Flying the Hypert1 Skies
A little airplane has given new meaning to the term “going hyper.”
The Hyper-X2 recently broke the record for air-breathing jet planes when it traveled at a hypersonic speed of seven times the speed of sound.That’s about 5,000 miles per hour.At this speed,you’d get around the world — flying along the equator — in less than 5 hours.
The Hyper-X is an unmanned,experimental aircraft just 12 feet long. It achieves hypersonic speed using a special sort of engine known as a scramjet3.It may sound like something from a comic book,but engineers have been experimenting with scramjets since the 1960s.
For an engine to burn fuel and produce energy,it needs oxygen.A jet engine,like those on passenger airplanes,gets oxygen from the air.A rocket engine typically goes faster but has to carry its own supply of oxygen.A scramjet engine goes as fast as a rocket,but it doesn’t have to carry its own oxygen supply.A scramjet's special design allows it to obtain oxygen from the air that flows through the engine.And it does so without letting the fast-moving air put out the combustion flames. However,a scramjet engine works properly only at speeds greater than five times the speed of sound.A booster rocket carried the Hyper-X to an altitude of about 100,000 feet for its test flight.The aircraft’s record-beating flight lasted just 11 seconds.Although the little plane’s self-powered flight lasted only 11
seconds,that brief journey on March 27 makes a major milestone on the way to a new breed of very fast airplanes,comments Werner J.A.Dahm of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor4.In the future,engineers predict,airplanes equipped with scramjet engines could transport cargo quickly and cheaply to the brink of space. Such hypersonic jets could potentially carry passengers anywhere in the world in just a few hours.
Out of the three experimental Hyper-X aircrafts built for NASA5,only one is now left.The agency has plans for another 11-second hypersonic flight,this time at 10 times the speed of the sound.
词汇
hypersonic/7haipE(:)5sCnik/adj.超音速的 booster/ 5bu:stE/n.助推器
equator/i5kweitE(r)/ n.赤道 milestone/5mailstEun/n.里程碑
unmanned/Qn5mAnd/adj.无人的 booster rocket 助推火箭
scramjet/5skrAmdVet/n.超音速燃烧冲压式, cargo/5kB:^Eu/n.货物
喷气发动机
combustion/kEm5bQstFEn/n.燃烧 brink/briNk/n.边缘
练习:
1. The Hyper-X broke the record because
A it was the first air-breathing jet plane.
B it flew along the equator.
C it flew at speeds smaller than five times the speed of sound.
D it traveled at a supersonic speed.
2. What kind of an engine did the Hyper-X use?
A A jet engine that gets oxygen from the air.
B A scramjet engine that doesn’t carry its own oxygen supply.
C A rocket engine that carries its own supply of oxygen.
D A iet engine that uses no oxygen.
3. What is NOT true about the scramjet engine?
A It goes slower than a rocket.
B It extracts oxygen from the air that flows through the engine.
C It works only at speeds greater than five times the speed of sound.
D It doesn’t carry its own oxygen supply.
4. What did Werner J.A.Dahm of the University of Michigan say about the Hyper-X test flight?
A It indicated the birth of a very fast airplane.
B It was self-powered,so it lasted only 11 seconds.
C It can transportcargo quickly and cheaply to the brink of space.
D It is a major milestone in the journey of making a new type of very fast airplanes,
5. What has NASA planned to do?
A To make another 11-second hypersonic flight at 10 times the speed of the sound.
B To make three more Hyper-X experiments.
C To retest the aircraft that is left.
D To make the aircraft fly higher and longer.
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