Some time in the middle of the next decade a revolutionary new engine will propel a reusable space plane called Skylon towards the heavens, hopefully changing the way we escape our atmosphere for ever. The Synergetic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine (Sabre) isnt a product of Nasa or a super-wealthy space entrepreneur. Its the brainchild of a quiet, British engineer called Alan Bond. And, from its base in a science park near Oxford, his company Reaction Engines is getting closer to perfecting its design. Bond has spent his working life trying to solve a problem that most people havent even considered; space crafts powered by traditional rockets are far too expensive and unreliable, and will never provide humankind with the tools to explore our solar system and beyond. The Sabre design is so effective because it operates as a traditional jet engine at take-off and during the ascent, before transforming into a powerful hydrogen-burning rocket engine to send the Skylon at Mach 25 beyond Earths atmosphere. This allows the Skylon to operate like a plane and re-enter the atmosphere, before landing on a normal runway.
Posted on: Sun, 06 Jul 2014 11:52:15 +0000
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