Word: rams
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Every new airplane engine starts out in life as a fairly simple machine but gets more & more complicated as it grows up. Ram jets are no exception. The early models were hardly more than hollow cylinders-enchantingly simple, but also extremely inefficient. Their "fires" often blew out, and there was no adequate way to control their power output. So the engineers went to work to educate the ram jet and teach it how to act as a well-behaved engine should. Recently the Wright Aeronautical Corp. told how a grown-up supersonic ram jet works...
Push & Pull. To overcome the bad habits of earlier ram jets, Wright engineers have installed in the new model a complicated system of instruments that measure temperature, pressure, etc. As the ram jet changes speed and altitude the instruments feed in just the amount of fuel needed to keep the engine working at top efficiency. If a sudden change of conditions makes the main flame go out, it is reignited immediately by the small, sheltered flame...
...Wright ram jets have "flown" only in a monstrous test chamber at the Wright plant at Wood-Ridge, N.J. Compressors blow air into the ram jet's nose. Simultaneously, three steam "ejectors,"' fed with steam from the plant's main boilers, pull combustion gases out of the ram jet's exhaust. By regulating the compressors and ejectors, the engineers can feed the ram jet with air of almost any speed and density. It is no trick at all to make it act as if it were speeding 2,000 m.p.h. at an altitude of 15 miles...
...Better Missiles. The biggest ram jet tested so far is 20 inches in diameter, but bigger ones are on the way. Exact details are a military secret, but Wright engineers are already talking about a monster (probably no bigger than an automobile) that will develop 75,000 h.p.-about one-third as much as the Queen Mary...
These Paul Bunyan engines are intended primarily for expendable guided missiles. Since a ram jet does not have to carry its own oxygen, as a rocket does, it is seven times more efficient. But since ram jets have no power at all when standing still, the missile will probably be tossed into the air by a great booster rocket. When it reaches a sufficient speed (something like 500 m.p.h.) the ram jet will take over. Wright's experts also foresee another use for the big new ram jets: when airplanes fly at 2,000 m.p.h., they believe a ram...