Key Test For Skylon Spaceplane Engine Technology

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."

Re:I thought that was not the hard part....

[jacknifetoaswan]

The issue isn't necessarily protecting the bulk of the spacecraft, it's protecting those parts that have openings to the outside world. It's easy to design an ablative thermal protection system, or a ceramic-based one, but the tough part is sealing the air inlets, docking ports, etc, etc, etc, such that superheated gasses can't melt the turbine blades or fuel nozzles within the engines. Yeah, you can have moveable doors that would swing open to block the ports, but you've got to make sure they're SEALED, and you've got to make sure that they can open again, reliably, after re-entry, so that you're able to start up your engines on the air cycle and make a safe landing.

Re:This shouldn't be difficult

[AHuxley]

Yes its an old idea http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saunders-Roe_SR.53 [wikipedia.org] i.e. how to get to 60,000 ft (18,300 m) in just 2 minutes 30 seconds.