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Aircraft


"RUSSIA'S ELON MUSK" IS DEVELOPING HYPERSONIC ROCKET CARGO PLANES

By Loz Blain
February 09, 2022

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"Russia's Elon Musk" is develo...


After just 4 months, Destinus has flown its first prototype, the size of a car.
Another is coming, which the company says will be the size of a bus
Destinus
View 4 Images
1/4
After just 4 months, Destinus has flown its first prototype, the size of a car.
Another is coming, which the company says will be the size of a bus
Destinus
2/4
The hypersonic plane would use an air turbo rocket first stage, then a rocket
second stage engine, both powered by liquid hydrogen, to reach speeds up to Mach
15
Destinus
3/4
Most of the high-speed cruising would be done in the thin air of the mesosphere,
above 50,000 m
Destinus
4/4
The aircraft design developed by the EU's Stratofly project – which itself was
developed from the prior LAPCAT MR2.4 project
Stratofly

View gallery - 4 images

Described by his PR team as "like Russia's Elon Musk," serial entrepreneur
Mikhail Korkorich says his new company Destinus is building a hydrogen-powered,
zero-emissions, transcontinental cargo drone capable of hypersonic Mach 15
cruise speeds.



This Hyperplane, according to Destinus, would "combine the technological
advances of a spaceplane with the simple physics of a glider to create a vehicle
that meets the demands of a hyper connected world," blasting cargo between
Europe and Australia in just a couple of hours using clean liquid hydrogen fuel.



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A fully autonomous machine, the Hyperplane would take off from regular airport
runways and fly slowly to the coast before accelerating to supersonic speeds. In
an interview with DroneTalks, Korkorich explained that this would be done using
a "first stage air turbo rocket engine, which is, I would say, a known
technology."

It would then ignite its second stage, a rocket engine, to accelerate to
hypersonic speeds between Mach 13 and Mach 15 at mesospheric altitudes over 50
km (160,000 ft) where air resistance is greatly reduced.



"The logic is simple," said Korkorich. "If you want to move something from one
place on Earth to another place on Earth, you need to spend energy in several
directions. One, you need to overcome gravity as long as you're keeping the
plane in the air. So, longer means more gravity losses. Second is against the
friction of the air, and third is for your maximum velocity kinetic energy.

"Yes, we need to accelerate our vehicle to a very high velocity with the rocket
engine. So we need to spend more energy for acceleration. But because we are
flying 10 times faster, and because we are flying at extremely high altitudes
... where there's more than 10 times less air than at 10 km (33,000 ft), our
gravity losses and our aerodynamic losses are extremely low. So overall it
starts to be very appealing. Actually ... we can move stuff from here to another
continent cheaper than normal planes. It sounds strange, but it isn't; we just
spend less energy for this."

Most of the high-speed cruising would be done in the thin air of the mesosphere,
above 50,000 m
Destinus


In order to get there, Korkorich says one key step will be developing a rocket
engine that's "almost as re-usable as a jet engine," as well as a hydrogen
cooling system that can stop the aircraft's structure from melting under the
"dozens of megawatts per square meter" of heat that hypersonic vehicles produce
pushing through even the low-density air at mesospheric altitudes.

Korkorich says the plan is to start out moving urgent, high-value premium cargo
– medical deliveries, secure documents, critical infrastructure parts – but that
eventually "amazing tuna from the Mediterranean will be in the kitchen of
Japanese restaurants as fresh as if it's just been caught, eventually at the
same price." By flying way up in the mesosphere, Korkorich says the Hyperplane
will generate "10 times less" sonic boom noise.

Destinus says it's opened four offices, in Spain, France, Switzerland and
Germany, and raised some pretty decent capital to get started, but that it will
need a lot more. "The capital requirements are immense," reads a company blog
post. "Kokorich estimates that he will need more than a billion francs before
Destinus is profitable. The first financing round of eleven million this spring
was completed in one afternoon, and the investors – most of whom knew Kokorich
from his previous companies – only needed a few presentation slides." The
company expects another imminent 25-million round to come in just as easily.
"It's a huge bet Kokorich is making," continues the blog, "with enormous
potential and unclear chances of success."

Within just four months of starting out, the company says it has already flown
its first prototype, called Jungfrau, and presented it in a video published on
LinkedIn. The test flight, completed near Munich, lasted five minutes, and
focused on "how the hypersonic aero shape would operate at low speeds during the
critical phases of take-off and landing." Thus, the Jungfrau, "about the size of
a car," was kept below 150 km/h (93 mph) and under 20 m (66 ft). "The next one
will be ready in early 2022," says Destinus, "and it will be the size of a bus."

OK, let's pump the brakes here for a second, because there are enough big buts
here for Sir Mixalot to while away his twilight years in a land of plenty.

The first is that Jungfrau prototype, which looks very similar to another
design: the LAPCAT MR2.4 hypersonic cruiser concept, developed as part of an EU
research program and the subject of the Horizon 2020 Stratofly feasibility
study. The MR2.4 was designed to be a 300-seat passenger plane, mind you.


The aircraft design developed by the EU's Stratofly project – which itself was
developed from the prior LAPCAT MR2.4 project
Stratofly

Destinus says Jungfrau uses "an aero shape based on a hypersonic design," so
it's not claiming that this design is completely original. But why build a
prototype – the size of a car, no less – that doesn't represent the aircraft
you're actually going to make? What's really being tested in the upcoming
"intensive test campaign?" What engines does it use? They sound like jet
turbines to us, and we can't find footage of an air turbo rocket for comparison.

That's probably because, while they're perhaps a "known technology," as Kokorich
suggests, they haven't exactly caught on at this point. "I can only say this,"
said Matt Thomas of CFD Research Corporation, who has spent more than 30 years
researching, developing and building air turbo rockets, and worked on designs
for both AMCOM and CFD. "I obviously don't follow the literature day to day, but
many different people have looked at derivatives that could be considered
related to the air turbo rocket. The English have dome some things, the Russians
have done a few things. I've never seen it hit pay dirt, where you're seeing
them flying on a day-to-day mission."

That's not to say it couldn't happen, particularly with hydrogen as a fuel. "The
Japanese actually did a really good job on a hydrogen fuel regeneration ATR,"
said Thomas. "They got it working pretty good. But that's about the easiest
propellant you could find. Anybody could get a hydrogen regen ATR going. It's
not that tough." So essentially, it's possible, but nobody's managed to
commercialize anything as yet, and it likely represents a major hurdle.

The hypersonic plane would use an air turbo rocket first stage, then a rocket
second stage engine, both powered by liquid hydrogen, to reach speeds up to Mach
15
Destinus

Then there's Kokorich himself. He certainly seems to have some experience in
business and aerospace, having launched dozens of companies, including Dauria
Aerospace, Russia's first private micro-satellite manufacturer, and American
startup Momentus Space, a Y Combinator graduate-turned-SPAC-listed company
dedicated to last-mile delivery in space.



But recently, it's hard to find a mention of his name not linked to some
controversy or another. Take the Momentus SPAC listing; the SEC alleges Kokorich
and the Momentus team lied to the company about to acquire it about its "unique
water-based propulsion system," saying it had been successfully tested in space
when the only space-based test had failed.

He's been described by Tech Times as "an unscrupulous entrepreneur who seems to
be in hot water with the US officials all the time," and has been repeatedly
been rebuffed by US officials as a potential national security risk due to some
of the relationships he has with businesspeople back in the old country. As a
result, he had to resign as CEO of Momentus, and is now not allowed to know
about the tech his own company is working on. Kokorich has explanations, and
Europe is not America, but there's a fair bit of smoke around him.

And then there's the very idea of a hypersonic delivery plane. Not only are
hypersonic aircraft insanely challenging to build, but anything moving at that
speed carries enough kinetic energy to double as an absolutely devastating
weapon.

As our own David Szondy pointed out in his excellent hypersonic explainer piece
from 2017: "The kinetic force of a hypersonic projectile can give it the punch
of a small tactical nuclear weapon without an ounce of explosives aboard. Small
wonder the US Air Force called its '80s project to drop tungsten arrows from
space 'rods from God.' Zeus didn't have such thunderbolts ... All that speed and
all that inertia turns any research platform, recon unit, or passenger aircraft
into a potential kinetic weapon. They don't need high explosives to destroy a
target. All they have to do is hit it. In other words, any hypersonic vehicle is
an intrinsic weapon given the proper modifications."

Do these concerns mean Destinus is destined for failure? Not necessarily, but
like any commercial hypersonic venture, it's a long shot at best. Heck, as
well-funded, well-connected company Aerion recently found out, it's insanely
difficult just getting a supersonic civilian aircraft project together.

Check out a short video below.


Destinus - A New Class of Fast

Source: Destinus

View gallery - 4 images


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10 comments
Loz Blain
Loz has been one of our most versatile contributors since 2007, and has since
proven himself as a photographer, videographer, presenter, producer and podcast
engineer, as well as a senior features writer. Joining the team as a motorcycle
specialist, he's covered just about everything for New Atlas, concentrating
lately on eVTOLs, hydrogen, energy, aviation, audiovisual, weird stuff and
things that go fast.


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published.
GdB February 9, 2022 03:10 PM
Zero emissions without any extra speed is all that is required.
byrneheart February 9, 2022 04:04 PM
Does everybody realise that this is,"supervillain" Musk creating an armoury of
high speed kinetic energy missiles? 😊
byrneheart February 9, 2022 04:06 PM
Sorry, "Russia's, Musk equivalent supervillain"😂
Arty February 9, 2022 05:59 PM
Sooo many conflicting goals here...

As for this: "One, you need to overcome gravity as long as you're keeping the
plane in the air. So, longer means more gravity losses. Second is against the
friction of the air, and third is for your maximum velocity kinetic energy."

"Gravity losses" are proportional to velocity (i.e. double your velocity, halve
the time (energy) spent counteracting gravity.

But drag is proportional to velocity *squared*. So you halve your time in the
air, but the thrust required during flight time is 4 times higher.

In other words, someone in this venture is trying to ignore or deny very basic
physics.
Smokey_Bear February 9, 2022 06:03 PM
interesting, but yeah, as the article points out, they have a loooooong road
ahead of them.
EH February 10, 2022 03:18 AM
It looks like a fairly reasonable concept, compared to others along the same
line. Russia has the engineering ability if anyone does -- the US, aside from
SpaceX, no longer does, and China is coming along slowly. (Respect for position
and "authority" over engineering intelligence and invention is a big part of the
problem in China and the US.)

But the big question is whether air-breathing spaceplanes make any sense
compared to BDBs (big dumb boosters), and the answer is basically a resounding:
NO. Most of the payload is spent hauling wings and support structures and heavy
air-breathing engines, which are all ridiculously expensive to design, build,
and test. Truax had it all figured out in the '60s.

(Also the use of hypersonics as weapons is over-hyped: "(mach 14)^2 /2 -> TNT" =
2.33, "(mach 14)^2 /2 -> oil" = 0.26 (using Frink). So mach 14 has over double
the energy of TNT, but only about a quarter as much as oil. Fuel-air weapons are
way better bang for the buck than hypersonics.)
Jay February 10, 2022 07:20 AM
This looks like a technology capable of Mach 1.5 combined with a business case
substantiated by Mach 15.
Even if it were possible to produce a hypersonic plane capable of rapid reuse,
cargo prices would be in the
thousands of dollars per kilogram. Verdict: don't invest your last 100 million
for <1% of this idea's development cost.
TechGazer February 10, 2022 08:46 AM
"Zero emissions" is probably false, but added for trying to get funding. Any hot
flame in air is going to generate nitrogen oxides.
dugnology February 10, 2022 08:50 AM
Not going to happen
Marco McClean February 10, 2022 02:19 PM
And if you're flying eastward you get one Mach for free. Another mere 10 Mach
and you can remain in orbit and fly those Mediterranean tuna or legal papers
needing a genuine signature or transplant liver or last-minute anniversary gift
over any spot on spot on the planet forever for free. Open the hold to space and
the cargo will vacuum dry then alternately cook and freeze, cook and freeze,
cook and freeze, virtually forever, also for free.
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