Among the handful of companies like Stratolaunch and Lockheed Martin testing hypersonic vehicles is Space Engine Systems, a small Canadian startup developing what it calls the “lowest cost trucking company to anywhere in space.”
The company’s Hello-1X is a hypersonic demonstrator vehicle that can be piloted or flown autonomously. It’s designed to take off from a runway and climb to an altitude between 17 and 20 miles while reaching Mach 5 before gliding back down to Earth. It’s a 70-foot-long prototype and it will help the SES eventually complete development on its Hello-1 and Hello-2 vehicles. And it didn’t always go by its current name.
According to Aviation Week, the company just recently changed the branding to Hello-1X from “Sexbomb.”
SES founder Pradeep Dass told the publication they decided to change the name, which combined the company’s first two initials with its intended use as munition, after some people were offended.
Even after getting past the slightly offensive name roadblock, SES still has to put a hypersonic vehicle in the air, something that Dass fully acknowledged would be extremely difficult.
“I totally understand there’s every chance of failure,” he said. “We try [to] mitigate [the risk] as much as we can.”
SES has some things going for it though. It’s built a precooled, air-breathing turbo-ramjet to support hypersonic flight and it said the engine will be able to handle a wider range of conditions than either a turbojet or a ramjet on its own. It’s also building what it’s calling the world’s first full scale heated wing up bending test facility, which it said can apply both thermal and mechanical loading to airframes to provide information on how the airframe will perform under flight loads. The company said the test cell will be mobile and capable of subjecting an airframe to temperatures approaching 2,552 degrees fahrenheit.
