Skylon in flight showing the Sabre engine
London To Sydney Spaceflight Edges Closer
‘A British company believes it is a step closer to building a rocket plane that would get from London to Sydney within four hours.’
4:20pm UK, Wednesday 28 November 2012
Thomas Moore, Health And Science Correspondent
(excerpt)
‘British engineers have successfully tested a key component of an engine that could power a spaceplane from London to Sydney in under four hours.
The engineers have hailed it as the biggest breakthrough in aerospace propulsion “since the invention of the jet engine”.
Oxfordshire-based Reaction Engines hope to build a rocket plane called Lapcat that would take off from an ordinary runway, reach speeds of around 19,000mph in the upper atmosphere and then land like a normal jet aircraft.
While still in the atmosphere, the plane’s Sabre engine would combine on-board hydrogen fuel with oxygen that it “breathes” from the air. But the air needs to be super-cooled for the engine to work.
The company has now demonstrated a lightweight heat exchanger that pre-cools incoming air from 1000 degrees Celsius to minus 150 degrees in 1/100th of a second - six times faster than the blink of an eye - without blocking pipes with a layer of frost.
Alan Bond, who founded the company and led the research, said: “The team has been trying to solve this problem for over 30 years and we’ve finally done it.
“The Sabre engine has the potential to revolutionise our lives in the 21st century in the way the jet engine did in the 20th Century.”
The tests were validated by the European Space Agency.
Science minister David Willetts MP said: “This is a remarkable achievement for a remarkable company. Building on years of unique engineering know-how, Reaction Engines has shown the world that Britain remains at the forefront of technological innovation and can get ahead in the global race.”
The Sabre engine could also power a re-useable rocket plane called Skylon that could carry a large payload into space, reducing the cost of launching a satellite by more than 10 times.
By using available oxygen in the atmosphere it would reduce the amount of fuel it needs to carry, so it could reach orbit in a single stage. Current rockets require costly multiple stages which are jettisoned during their ascent.’
http://news.sky.com/...ht-edges-closer
Skylon in flight showing the Sabre engine
I don’t ‘get’ why a great heat exchanger is so important.
Seems like it would be cooling waste heat that would better be used for propulsion.
And sure enough, towards the end of the article,,
“The HOTOL study was launched in 1986, but two years later the government refused to fund it further.
In 1989 Bond helped form Reaction and designed its new concept craft, Skylon.”
Which he hopes ESA will fund now.
The cost of spaceflight is not the fuel or vehicles, it is the overhead.
Here is how to lower the cost of spaceflight:
1: Fire all the lawyers and bureaucrats.
2: Separate flights for cargo and humans.
3: Taxes in space, stay in space.
A few basic unanswered questions....
1: How much coolant was used to achieve this temperature conversion rate per mass of airflow?
2: From this, how much coolant would be required for a 4 hour flight (for the engines and airframe cooling)?
3: How much weight/volume/precautions will this add to the aircraft?
4: Where is face palm guy?