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AssigneeSonic Blue Aerospace, Inc.
InventorRichard H. Lugg
Estimating the term…
HYPERDRIVE receives continuous air breathing assistance from compressed atmospheric air through a high speed magnetically core driven turbine accelerator which resolves around a common flow path tunnel. The tunnel runs from the front to the back of the engine. It is assisted by a series of radial geometric ramjet engines that share the common flow path tunnel for hypersonic exhaust but has separate inlet air from a linear aerospike which governs mass flow of air, velocity of inlet air and pressure to the turbine and/or ramjets, as well as the positioning of the shock wave at the inlet to reduce aerodynamic drag. The ramjet is of hybrid engine design where it can also function as a scramjet, thus a ram-scramjet structure for combustion in a radial configuration about the engine (aft of an electrical compressor), where the common flow path tunnel also serves as a compression tunnel to compress air through a the constantly occurring series of compression shocks entering from and around the aerospike.
A turbo-ram scramjet plasma rocket engine with five engine cycles, using simultaneously, dependent on what flight phase it is operating in, both a kerosene based fuel, a hydrocarbon based feel a hydrogen ion plasma generated fuel, and a drag reducing/thrust building propulsion system for high speed ascent propulsion phase, all within the same engine architecture in the flight vehicle, thereby allowing multi-engine combustion and drag reduction systems, providing fuel and oxidizer mixtures over a wide Mach number operating range, and thus capability of single stage to orbit operation.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.