Reaction Engines SABRE engine (Skylon Spaceplane)

[Archibald]

The supreme irony is that in 1989 BAe already screwed Alan Bond's team over the classified RB-545. Also Interim HOTOL. Hence 35 years later things would come full circle - damn.

 

[FighterJock]

So true Archibald so true.

 

[SteveO]

Awww… nuts! Sad news about Reaction Engines. Another Great British space flight dream in the bin.

Back when I started this thread I was a massive Skylon fanboy after reading about it in Spaceflight magazine. Then I actually got around to reading my big Space Shuttle book by Dennis R. Jenkins and realized it wasn’t going to be as straight forward as chucking money at it!

Then SpaceX and Falcon 9 happened!!!

 

[FighterJock]

That was exactly the same with me SteveO as to how I first saw anything about Skylon too through the BIS Spaceflight magazine and then onto the BIS Journal especially in the early years of its existence. I was somewhat of a fanboy as well I really wanted it to succeed where HOTOL failed but alas it was not to be.

 

[Zoo Tycoon]

Then SpaceX and Falcon 9 happened!!!

There you go, yup, likewise I reckon that’s that’s what nailed em.

 

[SteveO]

Yep, SpaceX and Falcon 9 was that, oh yeah!, moment when I realized making routine space flight easy was about science and engineering and not looking cool!

Saying that, watching a Falcon 9 land is about as cool as it comes

 

[Maro.Kyo]

There you go, yup, likewise I reckon that’s that’s what nailed em.

And not just REL/Skylone, but the whole SSTO dreams. Ony maybe in the distant future may we see serious SSTO efforts again... At least Stoke is doing something really cool.

 

[Dagger]

Already for many years REL only spoke about using Skylon to "fly to Sydney in 4 hours" or "fly to New York in 2 hours", not for SSTO.

In 2008 they came up with LAPCAT-A2, which looks very much like Skylon, and in January 2011 they even announced that it could fly "within the next 15 years".
That should then be before the end of next year, but of course nothing happened since 2011. See attachments.
LAPCAT has been mentioned before in this topic in those years.

Falcon 9 did not kill REL, their total lack of any achievements did.

 

[SteveO]

An old Reaction Engines paper from when Skylon was still the main event

A DESIGN FOR AN ORBITAL ASSEMBLY FACILITY FOR COMPLEX MISSIONS

 

[SteveO]

A few months ago Reaction Engines released issue 1 of a 52 page Skylon User Manual for prospective clients! You can download it from http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/downloads/SKYLON_User_ Manual_rev1[3].pdf.

Link no longer works unsurprisingly so I’ve attached the Skylon Users Manual

SpaceX did one for the Falcon 9 too, if only RE had their success! If only horizontal SSTO was easier

 

[Archibald]

There were two users manual released: one for the 275 tons Skylon C2, and another for the 325 tons D1. I have both of them on my HD, plus a ton of documents "Skylon for -" (space stations, Moon, Mars, upper stages, and other stuff).

 

[FighterJock]

That I would love to see Archibald.

 

[SteveO]

Yes, please share what you have with us Archibald! I remember some of those but failed to save them!

 

[Owens Z]

There were two users manual released: one for the 275 tons Skylon C2, and another for the 325 tons D1. I have both of them on my HD, plus a ton of documents "Skylon for -" (space stations, Moon, Mars, upper stages, and other stuff).

SteveO has posted the later version of the Skylon user's manual, on configuration D1. Here (see attached PDF) is the earlier version that I have in my records, on configuration C2, if anybody is interested.

 

[Archibald]

Ok I know where to find that I'll post them tomorrow.

 

[Rhinocrates]

RE's Troy study for a mission to Mars from... a while ago.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqqnctOCMvs

 

[Archibald]

And, as promised - here we go. Twenty files, max that can be attached to a post. More to come in the next message.

Note that the file called 6844338 is one of the Skylon user manual, sorry if it has already posted elsewhere with a different name.
It is the first manual, for the C-2 variant.

 

[Archibald]

Second part. Twelve more files. SKYLON_Users_Manual_Rev_2.1 is the other one: the D-1 variant.

 

[FighterJock]

Wow, that is a lot of reading Archibald thanks for posting.

 

[Archibald]

I did the same thing with ULA own technical library (ACES, DTAL horizontal lander, EELV evolutions). Dowloaded everything of interest like a manic squirrel storing nuts for winter.

 

[SteveO]

Archibald, thank you so much for sharing those with us. Great collection!

 

[SteveO]

I think for me it was Adrian Mann’s artwork that really made me want Skylon to succeed. His lovely crisp CGI just looked right and made me forget about the laws of physics
His website -

Bisbos.com :: Spacecraft : REL : SKYLON

 

[SteveO]

It’s interesting to compare the rocket plumes on the original Skylon mission animation and Hazegrayart’s more recent go at it!

View: https://youtu.be/DZp2p_rNhlI?si=_3xffFHRIbNl7Iy1

View: https://youtu.be/mOqInOe5g8k?si=RKbi7JeP6dQe8hMy

 

[red admiral]

It’s interesting to compare the rocket plumes on the original Skylon mission animation and Hazegrayart’s more recent go at it!

They look cool, but aren't simulations of what the plume actually does. At altitude with lower pressure then it looks more like the attached. Which may cause issues for the aft fuselage structure and thin, brittle TPS covering it...

 

[fightingirish]

How Britain's Air Breathing Rocket Engine Would Have Worked... If The Builder Hadn't Gone Bankrupt.
Reaction Engines had been working on an innovative engine design named SABRE, this was intended to operate as an air breathing engine up to about mach 5 and then switch to a pure rocket engine cycle. The ultimate goal was to build an aircraft named 'Skyline' which could fly all the way to orbit without dropping stages, but the company was first and foremost focussed on demonstrating the engine design, and in particular, the pre-cooler which would be required to chill the incoming air down to usable temperatures so it could be compressed and then used to burn hydrogen in a rocket engine. [...]

Video:

View: https://youtu.be/4YLg8X0BAL0?si=d80Tq6TIxXR3p3Ch

Link:

https://youtu.be/4YLg8X0BAL0?si=d80Tq6TIxXR3p3Ch

 

[Owens Z]

My post # 617 in this thread three weeks ago got several likes (thank you), but nobody here has been able to answer the question therein about whether or not the planned British test program (to add a Reaction Engines' helium precooler in front of an EJ200 jet engine as used in the Eurofighter Typhoon) actually occurred in 2019-21. I am now doubtful that it ever did, even though the test appears to have already been fully funded. I re-read my sources. Craig Hoyle wrote the article "EJ200 trial to accelerate UK hypersonics research" in the 31 July 2019 issue of Flight International. Aviation Week's London correspondent Tony Osborne wrote "Precooler Technology Could Bring Advantages to Fighter Engines" (AWST 19 August 2019), which followed up from his colleague Guy Norris's "Positive Reaction (Reaction Engines' Pre-Cooler Passes Mach 3.3 Test [in Colorado])" (AWST 22 April 2019). I have emailed queries about the planned test program directly to Mr Hoyle and Mr Osborne, and await their response—or better yet, an answer included in an upcoming informative article by one or both of them about the life and death of Reaction Engines.

I completely agree (in fact ever since the 1990's when I learned of Skylon) with what the famed Henry Spencer wrote on a newsgroup recently, that it would have been wiser for Reaction Ltd to use its constrained funds to build "a crude-and-heavy test aircraft to put the engine through its paces, running out of fuel and oxidizer just after the shift to rocket mode... [Reaction] needed to get something flying without spending several billion dollars first... nobody was ever going to give them billions on the strength of paper studies. They spent far too long trying to sell that impossible fantasy."

Still, the end of Reaction Engines is a loss for space achievement. Maybe whomever inherits the defunct company's intellectual property will make something of it.

 

[FighterJock]

Let's wait and see Owens Z, It would be such a waste to see all the technology just disappear and not be used for something else.