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Skylon spaceplane gets cash boost

by Musab  |  3 years, 3 month(s) ago

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An innovative UK launcher concept is to get 1m euros (£900,000) of investment from the European Space Agency (Esa).

 Tags: boost, Cash, skylon, spaceplane

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  1. Musab
    The Skylon spaceplane would take off from a conventional aircraft runway, carry over 12 tonnes to orbit and then return to land on the same runway. The money will help prove the vehicle's core technologies, including its Sabre air-breathing rocket engine. Reaction Engines, the company behind the project, believes its reusable launcher could fly within 10 years. Alan Bond, the firm's managing director, said: "Traditional throw-away rockets costing more than a $100m per launch are a drag on the growth of this market. "The Holy Grail to transform the economics of getting into space is to use a truly reusable space-plane capable of taking off from an airport and climbing directly into space, delivering its satellite payload and automatically returning safely to Earth." The Skylon concept's key enabling technology is its Sabre propulsion system. It is part jet engine, part rocket engine. It burns hydrogen and oxygen to provide thrust - but in the lower atmosphere this oxygen is taken from the atmosphere. At high speeds, this requires Sabre cope with 1,000 degree gasses entering its intake. These need to be cooled prior to being compressed and burnt with the hydrogen. Reaction Engines' breakthrough is a remarkable heat exchanger pre-cooler. Arrays of extremely fine piping plunge the hot intake gases to minus 130C in just 100th of a second.

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