The military-industrial scientific research system of the academic master.

Jablonski was already in a state of internal struggle between reason and conscience, and he was already in a daze when he took the initiative to talk to Collinger just now.

Now that he has been interrupted, it is impossible for him to directly admit after he regains consciousness that he has discovered something fishy in the testing process of the solid rocket booster.

And as Dr. Hurst said before, the scramjet engine was successfully started and worked normally for a period of time, so it shouldn't have been blamed on them.

After this self-excuse, the slight sense of guilt that Jablonski had in his heart finally disappeared.

Don't ask, the only answer is that other people have done it too.

"Daniel?"

Of course, Collinger had no idea of ​​the series of thoughts that flashed through the young man's mind. He just looked at Jablonski, who seemed to be in a daze after hearing his answer, and called the other's name again.

This made the latter regain consciousness:

"Oh……"

Jabolensky quickly pretended to be racking his brains:

"I'm wondering if there's anything else we need to do in the next stage of research and development."

This technical issue really attracted Ke Lingjie's attention:

"Strictly speaking, we have only completed the accident tree analysis and have not yet formed a complete conclusion report, so there is no rush for new research tasks..."

He gestured to Jablonski to follow him and replied:

"But if you really want to get started quickly, I suggest you focus on further improving the precision of the parameters of the solid rocket motor."

"Accuracy?"

Jablonsky is a bit unfamiliar with the adjective.

Compared with liquid propellants, the working characteristics of solid propellants are explosive in nature, which means that the maximum performance of the propellant is brought into play as much as possible.

If there is excess energy, it can be consumed by maneuvering the aircraft itself, or a flight condition detection gate can be set up to jettison the boosters in advance once triggered.

Therefore, there is basically no need to consider overly complex control issues.

"Yes."

Ke Lingjie nodded:

"In order to further improve the working stability of the air-breathing engine, we may make some adjustments to the compressed air inlet system of the No. 2 and No. 3 test bombs..."

"You should know that scramjet engines rely on a pre-combustion-shock wave system to achieve air compression, and the operating window of this system is relatively narrow, resulting in different intake systems corresponding to different starting conditions. If the shock wave train affects the intake port, it is possible to break the balance between the intake port pressure and the combustion chamber back pressure..."

"In short, you will need to frequently adjust the working curve of the rocket booster stage. If you can improve the design accuracy, you can save a lot of trouble in repeated testing."

A seemingly ordinary request instantly set off alarm bells in Jablonsky's mind.

This was not mentioned at all in the meeting just now.

Logically, if the heat seal is not tight, you can simply improve the sealing technology, or even more fundamentally, redesign the interface part and that's it.

There is absolutely no need to modify the compressed air intake system.

In other words, this old man who seemed to be completely in the dark probably did not include everything he knew in the preliminary conclusion report.

Even if the other party is still unclear about the specific problem, it has at least some doubts about the SJX61-1 scramjet engine and Pratt & Whitney.

If that's the case, then could it be that I've also been targeted, but only because there's no evidence...

Jablonski suddenly felt a chill on his back and was a little hesitant to continue chatting with Collinger.

Suddenly I felt like laughing again——

From this perspective, there are probably many talented people among the major subsystems of the entire project. It is very likely that other people have done the same thing as me, but they are just hiding it more deeply.

How can we develop hypersonic weapons with a group of insects like this?

Oh, so I am also an insect?

That's fine.

At this time, the two of them just happened to walk to a fork in the road at the testing center.

One side leads to the living area, and the other side leads to the park gate.

So, Jabolensky quickly found an excuse, said goodbye to the other party, and fled quickly...

……

In fact, Collinger didn't pay much attention to the booster issue.

Although the working time was shorter than expected and the flying body could not be pushed to the planned separation speed, the difference of only a single-digit percentage was barely within the acceptable range, and there is still room for further optimization in the future.

What really made him doubt were the two accident tree analysis conclusions.

Even if the actual heating conditions cannot be accurately estimated during the design phase, causing the flight body shape variables to exceed the prior estimates, the problem should first occur in the air inlet and combustion chamber.

However, the analysis concluded that the heat seal of the installation pipe opening between the rear of the engine and the projectile body was not tight.

That in itself is a bit outrageous.

Moreover, during the test, the data from the missile-borne signal sensors disappeared in an instant. According to his experience, this was more like the flying object directly disintegrating after passing a certain working point due to currently unknown structural or load problems.

If the cause is a slow-moving, such as a high-temperature gas leak, then the sensor data should first become abnormal, and then the abnormal data should gradually expand and finally disappear.

And this analysis conclusion was actually reached jointly by two independent analysis teams.

Therefore, there must be someone inside the R&D team playing tricks.

As for who exactly...

He might find out soon.

Collinger watched Jabolenski's back gradually disappearing into the distance, raised his hand to check the time, then turned around and walked straight toward the parking lot at the entrance.

As a project manager and senior engineer, his actions were not restricted much.

Even if you leave the test center, you do not need to report to anyone in advance.

About an hour and a half later, Collinger's Dodge pickup truck stopped in the underground parking lot of a hotel in downtown Wilmington.

Soon, a man in a suit and tie came over quickly. After confirming the license plate number, he opened the passenger door and got in.

"Karl, long time no see."

While chatting, Collinger turned up the volume of the car music.

Karl-Heinz Brinkmann is a professor at RWTH Aachen University and head of the Laboratory for Fluid Mechanics and Aerodynamics.

He was also the "foreign aid" specially found by Collinger.

The two attended the same university thirty years ago. Although Collinger chose to enter the business world after graduation and Brinkman continued to develop in academia, they have always maintained a close relationship.

At least in the former's opinion, his friend is far more reliable than most of his colleagues.

"Why choose a place like this to meet...why not go up and have a cup of coffee?"

Brinkman frowned, obviously not liking the depressing environment of the underground parking lot.

Ke Lingjie didn't explain too much, just shook his head:

"I'm sorry, I really don't have time recently... When I finish the work at hand, I will invite you to visit my farm."

"Ok."

Brinkman beside him obviously understood his character. He just shrugged and took out a USB flash drive from his briefcase.

"All the test data you want is here."

After seeing the USB flash drive, Ke Lingjie's eyes lit up instantly, and he leaned over to the back seat to get the laptop that had been prepared long ago.

However, Brinkman did not hand him the USB drive immediately. Instead, he hesitated for a moment and then said:

"I have to remind you first that although the TH-D wind tunnel is already a high-enthalpy wind tunnel, it still cannot fully reproduce the flight conditions under hypersonic conditions, especially the total airflow temperature. In addition, due to the limitations of a single test cycle, the measurement of some cumulative parameters will also be distorted to a certain extent. If you want to use it for engineering needs, it is best to just use it as a reference..."

Ke Lingjie couldn't help but curl his lips:

"It's not my first day in this line of work, don't worry..."

As a seasoned engineer, he certainly wouldn't make such a low-level mistake.

In fact, he was just going to compare the data given by the TH-D wind tunnel with the design data provided by Pratt & Whitney. It would be enough to achieve 60% to 70% of the actual total temperature.

Brinkman hesitated for a moment, but after all, he was here, so he took the initiative to insert the USB drive into the USB port...

Ke Lingjie did not choose to copy the data, but directly opened the report document in the USB flash drive, then clicked on another origin data file on the desktop, and exported several background-free vector curves in PNG format to the report document.

This was a rather brutal way of comparing data, but he didn't need a detailed analysis report this time, so he didn't care about the details.

"what is this?"

Brinkman looked at the computer screen with some confusion.

Ke Lingjie was dragging several curves into the same chart. Since he only had a touchpad, the operation was quite awkward. He answered without looking up:

"The SJX61-1 engine design curve provided by Pratt & Whitney..."

As soon as he finished speaking, the starting points of the two curves overlapped precisely.

It can be clearly seen that the entire curve shows obvious differences after the horizontal axis ln (T9/T3) is greater than 0.3.

When reaching the critical point of 1, the corresponding Mach number actually has a difference of nearly 25%.

Brinkman had just recovered from the shock of seeing such confidential data when he noticed the ridiculously large gap in results on the screen.

"You see, I've already said that the measurement of cumulative parameters will be distorted..."

Apparently, he hadn't realized where the problem lay and subconsciously thought that his wind tunnel data was not accurate enough.

"It is indeed somewhat distorted..."

Ke Lingjie took a deep breath:

"But it's not your data that's distorted..."

"..."

At this moment, the same voice as Jablonski echoed in his mind -

How can we develop hypersonic weapons with a group of insects like this?