Reaction Engines SABRE engine (Skylon Spaceplane)

[Owens Z]

No "good riddance" implied...

Orion III spoiled us...well...we got 9/11 instead of a space odyssey in 2001.

I should have been into girls and cars in my youth like most normal people. I remember--not that long ago--a book released in 1980 called BREAKTHROUGHS that read like it was a prediction of the singularity--two decades before that word referred to anything besides a collapsar.

It read like Kurzweil's hype..about miracle cures just around the corner...my parents were always sickly --and that book got my hopes up.

Instead--I lost my parents in my 30s.

The winged spaceplane concept.....the loveliest of all sirens--with the sweetest voice--and the sharpest claws.

I don't think Sanger and Bredt invented the Silverbird after all.

I think it was Umberto Eco and Lord Dunsany.

SABRE, and Star Raker only fly in the airspace over Sona-Nyl.

Could you elaborate a little further?

Publiusr, I have read and re-read your post, and pondered it carefully—and I still have no idea what you are trying to say. So I will leave you be. Condolences about your deceased parents. I was not aware of a 1980 book entitled Breakthroughs, and I don't find any such work in my public library's records. But as a youth I too had my imagination fired by a hype-heavy book from that same time; see the attached front cover.

 

[Rhinocrates]

But as a youth I too had my imagination fired by a hype-heavy book from that same time; see the attached front cover.

Ah yes, I too collected the whole series. Long gone now but fragments are appearing on the net. I might post a few on an appropriate thread.

I think Publiusr's point is that Skylon embodied, like the Citroen DS, a promise of the future that never eventuated. Reaction Engines's demise rubs salt into that wound.

Alan Bond was thinking about what was promised and what should have been when he named Skylon - it was in honour of a monumental spire erected for the 1951 Festival of Britain. On the centenary of the Great Exhibition, it showed a post-war Britain reforged in what Harold Wilson called 'the white heat' of technology in 1963.

Skylon (Festival of Britain) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Festival of Britain - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzIg5EXXu9E&ab_channel=TheiPaper


Here's an essay by French philosopher Roland Barthes on the special appeal of ambitious, futuristic engineering projects that become cultural icons. It's sort of required reading if you're studying design and architecture.

Citroën DS by Roland Barthes

 

[Nicknick]

I`ve never worked anywhere doing combustion engine fundamental design which used Creo, and I`ve worked at a lot of engine design departments.

All CAD systems are basically flawed and annoying, and the arguments endless, but I would say virtually every high level engine design dept is using either NX or CATIA. CATIA has been losing quite a bit of marketspace to NX in the last few years, partially because its insanely expensive, but also because nobody wants the cloud based V6 version (which is now called "3D experience" for reasons nobody knows).

Solidworks is amazingly easy and very capable, but falls over on stability and despite the PR claims, a total inability to satisfactorally work with very large assemblies or extremely complex single parts. I would say it has the large market share for what we`d call mid-range engineering firms.

As far as I can tell Creo basically got no significant useful upgrades or serious feature expansion in the last 10 years and almost all current users of it are pretty much using it for some historical product continuity reasons, rather than because its what you`d choose out of the box today were you starting from zero.

Catia V5 is the best CAD system I`ve ever used, its ability to work with gigantic parts and assemblies in real time on even moderately capable PC`s is unbelievable, I have no idea how it does it. I`d use it now, but I dont have £100,000 for V5 with all the toolbars, so I use NX, which is about 2/3 as good for 15x less money.

I did a lot of work for Volkswagen enviroment (including suppliers) and they all used Creo. It was also used by some off Highway companies I've been working for (agriculture, Aero, Marine...) and the prefered program by the FEV, AVL and guess so, for many others too. According to a guy who designed a whole engine for a famous sport car company with Creo (including all FEM, multi body etc. all done within Creo enviroment) they internally tested varios programs and Creo turned out to be the most stable and fastest program for engine design.

There was at least one big step in Creo within the last 10(?) years. Creo can now perform Boolshe operations and offers a model tree like Catia. You can also handle different solids in one part completely seperatly as it was allways the case in Catia. I started with Catia V4 and I allways missed this in ProE/Creo!

However, Creo is currently the program I'm most used to, so my view might be biased....

 

[publiusr]

Here we go—Charles Panati

Amazon.com

 

[Gablu]

Hi, I came across the Hotol - Britain's first space plane book by Dan Sharp on X a few days back.The vehicle configuration with its Sotka style air intakes piqued my interest and since then I have done some reading on Hotol and Skylon, watched some docs and Alan Bond interviews on YouTube.

I have a few questions.

1. Reaction Engines Ltd went bankrupt in Oct of this year. Under PwC administration now. If they had been able to secure the required funding say another 30 million pounds from UAE SDF or Rolls Royce, then when did they plan to fly a scaled down sabre engine on a flying test bed?

2. If funding had been secured, what were their future plan of action. Back in 2011, the REL guys were saying that they will have a flying space plane for uncrewed missions in next 15 years. They even had plans of an unmanned Skylon mission to Mars in 2026. That's exactly an year from now.

3. How can a small private company with around 220 employees and around 100 million pounds investment plan to design,develope and test a SSTO spaceplane whose empty weight is 53 tons with a payload capacity of 15 tons to low eorbit. They didn't tie up with any OEM , aerospace company for providing them with the required consultancy and the IP of the enabling tech required to build any sort of aircraft. Had an established company , aerospace giant like Boeing, Airbus, Sukhoi OKB, Embraer , etc had such a program, it would have been understandable. But a small company of Oxfordshire with extremely limited funding planning to build Skylon is extremely daring and audacious on the part of the management of the company. How did they ever plan to design and build something which require billions and hundreds of very competent engineers from different disciplines in just a few hundred million pounds?

4. REL haven't demonstrated a 1:1 scale Sabre prototype on ground. Neither did they conduct any flight tests of any of the elements like precooler, compressor , air breathing rocket engine on a flying test bed. The only test of an engine with most of the elements was with a Gnome engine. Don't know what had happened to the precooler mated with Ej200 test.

5. REL was the lead propulsion company for the RAF HVX project which plans to have a flying reusable tech demo flyworthy vehicle by 2030. What will happen to this project now? Will RAF nominate any other OEM , like say Rolls Royce to do the required work OR did REC already transferred the required tech and their IPR for fabrication of the required engine.

6. Are there any plans to restructure and relaunch REL so that the experienced manpower is retained and all the decades of work doesn't go down the drain.

7. Why didn't Rolls Royce bail them out. 100 million pounds is peanuts for them. Especially when ESA guys conducted a thorough technical oversight of their entire work and came out with only 200 actions in 2010 or 11. They were satisfied with REL's work.


I had asked one of this ques to Dan Sharp on X but didn't recieve any reply. Maybe he's too busy with the book launch. Plan to buy one when the book is available in my country.

PS- Those brightly coloured and illustrated HOTOL brochure from BAc in the 80s really got my attention. Now completely obsessed with Hotol and Skylon.

 

[Zoo Tycoon]

Answers;-
1 - 30 mill would have just kept them going, I don’t know if that would have paid for any further demonstrations, but suspect not.

2 - Back in 2011 they were 100% private funded, so what were they supposed to say? Similar to Space X but yes they did the whole space vehicle.

3 - Reaction ===Engines==== Limited never intended to build anything other than the engine. Again the business plan was to engage a funded airframe prime and supply a unique engine. Skylon was demonstration of the art of the possible with their engine.

4 - The Gnome test fitted the available budget.

5 - The IP will be sold, with RR having had a share of REL, they have a position advantage in the purchase. I suspect it made business sense just get certain IP without all other things/cost REL was getting into.

6 - No, key staff all laid off, and being rather good they won’t be on the job market long.

7 - See answer 5. I think the technology was sound but with Starship no one is going to bankroll an SSTO. Fundamentally the wings are dead weight that just reduce payload so will always be an operating cost that vertical launch and landing doesn’t have.

High speed sub orbital cruise is probably where the potential is for the aerospace fraction of REL IP.

 

[Archibald]

PS- Those brightly coloured and illustrated HOTOL brochure from BAc in the 80s really got my attention. Now completely obsessed with Hotol and Skylon.

Welcome to the rabbit hole ! I've fallen into it in 2002. Still haven't found an exit.