PWA Tackles Hypersonics (1 Viewer)

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MIflyer

1st Lieutenant
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May 30, 2011
Cape Canaveral
From Av Week

As reusable hypersonic propulsion rises up the list of U.S. Defense Department priorities, Pratt & Whitney now confirms it is working on a secretive development program called Metacomet aimed at solving the problem of fielding high-speed, reusable propulsion systems at low cost.

Already at least two years old, Metacomet—a name linked to a 17th century Wampanoag chief, the namesake of a ridge overlooking a Pratt & Whitney research facility in Connecticut—marks the company's return to Mach 3-plus propulsion nearly a decade after selling its scramjet pioneer Rocketdyne arm to the parent company of Aerojet in 2012.

With the intellectual property of the former Rocketdyne off limits, Pratt & Whitney's GatorWorks division—a prototyping unit formed in 2018—launched Metacomet to focus on low-cost alternatives to ramjet and scramjet propulsion for high-speed flight.

The effort draws on the company's expertise with gas turbine combat engines, and in particular reaches back to decades-old experience with the unique J58 engine developed for the Mach 3-plus Lockheed SR-71. That aircraft achieved sustained flight above the Mach cutoff point of a normal turbojet by diverting inlet air from the compressor directly into the afterburner.

"The faster you go, the larger the propulsion system is relative to the vehicle and how much payload and fuel you can actually fit in," says David Stagney, senior director of GatorWorks. "So, we have spent a lot of time going back to the fundamentals and thinking about how to solve that problem differently. We know the Air Force wants to go really fast. They also want to have some very low-cost solutions, and to be able to have a large quantity of vehicles."

As a result, Stagney says Pratt & Whitney is tackling the problem from a new perspective. "We think that we can provide unique capabilities building on the legacy we have from the Mach 3 engine that we built [several] decades ago," he says. "Those core skills are still there, and our goal in GatorWorks is to come up with a whole portfolio of different solutions for a range of high-Mach solutions."

The engine-maker believes its design approach, which is thought to be tailored to higher speeds above Mach 3 but below Mach 5, is simpler and more affordable because it avoids the need for pure ramjet/scramjet cycles or the complexities of mode transition to and from turbine power.
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