There was held a round table "Planes and Engines of the Future" in the RAS SB Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics named after S. Khristianovich in June 2007. More than 70 leading national scientists and specialists, guests from Germany participated in its work. Discussions were dedicated to prospects of flying machines, prime trends of development of fundamental and applied research in aviation and space industries. Reports of academicians Viktor Panin (Institute of Physics of Strength and Materials Science, Tomsk) and Alexander Rebrov (Institute of Thermal Physics named after S. Kutateladze, Novosibirsk), other prominent Siberian scientists roused great interest. They covered a wide range of problems - from creation of nanostructural materials to their practical application, from laser technologies of metal cutting to welding, from assessment of expenditures on construction of aircraft to description of environmental problems. Heated debates developed in the course of discussion of possibilities to use aerodynamic and stands for ground modeling of elements of perspective aircraft and aerospace engines. It is common knowledge that this approach is inefficient in terms of hypersonic flying speed. In our case it is based on mathematical methods. And modern computers are able to forecast main parameters and characteristics of the plane with a high precision level sufficient for engineering needs. Certainly, hypersonic aircraft are largely developed on the basis of specific tests. They are carried out to check up effectiveness of proposed physical and mathematical methods as a result of which it becomes possible to appreciate mechanisms of interaction of air streams with a plane, solve many special problems arising in the course of design and tests of machines. By the way, it is not a simple task to reproduce original parameters of a hypersonic flight. It is impossible to maintain high temperatures (some thousand degrees) and intense pr ... Read more