Enabling High Speed Mobility with Airbreathing High Speed Aircraft

Hermeus is a venture-backed company with the long-term vision of upgrading the global human transportation network with hypersonic aircraft.  Since faster aircraft can service the same passenger flow with a smaller cabin, the aircraft can be sized to service both the private and commercial aviation markets.  While business-class over-water air travel is currently differentiated primarily by class and amenities offered, high-speed aircraft offer disruptive differentiation where the main metric is speed instead of comfort. To this end, Hermeus has taken an incremental technology development approach and is designing a vehicle to demonstrate high-speed flight.  While the largest challenge for sustained endoatmospheric hypersonic flight is the propulsion system, Hermeus has already proven the efficacy of its propulsion system through subscale testing. For the effort proposed here, Hermeus will expand on existing modeling and simulation tools to enable the evaluation of modifications to Hermeus’ commercial Transport vehicle in order to support requirements of the Air Force end user.  Trade studies exercising the improved modeling and simulation capability will be performed to determine what modifications will be required to meet Air Force end-user requirements as well as evaluate the impact of the modifications to the Transport vehicle’s preliminary design.  Test plans will be designed to reduce technical risk associated with the modifications to Hermeus’ Transport required to support Air Force end user requirements.