“The world was so recent that many things lacked names, and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point. ” — García Márquez
This is the current status of hypersonic technology, it’s like cars before model-T, first practical HCM/HGV of course aren’t meaningless, but so far , they didn’t provide any game changing capability in comparison to DF-21D or SR-71.
What matters is who will create the model-T, and that masterpiece, far as I can tell, has to be powered by TBCC/TRRE, scramjet today, can’t fulfill the requirements due to it’s many fundamental flaws, the thrust and TWR is limited by physics.
We are far from there is what I’m trying to say, from my point of view, I’d say China is most likely to reach the goal first to be honest, at least we have a practical idea ,walking the right path at least I believe so.
Americans are developing TBCC too, but I’ve checked their essays, they were on External parallel combined engine with LH2 in 2018 which in no way a right path, so I wouldn’t bet on them.
Russians couldn’t do anything anymore, this is way beyond their Soviet legacy, Zircon is far as they could reach.
Europe? Germans are way ahead of everyone else and based what I’ve read, there’s absolutely no chance they can lead the way.
Japan and Korea are basically non existence, their technology is so backward there’s no point talking about it, they are in the same league with India, they could make their own HCMs in next 5-15 years.
Detonation drive is the future, RDE is just one of many possible solutions , what I’ve posted is another one, but current Scramjet tech? It has no future.
