Fourth-year develops hypersonic jet igniter
By Radina Belberova | April 2, 2010A new high-speed engine igniter, developed by fourth-year Engineering student Ryan Johnson, will allow hypersonic combustion ramjets - scramjets, for short - to fly at five times the speed of sound. "At that speed, you could fly from Charlottesville to Los Angeles in 40 minutes," said Chris Goyne, research assistant and director of the University Aerospace Research Laboratory. Johnson's research is part of the Hy-V, or "high five" program, a University, industry and government collaboration dedicated to researching scramjet technology.