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The Skylon was developed from the British HOTOL project.įollowing the setback of HOTOL's cancellation, in 1989 Alan Bond, along with John Scott-Scott and Richard Varvill decided to establish their own company, Reaction Engines Limited, to pursue the development of a viable spaceplane and associated technology using private funding. Aerospace publication Flight International observed that HOTOL and other competing spaceplane programmes were "over-ambitious" and that development on such launch systems would involve more research and slower progress than previously envisioned. However, during 1988, the British government decided to withdraw further funding from the programme, resulting in development work being terminated.
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In conjunction with British Aerospace and Rolls-Royce, a promising design emerged to which the British government contributed £2 million towards its refinement British engineer Alan Bond was amongst the engineers who worked on HOTOL. In 1982, when work commenced on the HOTOL by several British companies, there was significant international interest to develop and produce viable reusable launch systems, perhaps the most high-profile of these being the NASA-operated Space Shuttle. Skylon has its origins within a previous space development programme for an envisioned single-stage-to-orbit spaceplane, known as HOTOL.
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Research and development programme Background and early work The British government pledged £60 million to the project on 16 July 2013 to allow a prototype of the SABRE engine to be built contracts for this funding were signed in 2015. For the first couple of decades the work was privately funded, with public funding beginning in 2009 through a European Space Agency (ESA) contract. As of 2017, only a small portion of the funding required to develop and build Skylon had been secured. In 2004, the developer estimated the total lifetime cost of the Skylon C1 programme to be about $12 billion. In paper studies, the cost per kilogram of payload carried to LEO in this way is hoped to be reduced from the current £1,108/kg (as of December 2015 ), including research and development, to around £650/kg, with costs expected to fall much more over time after initial expenditures have amortised. As of 2021, the groundworks for an engine test facility have been completed at Westcott and current plans are for the plant to be completed and the first ground-based engine tests to begin in 2021, and SABRE engines could be performing uncrewed test flights in a "hypersonic testbed" (HTB) by 2025. Testing of the key technologies was successfully completed in November 2012, allowing Skylon's design to advance from its research phase to a development phase. When on the ground, it would undergo inspection and necessary maintenance, with a turnaround time of approximately two days, and be able to complete at least 200 orbital flights per vehicle.Īs work on the project has progressed, information has been published on a number of design versions, including A4, C1, C2, and D1. The relatively light vehicle would then re-enter the atmosphere and land on a runway, being protected from the conditions of re-entry by a ceramic composite skin. It could carry 17 tonnes (37,000 lb) of cargo to an equatorial low Earth orbit (LEO) up to 11 tonnes (24,000 lb) to the International Space Station, almost 45% more than the capacity of the European Space Agency's Automated Transfer Vehicle or 7.3 tonnes (16,000 lb) to Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO), over 24% more than SpaceX Falcon 9 launch vehicle in reusable mode (as of 2018 ). The vehicle design is for a hydrogen-fuelled aircraft that would take off from a purpose-built runway, and accelerate to Mach 5.4 at 26 kilometres (85,000 ft) altitude (compared to typical airliner's 9–13 kilometres or 30,000–40,000 feet) using the atmosphere's oxygen before switching the engines to use the internal liquid oxygen (LOX) supply to take it into orbit.
Reddit spaceplan series#
Skylon are a series of concept designs for a reusable single-stage-to-orbit spaceplane by the British company Reaction Engines Limited (Reaction), using SABRE, a combined-cycle, air-breathing rocket propulsion system. HOTOL (Horizontal Take-Off and Landing) project ( March 2020)Īrtist's concept of a Skylon reaching orbit.
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