Word: jetted
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...exterior is cool). From the air intake in its snout, invisible hooks reach out; their suction will clasp a man who comes too close and break his body. The blast roaring out the tail will knock a man down at 150 ft. The reaction of the speeding jet of gas pushes against the test stand with a two-ton thrust. If the engine were pointing upward and left unshackled, it would take off like a rocket, each pound of its weight overbalanced by more than two pounds of thrust...
...early jet planes were hurried improvisations (Lockheed wrapped the famed P-80 around a jet engine in 141 frantic days) which did not begin to utilize the new engine's capabilities. Even later airframe designs have not kept up with the fast-growing muscles of the engine. Britain's first turbojet flew successfully in 1941. Designed by Britain's Air Commodore Frank Whittle,* it developed only 850 Ibs. of propulsive thrust. Now engines with 5,000 Ibs. of thrust are available, and soon there will be bruisers with 8,000-10.000 Ibs. No one thinks that even...
Before the jet engine came into the picture (like a young wife smashing the habits of a sot-in-his-ways bachelor), airframe designers were screaming for more power. Now they have it, they do not know quite what to do with it. The power-plant men are doing the screaming now. The great engine builders (Pratt & Whitney, Allison, General Electric, Westinghouse) are working on more powerful engines. "Get busy," they warn the airframe men, "and design some airframes that can keep up with...
Gargantuan Thirst. Only one present type of airplane, the fast, short-range fighter, is well adapted to the jet engine, whose great failing is its gargantuan thirst for fuel. Consumption varies with speed, altitude and other factors, but a fair figure for the big jets flying at low altitudes is 1,000 gallons of kerosene an hour. This means one gallon every 3.6 seconds. Fighters and interceptors justify this drain, but for bombers and commercial airliners, jet engines still use too much fuel...
...Jet planes are pushed by the reaction of the blast of hot gas shooting out the tail pipe. The present problem is that this blast is speeding much too fast-at about 1,300 m.p.h. Even when the plane is flying at 600 m.p.h., the blast is shooting backward in still air at 700 (1,300 minus 600) m.p.h. The engine is still wasting too much energy merely stirring up the air. To approach the normal propulsive efficiency of a propeller plane, a jet plane would have to fly faster than sound. But one arresting compensation-for the jets...