UK pledges fresh support for revolutionary space engine SABRE

Originally posted by stumason
reply to post by nomadros

 

You need to brush up on the details matey, as has been said, ESA has just recently signed this project off after a successful demonstration of the pre-cooler, an integral part of the engine.

www.reactionengines.co.uk...

EDIT: Not to mention the other tech demonstrators which are or are nearing completion. All the parts are there..

edit on 4/7/13 by stumason because: (no reason given)

I won't be holding my breath. As I said this is a sales pitch for mug money...they need £250 million for a prototype and the governemnt will probably lob in 50p and a couple of No10 dinners for the marks with the biggest wallets.

Originally posted by nomadros

Originally posted by stumason
reply to post by nomadros

 

You need to brush up on the details matey, as has been said, ESA has just recently signed this project off after a successful demonstration of the pre-cooler, an integral part of the engine.

www.reactionengines.co.uk...

EDIT: Not to mention the other tech demonstrators which are or are nearing completion. All the parts are there..

edit on 4/7/13 by stumason because: (no reason given)

I won't be holding my breath. As I said this is a sales pitch for mug money...they need £250 million for a prototype and the governemnt will probably lob in 50p and a couple of No10 dinners for the marks with the biggest wallets.

The government is putting in £60 million. As you say its not enough for the full phase 3 program with the flying demonstrator but its hopefully enough of a marker to attract venture capital to make up the difference.

If not it will probably allow them to take it to full scale ground testing.

reply to post by Trillium

Awesome animation about how this hybrid rocket/air-breather is intended to work:
on Vimeo

The ESA is supporting this technology. The first technology demostrator is set for launch in 2017.

There is already a consortium ready to build these things.

According to the details, Skylon can put 15 tonnes into orbit for £9.5 million

Given that ESA is re-supplying the ISS, this technology is very attractive.

Originally posted by nomadros
I won't be holding my breath. As I said this is a sales pitch for mug money...they need £250 million for a prototype and the governemnt will probably lob in 50p and a couple of No10 dinners for the marks with the biggest wallets.

You're just showing your total ignorance on the matter here - the Government tried to kill this project years ago under the Offical Secrets Act, which failed.

They then tried to ignore it and that failed - now it's actually proven, to ESA engineers no less, to work and they've lobbed £60 million quid into the pot with the realisation this is actually a concept that could make the UK a global leader.

There is a BBC documentary on their story out there and there was been a sea change in Whitehall as the old guard have been ousted and younger, more forward thinking types are now in charge.

Back in the 50/60's we were doing well in the Rocket design race, ours were cheaper than either the Russians or Yanks, until it was canned by a Labour Government keen to spend money elsewhere and not having the vision to see what we could have done.

In the end, they gave all the work we had done and handed it over the French - cue EADS and Ariane - bloody treason if you ask me when you see what we have missed out on, so hopefully the Government now saw what we did and hope not to repeat it.

reply to post by stumason


Doesnt surprise me.

The USA has been obviusly been trying to hold back civilian space explotation for years. Its only the last decade things have changed.

And it does not surprise me in the least that the UK would be hand in hand with the USA in holding things back.

reply to post by crazyewok


It wasn't so much as "holding it back", in so far as doing it deliberately to harm humanity, but more to do with, I think, being quite aware that if anyone was going to nail the single stage to orbit problem (The Yanks were barking up the wrong tree in a the wrong forest and still are) it would be this, which posed a significant security problem if we let it out of the country back in the 80's.

We couldn't afford the project ourselves, but we'd be damned if we let anyone else have it!

Now, however, we can.. The hard part was getting the pre-cooler working without frosting up, which it now does. The rest is pretty simple by comparison.

reply to post by stumason


Fair point.

As for the USA barking up the wrong tree. With NASA they seem to be doing on purpose.

Look at the Orion project of the early 60's if they had been given free rein we could be launching 8 million tons ships into orbit by now. And that was just the crude designs. There have been a few refined versions that got sat on too.

There has deffinatly been some delibrate holding back. I cant beleive the USA could be THAT incompetent.

Originally posted by crazyewok
reply to post by stumason

 

Fair point.

As for the USA barking up the wrong tree. With NASA they seem to be doing on purpose.

Look at the Orion project of the early 60's if they had been given free rein we could be launching 8 million tons ships into orbit by now. And that was just the crude designs. There have been a few refined versions that got sat on too.

There has deffinatly been some delibrate holding back. I cant beleive the USA could be THAT incompetent.

Project orion was a non starter as soon as the dangerous consequences of detonating atom bombs was known. Where would you launch it from?

The more promising technology for real application was NERVA. If we had continued to develop heavy lift rockets and NERVA we could be on Mars now.

It was a lack of political will that killed both.

reply to post by crazyewok


NASA's offical position on "single stage to orbit" is that it is impossible - hence they gave much of their work to the USAF who are now using it to build SCRAMJET missiles and not very well I might add, they can barely get the things flying for more than a few minutes and they need a boost to get up to speed before the SCRAMJET can work.

This Skylon, though, could prove to be the "global strike" platform the USAF is craving after - maybe that is an alterior motive for the UK Governments interest? A drone, capable of carrying any ordnance, of any size to anywhere in the world in less than an hour?

Originally posted by stumason
reply to post by crazyewok

 

NASA's offical position on "single stage to orbit" is that it is impossible - hence they gave much of their work to the USAF who are now using it to build SCRAMJET missiles and not very well I might add, they can barely get the things flying for more than a few minutes and they need a boost to get up to speed before the SCRAMJET can work.

This Skylon, though, could prove to be the "global strike" platform the USAF is craving after - maybe that is an alterior motive for the UK Governments interest? A drone, capable of carrying any ordnance, of any size to anywhere in the world in less than an hour?

Would be a powerful weapon!

I think the SKYLON will play a powerfull future role in space explotation.

But really it should be a support craft to a Nuclear pulse powered space craft!

If the sceintists in the 1960's had they way the today we would be able catch a ship for a crusie round satern for the price of a Carrabien crusie

I just think we are all going in the wrong direction and have been since the US goverment decided to scrap and classifiy Nuclear propulsion and go with crappy Satern V Chem rockets and later the even more crappy Shuttle and ISS.

Hell if we had gone the Nuclear propulsion route the first panned probes would be nearing Alpha centuri and Barnards star by now.

Far more impressive than sending a few Astronouts up in dangrous crappy chem rockets and shuttles to a collection of useless tin cans in orbit called a ISS.

reply to post by crazyewok


I am not totally convinced by sticking a load of nukes under my arse and blasting into space!

It's not a very "clean" or "safe" way of doing it, certainly no more than chem rockets.

What we should be focussing on is just getting cheap access to space, by whatever means. Once we're there, the industry will pop up around moon mining, tourism etc which will pump more money into research and we can, eventually, get the Warp drive working - which works on paper at least...

Originally posted by stumason
reply to post by crazyewok

 

I am not totally convinced by sticking a load of nukes under my arse and blasting into space!

It's not a very "clean" or "safe" way of doing it, certainly no more than chem rockets.

What we should be focussing on is just getting cheap access to space, by whatever means. Once we're there, the industry will pop up around moon mining, tourism etc which will pump more money into research and we can, eventually, get the Warp drive working - which works on paper at least...

Apprently the nuke option was very cheap and because of being able to lift up to 8 MILLION TONS (not a made up figure) it would have been the cheapest and most efficient way to get it up there.

Apprently they were able to find a way to build a "nuke" for $40,000 and it needed 1000 nuke at 1.5Kt-10Kt to get a 40,000-8million ton ship into orbit.


As for being clean? I think thats one of the reasons it got clasified. From what the sceintists have released (or been allowed to so far) they found a way to make "clean" nukes that made little if any fallout and which used only very small amounts of fission material. Great for a engine...... But also bad in that rogue countrys who are kept in check with the difficulty of getting hold of weapon grade material would suddenly have nukes in there reach

As for safety? the test models they did proved extremly stable. More so than the planned Satern V rockets.

Plus that only what they been allowed to say so far, reseach has continued under the USAF after they took it from NASA useless hands.


And in space? This vessel had the capability to get 10% the speed of light. 10% ! Makes chem rockets look like stone age tec.

You seem a smart guy so you should know that nuclear does to automaticaly = bad. Dont fall into the irrational trap the "green" lobby would like everyone to fall into.

This would make lifteing tons into obrit cheaper than air transport.


And something like skylon could play a vital role in resupplying such vessels and transporting crew to a from such mammoth vessels!

reply to post by crazyewok


Yeah, I know nuclear isn't as bad as they make out (I am all for building new plants for example) - I just am not happy sat on a few hundred off them primed to detonate under my bum! That said, it is functionally no different to sitting in a spaceship with some form of fusion reactor - that is pretty much a caged Star,,,

reply to post by stumason


I can understand the feeling of being uneasy.

But it no diffrent than sitting on 200 tons of chem explosives really. Its just a bigger bang and in either case if it goes wrong you wont feel much for very long in both cases. So it no that much diffrent.

Plus as the scientists makeing pointed out the ship would be so big it would be harder fo it to blow itself apart especialy since with no weight limit (well 8 million tons but that hardly a limit :lol you can use all sorts of materials and shielding that would be considerd to heavy to put on a normal tin can craft.

Plus once in orbit if you got things like skylon you dont have to bring it back down. You can keep it up there and resupply it with smaller vessels.

reply to post by crazyewok


Good points - I don't think it will ever come about though, not least because the envionmental crowd would simply stonewall any attempt at building one in the courts until it died, but we're also so close to other forms of propulsion that too would become "stone age".

Like I said, the Warp drive is within our grasp - theoretically it is possible and with developments at the LHC, it is only a matter of time before we can master gravity itself..

I bloody hope to see it before my time is done, then we can all kiss goodbye to chem rockets and all have runabouts to go and visit the Rings of Saturn with the kids on Saturdays...

reply to post by stumason


I think FTL is possible. And maybe Gravity manipulation. But the FTL I think is a least a century off maybe more. Its just we need to find away to produce such vast amounts of energy.

Thinng is Nuclear propulsion is here now, it can be used now. It could have been used in the 60's. Its far better than the backward chem rockets in use now so we should bite the builet and go the nuke route now, hell we should have done it 40 years ago!

If we go that dircetion now we could have colonies on the moon and mars and minning operation on the moons of satern within the next decade.

And a working orbital infrastructure and resource minning is a goal far more important that FTL and interstaller travel at the moment.

And I think that goal with skylon and Nuclear propulsion could be realised extremly quickly.

Hell a 8 million ton starship? Even a 1/10 of that would be big enough to spin and create simulated gravity and you could load it with lead shielding too so most the hazzards in space would be a non issue.

looks like something from thunderbirds but i will believe it when i see it flying .

a bit like in the 70s when some bloke built a engine that could take humans to mars in 2 days still waiting .

the chinese will have the plans by now and have a fleet of them before the u.k has got the material together .

lions led by lambs

There was a great documentary by the BBC on the Orion project. If you can find it is is brilliant.

The idea was to follow Dyson's son, I think. Very detailed and Dyson was as frank as he could be. It seems, as said above, the nuke technology is still ultra secret because they got the price so low. They even had Coca-Cola to design the mahines to launch the nukes out the bottom, like a factory.

They did calculations and each launch would kill something like 200 people, hence Dyson refused to go ahead. I think he said he wanted the number down to 20.

Also the military wanted to use it as a weapons platform so the politicians at the time baulked.

If you go to the REL website they describe the Skylon as an excellent platform to build new space stations and even ships in orbit.

ESA would be mad not to follow through on this. At a stroke they knock the Proton out of the launcher market and they have been looking for a new cheaper launcher than Arianne 5.

New Update here

www.flightglobal.com...

This sound more and more interesting