Documents / Report
This Defense Intelligence Reference Document, prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency and dated 8 March 2010, was produced under the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications (AAWSA) Program. It gives a historical and technical review of how to reach space and return. It covers hypersonic gliders, air-breathing and rocket propulsion, thermodynamics and materials, and launch options. It argues that reliable, schedulable access to low Earth orbit is mainly a hardware and propulsion problem rather than a technology one.
“The Advance”12 pages
UNCLASSIFIED/ /PS"-. 9PPl!ltllt t!l91!! 9HLY The Qu Tube In the 1990s, a colleague, Ying-Ming Lee, who then worked at MSE in Butte, Montana, showed the author a copper tube about a foot long that was a heat pipe from his colleague in Taiwan. If the tip was put into a cup of hot water, the other end almost instantly was too hot to hold. If it was quickly put into a glass of cold water, that tip just as quickly became ice cold. As documented in the excerpted page below from the University of Alabama, Huntsville, Annual Report, the apparent conductivity is greater than copper and could not be melted, as the thermal energy would be removed so fast that a significant temperature rise could not be attained. This could have significant industrial application for the United States. The late Clark Hawk had obtained a 10- foot-long Qu tube and tested it in his laboratory. The results were published in the University of Alabama, Huntsville, Annual Report. However, as Clark Hawk discovered, the Chinese team associated with Professor Qu in mainland China was not about to let this discovery into American hands. Plus his team was composed of a number of young, ambitious technocrats who thought they knew how to make their fortune. So both Ying-Ming's and Clark's attempts to advance beyond a demonstration tube ended in frustration. Any attempt to open the tube results in failure, as whatever is in the tube reacts into an inert powder. The author has two smaller tubes in his possession. With applications including hypersonic vehicles, nuclear power plants, and electronic cooling, these devices would lead to an economic breakthrough in practical thermal control. 23 UNCLASSIFIED/ ;CEiOAt OFFIQI.Ctk Wlii &••LY
Not linked to a story yet.
Report, from the dia collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 56 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.