British invention is out of this world Skylon Spaceplane

Originally posted by buddhasystem
How come nobody called BS on these statement in the OP?

Two engines suck hydrogen and oxygen from the atmosphere

Just how much hydrogen is there in the atmosphere we breath???

Bleh.

I am not sure its BS at all-but I think the engines must have to carry their own supply tanks of Hydrogen,which is then mixed with air from outside the craft.

I think...not too sure how it works,but I think it is a legit project.

The vehicle design is for a hydrogen-powered aircraft that would take off from a conventional runway, and accelerate to Mach 5.4 at 26 km using atmospheric air before switching the engines to use the internal LOX supply to take it to orbit. It would then release a 12-tonne payload, then reenter the atmosphere. The payload would be carried in a standardised payload container or passenger compartment.[3]

.

en.wikipedia.org...

And here-it uses liquid hydrogen-

The SABRE engine design aims to avoid this by using some of the liquid hydrogen fuel to cool the air right at the inlet. The air is then burnt much like in a conventional jet. Because the air is cool at all speeds, the jet can be built of light alloys and the weight is roughly halved. Additionally, more fuel can be burnt at high speed. Beyond Mach 5.5, the air would still end up unusably hot, so the air inlet closes and the engine instead turns to burning the hydrogen with onboard liquid oxygen as in a normal rocket.

(from same link).

Its not a fake-its a real attempt to take things to the next level IMO.
At least they are trying.

reply to post by mars1


Well.. I am 50 so i will miss the fun also..

But with no windows to look out and ew and aw....

what's the point of taking tourists

reply to post by baddmove


I guess you get to see the view only after you dock with the space station.
Hopefully you would have screens in the passenger area,which showed you the journey from outside cameras.

Good point though-I need windows to stop me getting sick when travelling-that could be an issue for some.

reply to post by baddmove


I know its not fair
Give them a chance still a long way to go the thing is new things are been tried NASA had its turn time for a change i hope more and more come forward with new ideas like this.

Thankyou

This is not really for tourism in the way that the Virgin Galactic project is, hence no windows. They are just an added complication. Its an attempt at a real space shuttle. Payload to orbit with the infrastructure requirements more like an airliner. Its also hypersonic transport for passengers.

Unfortunately Europe is never going to fund this to become a real product. To get it out of the lab and on to the runway is more cash than is available.

Sadly we'll probably have to wait for them to go bust, get forgotten and then get 'invented' by an american corp sometime down the line. Or for it to be stolen by the Chinese.

omg I typed in a search for this and I didn't find one..........but here you are!

I will wait till the prices go down before I buy a ticket

reply to post by KIZZZY


Don't worry about it Kizzzy this is a good story for the UK a long way to go yet but if it takes off after all we can not keep relying on NASA for all things SPACE.
Time for other countries to get up there that's what i think anyway.

Thanks

they said testing would begin in june. I anticipate any news of it to be posted at www.reactionengines.co.uk...

How long before Americans claim they invented this?

lol, i give it 24 hours.

Mach 5.5 is a long way off from the Mach 25 necessary to reach orbit.

JUNK, scrap it now. The new tech far outreaches this by far. NEW tech, that almost reaches the speed of light.

try the new and improved www.youtube.com... Can you believe it?

reply to post by Illustronic


why would you need mach 25 to reach orbit?

People certainly like to make promises to us lately. I remember the drawings of hover cars in the 50s. same thing

reply to post by cloaked4u


Short answer is you have to defeat/counteract the gravitational pull of the earth's mass. The Shuttle reenters the atmosphere at Mach 25, but you really only need about Mach 23.5 to reach LEO, 17,400 mph.

Just a note about gravity, you never escape earth's gravitational pull, until a grater gravity in space, the moon, or Jupiter, has a larger pull. Satellites all are falling towards earth's surface, the speed at which they orbit slows their fall towards the center of earth. The faster and higher your orbit, the longer you can defeat/counteract the gravitational pull of the earth.

2,250 mph will put you in the moon's orbit from the moon's surface because it has less mass than the earth.

You have to go MACH 38 to orbit Jupiter without falling into it, about 28,000 mph, faster than earth escape velocity–(to leave earth orbit). I thought it would be faster than that.

Update on this, I thought I would post it here instead of making a new thread.

Seems like they are making good progress with this and have had a successful test of the engine.

Got to love British engineering when it is at its finest!

Key tests for Skylon spaceplane project

"The message is that Britain has the next step beyond the jet engine; that we can reduce the world to four hours - the maximum time it would take to go anywhere. And that it also gives us aircraft that can go into space, replacing all the expendable rockets we use today."

Originally posted by woogleuk
Update on this, I thought I would post it here instead of making a new thread.

Seems like they are making good progress with this and have had a successful test of the engine.

Got to love British engineering when it is at its finest!

Key tests for Skylon spaceplane project

"The message is that Britain has the next step beyond the jet engine; that we can reduce the world to four hours - the maximum time it would take to go anywhere. And that it also gives us aircraft that can go into space, replacing all the expendable rockets we use today."

Been following this for a while. As a youngster i was outraged when Maggie T killed HOTOL.

This is a game changer. A real space shuttle.

Good to see brits can still innovate despite our government.

reply to post by justwokeup


It's the fact that it will be enable a craft to reach orbit in a single stage that amazes me, I have often wondered how long it will be before we start to see something like that.

It opens up a whole new realm of possibilities, from making deployments/flights cheaper, to space tourism for the poor (lol, you know what I mean!). Also Earth bound flights will no longer be a ballache (ie UK to AUS).

It is definitely nice we are getting back fully in the race, but, we haven't really left it as such. I'm pretty sure we supply NASA with a lot of its main tech.

Originally posted by SmokeandShadow
...I can't see why this hasn't been tried already.

The United States had the X-30 National Aerospace Plane (NASP) project back in the 1980s and 1990s, which was a similar concept. Ronald Reagan mentioned this project in his 1986 State of the Union address. The project was ultimately cancelled in the 1990s.

The technology behind the X-30 was billed by the U.S. as a potential future passenger transport that could take people from New York to Tokyo in 2 hours. However, I think the project was more important for developing the scramjet concept.

United States National Aerospace Plane:


X-30 information:

X-30 National Aerospace Plane (NASP)
Encyclopedia Astronautica Article: X-30

Looks like they have cracked the overheating issue.

www.thesun.co.uk...
www.telegraph.co.uk...

It paves the way for the building of a reusable space shuttle called Skylon — and a 4,200mph hypersonic airliner called LapCat.

Read more: www.thesun.co.uk...

4,200mph flights, really interest me. Its amazing to think how we went backwards with concord. Long haul flights always bug me, 4hrs to OZ, cant wait.

I wonder what the turn around time for this to be taken to final product are.

www.bbc.co.uk...

*edit* Looks like I answered my own question

The company must now raise the £250m needed to complete the next phase of development.

*edit*

The next phase is a three-and-a-half-year project. It would see a smaller version of Sabre being built on a test rig. The demonstrator would not have the exact same configuration as the eventual engine but it would allow REL to prove Sabre's performance across its air-breathing and rocket modes.