Word: turbojet
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Bolted motionless on a test stand, the little monster is not impressive. It has no coolly symmetrical propeller, no phalanx of cylinderheads, none of the hard geometrical grace of the conventional aircraft engine. Yet the unprepossessing turbojet engine has thrown the air designers into ecstatic confusion: nobody yet knows how fast the jet will enable man to fly, but the old speed ceilings are off. In their less guarded moments, sober designers talk of speeds so high that aircraft will glow like meteors...
...coming of the turbojet does not mean that the engine in use since the first days of the Wright brothers (pistons and propellers) is done for. It will be a long time, if ever, before that old stand-by disappears; it still has the edge over jets for many purposes, including long-range bombers. But where the power range of the old engine stops, the power of the jet begins. An air revolution is beginning...
...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 these will...
...designers' sights are aimed at higher things than the speeds of these sweet-flying planes. Newer models, such as North American's F-86A, are already nibbling gingerly at the speed of sound, and no one doubts that the turbojet engine can soon push properly designed airframes across the threshold...
...Society of Automotive Engineers. In outline, the job looks simple. A "nuclear reactor" (essentially a controlled, slow-exploding atom bomb) gives off most of its energy as heat. One way to do the trick is to put a reactor in place of the combustion chambers of a turbojet engine (see chart). A compressor forces air into the forward end of the engine. Heated and expanded by the nuclear reactor, the air shoots toward the rear end. On the way it spins a turbine, which runs the compressor through a shaft. The force of the jet escaping from the tailpipe pushes...