
The Leduc ramjet - LordFrith
https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2016/11/29/the-breguet-leduc-ramjet/
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rwmj
More about that coal-powered supersonic plane (that didn't fly):
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lippisch_P.13a](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lippisch_P.13a)
_" Initially, it was proposed that a wire-mesh basket holding coal be mounted
behind a nose air intake, protruding slightly into the airflow and ignited by
a gas burner ... The coal was to take the form of small granules instead of
irregular lumps, to produce a controlled and even burn, and the basket was
altered to a mesh drum revolving on a vertical axis at 60 rpm."_

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masklinn
Ramjets do live on to an extent, in NASA technological demonstrators but also
more interestingly in the SR-71's legendary J58 engines, which switch to from
mostly turbojet at low speeds to mostly ramjet at high speeds: the compressor
is almost entirely bypassed then[0] and the vast majority of thrust comes from
the "afterburner", hence the engine's maximum efficiency being around Mach
3.2.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratt_%26_Whitney_J58#/media/F...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratt_%26_Whitney_J58#/media/File:SR71_J58_Engine_Airflow_Patterns.svg)

~~~
hga
A good fraction of these in service or development missiles still use them:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramjet#Missiles_using_ramjets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramjet#Missiles_using_ramjets)

And the no longer in service Sea Dart was really put to the test in the
Falkland Islands war, preformed pretty well and made a material difference.
And the somewhat related earlier RIM-8 Talos got 4 MIGs in 3 firings,
including "the first downing of a hostile aircraft by a missile fired from a
ship"
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIM-8_Talos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIM-8_Talos)).

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fernly
Momentarily confused between a ramjet[1] and a valveless pulsejet[2] -- the
latter are played with by many amateurs( e.g.[3]) producing amusing videos of
their cherry-red glow and eardrum-piercing noise.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramjet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramjet)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valveless_pulsejet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valveless_pulsejet)

[3]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cR6bD57AKw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cR6bD57AKw)

~~~
JumpCrisscross
Ram jets burn (like a turbojet); pulse jets bang (like an internal combustion
engine).

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marktangotango
I love the hardware the old aircraft and rocket designers came up with(!), and
built(!), and flew! For example the ultra heavy lift rocket designs the Air
Force solicited in the 50's and 60's, to put military outposts on the moon.
The Sea Dragon is a favorite of mine [1]. Not built nor flown, but really
interesting.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Dragon_(rocket)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Dragon_\(rocket\))

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ragebol
Not sure whether the TIE fighter-like sound on the second movie clip [0] is
edited in or that a nazi aircraft really did sound like an Empire spacecraft

[0] [https://youtu.be/MvtxjSrImHw?t=41s](https://youtu.be/MvtxjSrImHw?t=41s)

~~~
throwanem
Edited in; that's a gliding test, so there wouldn't be any engine noise even
assuming the original film had an audio track, and given it's a ramjet, even a
full-up production aircraft would be gliding at that point in its flight
profile.

In any case, the TIE fighter sound was created from whole cloth (actually "an
elephant call and car tires on wet pavement", apparently) for the first Star
Wars film.

