is composed of cellulose fibers that are bound together by a polymer called lignin, and 00:09:23
when you combine these two components together, you end up with a tree which is very, very strong. 00:09:28
A composite material is made when a combination of two or more materials are combined together 00:09:33
to make a new and different material. Researchers take individual materials, one, a reinforcing 00:09:38
material for strength and stiffness, and one, a glue or binding material, such as a resin, 00:09:44
to surround and hold the reinforcement in place. When the reinforcing material and the binding 00:09:50
material are combined, they make a new material. This new material usually is not only strong and 00:09:54
resistant to extreme temperatures, but can be much lighter than the existing material. 00:10:01
Similar to the tree, an analogous synthetic material is a graphite composite. A graphite 00:10:06
composite is composed of carbon fibers which are very, very strong, and to make a structural 00:10:11
material using these carbon fibers, we consolidate it by combining it with this polymer matrix resin. 00:10:17
This polymer matrix resin is kind of like a glue, and this is a large part of the research that we 00:10:23
do here at NASA. Depending on the properties of this particular polymer, it will dictate the 00:10:28
maximum temperature that you can use it at and also how strong this material is. One of the ways 00:10:34
that we can use the glue that Joyce Lin talked about is to make it into little balls called 00:10:39
microspheres. As you can see, it's mostly air. Since it's mostly air, we have the combination 00:10:44
of a strong material that's also lightweight. What we do is we take the balls and we consolidate it 00:10:49
into a foam piece, and because, again, the material is strong to begin with, you now have a very 00:10:55
tough, lightweight structure. We then take this structure, combine it with carbon fiber. What we 00:11:02
have done now is to have a lightweight structure that improves fuel efficiency, therefore it reduces 00:11:10
the cost of travel, and we also have improved safety in aircraft travel. So Mia, what is the future of 00:11:16
composite materials? I mean, where do we go from here? One of the things that we're looking into 00:11:22
now is called nanotechnology. Nanotechnology presumes that we're able to go into the atomic 00:11:26
level, move atoms, so that we can create materials in a very controlled manner. That way, we can 00:11:32
design materials very precisely. In the current technology, we use wires embedded in structures 00:11:37
to sense defects in aircraft parts. We are trying now to reduce the size of these wires so that, 00:11:42
in effect, we have nerves embedded in aircraft structures. Because carbon nanotubes are about 00:11:47
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Idioma/s:
en
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Autor/es:
NASA LaRC Office of Education
Subido por:
EducaMadrid
Licencia:
Reconocimiento - No comercial - Sin obra derivada
Visualizaciones:
387
Fecha:
28 de mayo de 2007 - 17:04
Visibilidad:
Público
Enlace Relacionado:
NASAs center for distance learning
Duración:
11′ 53″
Relación de aspecto:
4:3 Hasta 2009 fue el estándar utilizado en la televisión PAL; muchas pantallas de ordenador y televisores usan este estándar, erróneamente llamado cuadrado, cuando en la realidad es rectangular o wide.
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Tamaño:
69.20 MBytes

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