Going hypersonic means traveling at Mach 5 speed or higher. Mach refers to an aircraft’s speed relative to the speed of sound; Mach 5 means traveling 5 times faster than the speed of sound.
As much as we would like to, there are a number of reasons we can’t go hypersonic yet, whether it’s for commercial travel or space travel purposes. The primary reason is heat, or more specifically, too much of it.
Basically, when you travel at Mach 5 (3,800 mph, 6,125 km/h) or higher, the extremely high temperature (up to 3,000 degrees Celsius or 5,400 degrees Fahrenheit) will slowly eat away at the coating of the aircraft. Well, one can only imagine the damage an aircraft can sustain if it maintains those kind of speeds.
To solve this seemingly unsolvable problem, a team of researchers from U.K.’s University of Manchester and China’s Central South University have fabricated a carbide-based coating material that is less susceptible to the degrading effects of ultra-high temperatures, making it more resilient and long-lasting. The material belongs to a new class of ultra-high temperature ceramics (UHTCs) and can be regarded as an improved version because it is supposedly 12 times better than existing UHTCs.
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