Grant me a little thread tangent on ram/scramjet development.
1. Physics too poorly understood for reliable computational simulations
2. Therefore, experiments only way: Flight tests or windtunnels.
2a. Flight tests are stupid expensive - launch a rocket everytime you want to do a test - get 30 seconds of data.
2b. Windtunnels are VERY specialized and expensive to develop. Working gas is too dissimilar, or test section too small. Most reliable way is rails+rocket or somekind of cannon. US DoD is funding such a startup for this very reason.
3. Little to no published info on these things - all data gathered is guarded closely since it is so expensive to get and so strategically important.
So to expect our poor old SPD orgs to do this kind of development is not realistic. Just my two cents.