Key Test For Skylon Spaceplane Engine Technology 92
Ogi_UnixNut writes "The Skylon spaceplane is an ambitious project to develop a single-stage-to-orbit craft that can take off and land like a normal airplane. Part of this project requires an engine that can work both as a rocket engine and a normal air-breathing engine (a hybrid approach, essentially). This would reduce the amount of oxidizer required to send stuff into space, and thus greatly reduce the cost. Now, some key experimental parts of the engine have been built, and are to be tested in public at the Farnborough Air Show in the UK in July. The BBC has video of the cooling system being tested."
Reaction Engines Ltd, SABRE Engine (Score:5, Informative)
I've been following the guys down at Reaction Engines and their SABRE engine concept for a few years. These are the same guys who came up with the HOTOL concept at Rolls Royce in the 1980's. No word on what they'd use for thermal protection on re-entry but they're a clever bunch and if I came into a billion pounds I'd shove a fair chunk of it at these guys to build me a fleet of spaceships to rule the world ;-)
If they could get government funding we could lead the world in launch capabilities. However, what would probably happen is that we'd end up handing it over the the USA as our leaders are too short sighted and too cheap to fund anything truly visionary or world beating.
I'm impressed (Score:5, Informative)
At high speeds, the Sabre engines must cope with 1,000-degree gases entering their intakes... Reaction Engines' breakthrough is a module containing arrays of extremely fine piping that can extract the heat and plunge the intake gases to minus 140C in just 1/100th of a second.
That is... impressive, to say the very least. It sounds from Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] like they are even using the heat energy to power the turbo compressor (wondering if it was possible to convert the heat to useful energy was one of my first thoughts). I'm curious how efficient the jet is at low speeds, though. Typically, most jet engines work well at either low or high speeds, not both.
These kinds of engines are definitely needed to make space travel cheaper. Much cheaper, potentially, than solid-state rockets.
TROY & Mission to Mars (Score:5, Informative)
Just thought I'd point you in the direction of Reaction Engines ideas for a mission to Mars. Take a look at the detailed PDF and the movie.
http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/troy.html [reactionengines.co.uk]