Talk-Polywell.org

Latest Shefex Shot Keeps Germany In Hot Pursuit

“Right now the shuttle or other winged vehicles have only high drag during the hypersonic phase—they are flying at the end of the trajectory at subsonic speeds. We want to fly in the hypersonic cross-range in the upper atmosphere, and then we intend to only have a lifting body for landing,”

Looks to me like it will have a prohibitively high landing speed. I don't think these people have considered what it means to land at 300+mph.

It seems to be evolving into a larger-planform vehicle.



I don't think we're seeing all the variants, either. There are some discrepancies in label vs. picture for the different SHEFEX versions around the web.

Faceted aircraft don't necessarily need a high landing speed, if the planform is large enough for low "wing" loading.

http://www.eaa.org/experimenter/article ... mobile.asp





I suspect the reason SHEFEX has improved hypersonic aerodynamics (if the claim is true) is that shock waves preferentially attach to the edges, making forces and moments more predictable than they'd be with a 'jumping' shock attachment on a curved surface.

Structural goodies from Wainfan's NASA PAV version:



Insert Polywell WB-21 here...