How does the ramjet work?
Though still not very common, the ramjet may actually be regarded as the simplest form of a jet engine having no moving parts. It is essentially a hollow tube into which fuel, mixed with air, is injected and burned in order to produce thrust. The ramjet is capable of operating only when it reaches a particular speed that permits incoming air to be compressed by being forced into the engine. This phenomenon, called the “ram effect”, occurs when a volume of air is forced into a small space at a sufficiently high speed and is compressed to a higher pressure. X-43A test flight (Credit: NASA) The supersonic combustion ramjet (or scramjet) is a variant of the ramjet engine. Despite the extensive research conducted in this area in the last several decades, it has not yet reached operational stage. All ramjet engines are supersonic, but Scramjet operates at hypersonic speeds, from approximately Mach 5 up to Mach 10-12 (NASA’S X-30 National Aerospace Plane, or NASP, was designed to reach speeds
