Hypersonic Wave Riders

[KJ_Lesnick]

I'm pretty sure that the first wave-riders the British came up with were Caret wing designs starting as early as 1951: I do not know if this information was in anyway privy to the United States via directly or indirectly (when I say indirectly I mean some scientists may very well have worked with both countries and might very well have shared insights with both)

In the US, I think the first were Eggers and Syvertson's work which started in 1954 IIRC but was published in 1956: It was based on a delta-wing with a half cone on the underside which would increase air-pressure on the underside rather than decrease air pressure along the top.

While I know that by the 1950's

• The aerodynamicists realized one could use the cone as an inlet as on the XB-70
  
• The knowledge existed such that one could replace a cone with a wedge (as on the XB-70) to do the same job
  
• That it was known that wings with low-sweep and suitable thinness could achieve lower drag once shockwave angles went past the wing-sweep
  
• That at least Convair knew to design a fuselage shape for it's Super Hustler like a blade rather than a pointed nose
  
• That wing designs such the crescent-wing (used by the British) were already known in the United States by the late 1950's
  

I don't know if anybody had thought of

• Using a 2D compression and expansion ramp like we'd use on a modern wave-rider (rather than a wedge-splitter)
  
• Ogival wings in which the wing sweep angle starts at zero, then progressively increases (like a shield or shovel or surfboard) from root to tip
  

.
I know the Kuchemann Tau which was a spatular nose design based on the earlier highly swept wing wave-riding lifting-body designs with a zero-sweep 2D insert half the span of the wings was published in 1966 with a proposed 35 percent reduction in drag; I'm wondering if anybody had thought of a similar idea earlier than 1966.

I was thinking of some kind of hypersonic bomber in lieu of the XB-70.  Sure the XB-70 with Mach 3 or even Mach 4 capability was an awesome machine, Mach 6.5 or Mach 10-12 would be un-interceptable and provided it could accurately release a bomb (nuclear or not), it would be a force to be reckoned with...

[Captain Canada]

A little lost, but I love the idea. Fast moving wave riders would be almost impossible to stop....

[rickshaw]

A little lost, but I love the idea. Fast moving wave riders would be almost impossible to stop....

If sufficient explosive and metal moving in the opposite direction is applied, anything can be stopped. 

[Rheged]

A little lost, but I love the idea. Fast moving wave riders would be almost impossible to stop....

IF they are unstoppable in motion, the concept  of the pre-emptive strike  to cripple them before take-off  raises its ugly head......

[Mr.Creak]

A little lost, but I love the idea. Fast moving wave riders would be almost impossible to stop....

If sufficient explosive and metal moving in the opposite direction is applied, anything can be stopped. 

You don't need moving metal.
IIRC Air International had a 3 (?) part article on hypersonic aircraft (David ?somebody? author) where it was posited that any on-board air-ground weapons would be little more than inert guided rods - the vehicle's speed, and the added velocity from the "drop", would render them sufficiently deadly to most ground targets.
How much more fragile is the carrying aircraft going to be?
Hitting even a "stationary" lump of metal would be devastating at Mach 6+.
There's a unit of measure used by the guys on sfconsim-l: the rick and kilorick (named after one of their members Rick something-or-other, who pointed out that a difference in velocity of 5 km/sec at impact gives a 1 kg mass the same energy as 1 kg TNT IIRC).
Mach 6 is ~2 km/ sec = ~400 grammes of TNT per kg.
Compare that with a 30mm gun (GSh-301 for example) round which carries only 40-50 grammes of explosive.

[Gondor]

A little lost, but I love the idea. Fast moving wave riders would be almost impossible to stop....

If sufficient explosive and metal moving in the opposite direction is applied, anything can be stopped. 

I agree although I think that you may need a bucket of instant sunshine to do the trick considering how much distance such a vehicle would move if your anti-hypersonic missile was slightly inaccurate so covering a larger area would be far more effective.

Gondor

[KJ_Lesnick]

Captain Canada

The idea was mostly about when the aerodynamic knowledge to produce the integrated inlet and lifting bodies came into existence (not necessarily even the same as when they idea was first developed, but when the idea first came into being).

[rickshaw]

Mr. Creak and Gondor, you make valid points but I draw your attention to the most important word in my sentence - "Sufficient". 

[KJ_Lesnick]

Rickshaw's right everybody...

[KJ_Lesnick]

rickshaw

Correct...