CAN WE CRASH THE DEADLY FLAME BARRIER? (Oct, 1955)
CAN WE CRASH THE DEADLY FLAME BARRIER?
Fly a plane fast enough and friction will melt it. Can we “put out the fire?”
By David W. Barclay
ENGINEERS, who sometimes get pretty irritated when writers dream up catch phrases for their scientific findings, are not exactly happy with the term Flame Barrier or Heat Barrier which has been applied to hypersonic flight. (A barrier, say the engineers, is something you can climb over, sneak around or bull your way through. None of these work when an air-breathing, wing-lifted vehicle is trying to go faster and faster in the envelope of air which surrounds the earth.) But regardless of what you call it, the obstacle—air friction—is there and gets worse with each extra mile per hour of speed. Eventually you wind up as a glowing ember, blob of molten metal, or a cloud of superheated dust. Read the rest of this entry »




























