The Skylon spaceplane is an aircraft that has been designed by Reaction Engines Limited of the United Kingdom. The great thing about this particular spacecraft compared to others is that is it will be potentially powered by two SABRE engines to create the ultimate single-stage-to-orbit spaceplane.
Reaction Engines Limited are a British Aerospace Manufacturer that were founded in 1989 and are based in Oxfordshire, England. For quite some time now Reaction Engines have been working on the Skylon project and in 2009 the European Space Agency (ESA) announced they were investing into Skylon to produce a demonstration engine by 2011. On completion of the jet engine test in 2011, Reaction Engines Limited received a further $350 million in funding to allow them to continue with the project. Since then the company has received numerous funds from both private and public investors, including a whopping £60 million from the British government and over £20 million from BAE Systems in exchange for 20 percent of the company’s share capital.
Now that the funding has been secured, the company now need to get to work to ensure they can reach their target of producing a ground-based SABRE demonstrator engine by 2020. They have been working on these engines for a while now, so hopefully they should have no trouble in doing this. SABRE stands for Synergistic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine and is a hybrid rocket jet engine that will have sufficient thrust power to propel a spaceplane from Earth to low-Earth orbit. The difficulty that most engines have when reaching these high altitudes is that the air is thin and does not hold enough oxygen for a regular engine to remain in operation. But, the SABRE engine has been designed to be able to combat that.
The SABRE engine has been developed over the past 20 years and because of its advanced breathing system it can reach speeds of up to five times the speed of sound as well as flying directly into the Earth’s orbit. Also, because of its ability to switch from air-breathing mode to rocket mode, makes SABRE the best engine for the job when it comes to powering spaceplanes such as Skylon. But, with the introduction of similar projects like Blue Origin and SpaceX only time will tell as to who will come out on top.
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