A 40-foot-long metal tube hooked up to wires and intricate machinery sits in the basement of the UW’s Aerospace Research Building. The machine, called the ram accelerator, can theoretically accelerate projectiles to a velocity of Mach 23.5, or 17,895.5 miles per hour. Ongoing research at the UW is aimed at using the accelerator as a cheap way to launch satellites containing nonhuman cargo into space.

“We can’t really do anything meaningful [in space] unless there’s cheap access to space,” said Viggo Hansen, head research assistant at the project and a UW junior.

This summer, research has focused mostly on the shape of the projectiles and how to optimize speed in the tube of the ram accelerator without compromising stability in free flight.

The design of the ram accelerator is based on the design of the ram engine, which is commonly found on supersonic jets. The ram engine can accelerate a jet to speeds of Mach 1.3, or 989.6 miles per hour. The first ram accelerator was built at the UW in 1983, and is one of just a few in the world, said Carl Knowlen, the UW research scientist and lecturer in charge of the ram accelerator project within the Aeronautics and Energetics Research Program.

“This is it; this is the future,” Knowlen said, as he held up one of the projectiles, which can cost anywhere from $50 to $1,500.

The ram accelerator moves a projectile, called a solid body, through a medium of compressible gas, Knowlen said.

When the solid body moves through the gas, it compresses the gas, producing shockwaves and increasing both the pressure and temperature of the gas until it ignites, he said. The energy released by the ignition is what propels the solid body forward.

The cost of using the ram accelerator would be one-tenth of that of a rocket system, Knowlen said.

Using a ram accelerator would eliminate the need for rockets to carry the propellant required for a space shuttle to reach space, he said.

The cost of sending something into space in a space shuttle is about $10,000 per pound, which means that launching a space shuttle costs about $500 million, Knowlen said. Building a new ram accelerator would cost just as much, but the cost of shooting projectiles would be much less, he said.

The gases used in the ram accelerator are oxygen, methane and hydrogen, all of which are readily available, Knowlen said. A projectile could be accelerated to 8 kilometers per second to put it into space.

The project is funded by the Canadian government along with a small amount of sponsorship from the U.S. Office of Naval Research. Past funding for the project came from the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Army and several other government agencies.

“The ram accelerator is effective enough to be useful, and after demonstrating the value of it, we can get to further understand it,” Knowlen said. “You don’t have to understand everything to realize its scope.”

For more information, visit www.aa.washington.edu/aerp/ramac/index.html.