Work on Russian Hypersonic Plane Continues Despite Lack of Interest

Work on Russian Hypersonic Plane Continues Despite Lack of Interest

[Presenter] A new plane may appear in Russia in the near future. It will be a hypersonic plane. The question is whether Russia needs it.

[Correspondent] This clumsy-looking experimental facility is the first step towards the creation of the plane of the future, in which everybody will be able to make a short space trip. It will move in the stratosphere at a speed several times higher than the speed of sound.

[Aleksandr Kuranov, captioned as the general director of the Hypersonic Systems design bureau] In the 21st century the trip [from Moscow] to New York will take anywhere between 90 minutes and 2 hours.

Today, experts are completing trials of a thermo-chemical reactor created by the St Petersburg-based holding [name indistinct]. This is Russian know-how.

The reactor breaks up liquid fuel into hydrogen and methane using the high temperature created by friction in the atmosphere. Thus, the same machine will cool down the plane and prepare the fuel for the engine. Thanks to the reactor, it will be possible to use aviation kerosene to fill the plane, not liquid hydrogen which the Western competitors of Russian scientists have been planning to use.

[Kuranov] The Americans, who have spent several dozen billion dollars on this [hydrogen-based] programme, have abandoned it. And as far as we know, their current programme is based on the usage of dense fuel, in particular kerosene. They are planning to build a plane by 2022.

[Correspondent] Theoretically, Russia will be able to build a hypersonic aircraft in the first quarter of the century. But there are no takers for this experimental research, while in the USA this programme enjoys the same priority as the antimissile defence programme. And, of course, the Americans are starting not with just a passenger plane, but with a cruise missile that can fly 1,500 km in just 12 minutes. Modern antimissile systems will appear helpless when it comes to countering this missile.

BBC Monitoring

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