Photo: Reaction Engines
Air travel is about to get much faster and less polluting, but it will be another decade before we get to enjoy it. British firm Reaction Engines is working on an engine that will make hypersonic rocket-planes a reality and, with them, cross-globe flights that will last a fraction of the time they take now to complete.
Reaction Engines is working on something called a SABRE engine, where SABRE stands for Synergetic Air Breathing Rocket Engine, news.com.au reports. They’ve already tested a cooler that allowed an engine to reach Mach 3.3. in a simulator, and believe the same cooler will enable reaching speeds of Mach 5.5 by 2030. At 5 times the speed of sound, a flight from the UK to Australia, for example, will last about 4 hours, whereas today it takes 19 to 20 hours to complete.
Unmanned tests of the hypersonic rocket-plane, Skylon, will begin by 2025, Reaction Engines says. Commercial flights will follow in about 5 years’ time, and not only will they be more time-and cost-efficient, but they will also have a smaller impact on the environment as the SABRE engine is hydrogen-powered.
The rocket-plane will fly in Earth’s lower orbit. Liquid gases cool off the engine, which becomes very hot at hypersonic speeds: the simulator test showed that SABRE goes down from 1,000 degrees Celsius to 150 in a one-hundredth of a second.
“This is not sci-fi. This is not a pipe dream. This is literally in the works,” Dr. Graham Turnock, of the UK Space Agency, says of Skylon. “It has the potential to turn air travel on its head. Certainly the way you conceive air travel will completely change in ten years’ time.”
“It would not only allow you to fly around the world hypersonically, and take people from London to Australia outside the atmosphere and have far less long term effect on the atmosphere but it will also allow you to rapidly get much more technology into space,” Will Whitehorn, of trade body UK Space, says of the rocket-plane.
Reaction Engines received an AUD109 million funding from the government, with matching investments from Rolls-Royce, Boeing and BAE Systems, the media outlet notes.
Unmanned tests of the hypersonic rocket-plane, Skylon, will begin by 2025, Reaction Engines says. Commercial flights will follow in about 5 years’ time, and not only will they be more time-and cost-efficient, but they will also have a smaller impact on the environment as the SABRE engine is hydrogen-powered.
The rocket-plane will fly in Earth’s lower orbit. Liquid gases cool off the engine, which becomes very hot at hypersonic speeds: the simulator test showed that SABRE goes down from 1,000 degrees Celsius to 150 in a one-hundredth of a second.
“This is not sci-fi. This is not a pipe dream. This is literally in the works,” Dr. Graham Turnock, of the UK Space Agency, says of Skylon. “It has the potential to turn air travel on its head. Certainly the way you conceive air travel will completely change in ten years’ time.”
“It would not only allow you to fly around the world hypersonically, and take people from London to Australia outside the atmosphere and have far less long term effect on the atmosphere but it will also allow you to rapidly get much more technology into space,” Will Whitehorn, of trade body UK Space, says of the rocket-plane.
Reaction Engines received an AUD109 million funding from the government, with matching investments from Rolls-Royce, Boeing and BAE Systems, the media outlet notes.
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