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Spaceplane Concept Receives Euro Funding
draevil writes "BBC News reports that the novel "Skylon" spaceplane design of British firm Reaction Engines has received funding to proceed with its proof-of-concept design for an air-breathing rocket engine.
If successful, the Sabre rocket engine will be able to take the Skylon with 12 tonnes of cargo from a runway, to orbit and then back to that runway without the need for disposable components or a piggy-back ride on a larger aircraft.
Should the design prove viable, it could see first use within ten years."
I think the only ones who do this stuff successfully are the Americans.
As an American living in Britain I'm embarrassed that there is no British space program. Perhaps this can be the start of one - but more likely, the European financing will be half-ass or the British government will pull the plug on it somehow.
...to save a few hundred kilos of oxidiser. On the ground they won't be moving fast enough to scoop oxygen out of the air. In less than a minute they will be too high and fast to use anything from the atmosphere. Once effectively out of the atmosphere most of the work remains to be done so that will have to use stored oxygen.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
..That someone built a spaceplane. Too bad the US is busy cutting NASA budgets to fund a new welfare program.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
While the chances of this thing actually working is very slim, it is a very smart move to fund this sort of thing. At a million euros a pop, you can afford to fund a awful lot of projects that goes no where in order to find the diamond in the rough.
There has been some info about them on slashdot a while back http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/01/12/0135200
>"...the Sabre rocket engine will be able to take the Skylon with 12 tonnes of cargo..."
That should read "two Sabre rocket engines will be able to take a Skylon with 12 tonnes of cargo..."
That is 13.225 US Short Tons...or approximately 6 tons per engine, if the illustration is any indication.
Space Craft Blog feeds
Give the money to Noble. He'll use it to train the next generation of advanced engineers on a fun project that will actually go somewhere. Looking at the history to date of US efforts to develop scramjets (and this thing is basically an extended scramjet and therefore even more complex and expensive) a million Euros won't even pay for the project manager's office.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
The Sabre isn't taking anything into orbit, then, is it...
FTFA..."As the air density falls with altitude the engine eventually switches to a pure rocket propelling Skylon to orbital velocity..."
Since it will accelerate all the way to orbit there shouldn't be a problem getting fuel out of the tanks. For burns in orbit a hydrazine based reaction control system should be sufficient.
Liquid oxygen is as compact as oxygen can be made. For fuel, kerosene is more compact than hydrogen.
I don't see an issue with guidance. An iPhone will do a pretty good job of it in this day and age.
BTW I don't think this space plane thing will work but I do think the engines would be great for a high speed military vehicle. Something to get a payload to the target really fast. It could do unpowered semi ballistic lobs as well.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I think your definition of 'Rocket' is too restrictive. There is such a thing as an Air Augmented Rocket, which has all the characteristices of a rocket except it also uses air as additional propellant mass (not as a fuel) This is not the same as a RamJet. Also, from my understanding a Rocket is a type of Jet - an engine which relies up the dischage of a fluid jet for propulsion.
You're making a huge deal out of a simple mistake. Who really cares whether they've gotten their terminology wrong?
The actual content of the article is interesting, and I've seen far more stupid mistakes in past articles.
You can advertise in this sig from as little as £99.99 a month!
I think it is a way to develop an unmanned hypersonic bomber, without owning up to the fact for most of the development cycle.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
No. The definition is simple. A rocket uses stored oxidizer. A jet uses air. Period.
They are describing a hybrid device, that uses air -- which makes it a jet -- in the lower atmosphere, and a rocket higher up where there is less oxygen. Which is probably good engineering, if they have it halfway right! But the article is shit... because it simply isn't right to call a thing something that it clearly is not. A mammoth was never a kangaroo. Bush never really held to "classical Republican" values. Your ass is not a hole in the ground.
Saying it is an "air-breathing rocket" is (as I mentioned elsewhere) like saying a hybrid automobile is an "electricity-eating gasoline engine". It's not just a vague description, it is just plain false.
Why not take a look at: http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/sabre.html which may answer some of these questions? I went to a talk by John Scott-Scott of Reaction Engines a few years back and was very impressed by his description of the engineering work for the Sabre engine. The Reaction Engines guys are practical engineers with a wealth of experience, far from the "bumbling Brits" some other comments suggest.
I have no problem with hybrid engines. I have o problem with someone who wants to try the SSTO approach. I have a very BIG problem with stupid, inaccurate press releases that get the science more wrong than most middle-school students who were interested in the subject would, given the chance.
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/20/0149254
If it works, then maybe the power guys will have what they need to take their stuff up.
But it's a very big 'if' IMHO...the current shuttle show the tremendous problems associated with 'reusable' spacecraft, and even then they launch it conventionally.
I don't know how old you are, but I'm guessing you weren't born yet in the early 80s, when the shuttle first started flying. Trust me, a modern iPhone would out perform a 4 x 6 x 2ft mainframe from that time. I'm sure that the first shuttle had less computing power than the computer that I'm using right now. And GPS hadn't even started to be implemented yet. Yet our ICBMs could hit targets within a couple hundred yards on the other side of the world.
You're wrong about the engines, the engines are actively cooled at the inlet- they see ground level conditions throughout the flight.
You're also wrong about nitrogen, nitrogen is perfectly good reaction mass up to about Mach 5. Beyond that it tends to come apart. Guess what speed Skylon calls it quits and turns on the rockets?
The other point you're missing is that at low speeds rockets are horribly inefficient; the exhaust velocity is much too high. By using the nitrogen as reaction mass; powered by the hydrogen fuel reacting with atmospheric oxygen Skylon can reduce the exhaust velocity and get massively better efficiency. That means it needs a lot less propellant, and then when it does turn on the rockets, it has performance in hand. The design has twice the payload fraction of a rocket design because of that.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"