HOTOL, Skylon, and the future of the SABRE Rocket Engine
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- Опубліковано 15 вер 2023
- HOrizontal TakeOff and Landing space planes are the future of safe human transport into space. From the its beginnings in the 1960s to today, dedicated British engineers worked to build the perfect rocket engine. Now with an international team supporting them, will they find a space plane to use it? The Synergistic Air Breathing Rocket Engine is the most advanced rocket engine ever made. Paired with the right spaceship, it could change aviation and human spaceflight forever.
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it's a crime that the Skylon is not being properly funded
like he said, the engine is being developed for the USA so it may well live on. the USA are very interested in hypersonic airbreathing engines right now.
@@mrrolandlawrencehe said the US is interested only in SCRAM jet technology not this.
That was then... Now they want something that works ASAP
@@terranspaceacademy
Hey, just wanted to let you know that Space Engine Systems, the folks behind the Sexbomb space plane just dropped a new video of an engine test.
Skylon has too many issues wrong propellant for reusability, poor shape choice. Ect. Ect.
When I first saw the Skylon concept, I was thrilled. Our traitorous governments in the U.K. have a lot to answer for. This should be fully supported. What an awesome machine & engine.
*treacherous
*tracheostomy
*Pterodactyl…?🧐
*Televangelist…?🤷🏾♂️
@@ak47suki242but seriously, why bother correcting her with a synonym of the word she chose to use?? It’s like you were wrongly “correcting” someone in effort to be pedantic or something… just makes no damned sense to me…🤔
But if it makes you feel better about yourself, carry on…
At 20:10 as a pilot, I appreciate the fact that you want to keep the pilot alive.
Always brother. I firmly believe that every self driving truck needs a pilot also. It will be a long time before we should go human free.
By making the pilot redundant? Stay at home with your slippers on and you'll die just as often (once).
@@MattOGormanSmith you tell ‘em pal.
Allan Bond is a genius, Skylon is a thing of beauty, the coming together of a whole bunch of very clever systems and thermodynamics that many aeronautical engineers couldn't crack, single stage to orbit, I have been waiting for years for this...
Indeed. Very short-sighted that this hasn't flown yet.
Any relation to James?
There is actually a considerable amount of work that has accomplished in United States concerning the Sabre engine. In September 2017 the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) contracted with Reaction Engines Inc. to build a high-temperature airflow test facility at Front Range Airport near Watkins, Colorado. The particulars of that venture can be summarized in the Wiki article on the Sabre engine that I edited. The latest update on progress was done in mid 2022. What has occurred since then and the definitive results I haven't been able to determine in open sources. I am hoping that if DARPA and US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) see potential in the Sabre engine there is perhaps some classified work contracted that is not being publicized.
They are probably more interested in the heat exchangers for scramjets and high-Mach turbojets
I sure hope so, it is really pretty clearly an effective way to go to space. A first stage air breathing reusable booster to economically even give 700 mph and 30,000 feet is going give a lot more lift for the buck.
I think it will fly.
@@terranspaceacademy With the right funding maybe. SABRE looks very good on paper.
It's pretty clear, the US Air Force want this technology for missiles. Rather predictable they want the technology for killing people. The current UK Government, seem to be more interested in launching, US Lockheed Martin Cubesat rockets sadly...
Britain may have the best engineers in the world they are absolutely brilliant, they also have politicians that are absolutely horrible at recognizing potential in both people and technology. Take a look at any documentary on Frank Whittle and the issues that he had in developing the jet engine. He was blocked at every possible point both by the military and the government. The video shown here today once again displays the same lack of vision that the government has. So much technology that the rest of the world uses was developed in Britain but their government did not support it. In all of these cases the creators had to reach out to other countries to have the products developed. I truly hope that Britain wakes up and realizes the potential of single stage to orbit launch systems. They could lead this in the world of the future if their government will only support it. This is the only technology I see that could compete with SpaceX's reusability. Thanks for putting this video presentation together, very well done!
It is indeed sad. Which is why we need off-world colonies to make the really cool stuff. Like nanobots :-)
Seriously this is a big problem with bureaucracy. Look at what the US did to the videotape industry...
Unfortunately, Australia has the same issues over the decades. Woomera in SA, used by Britian in the 50s, could have been the base for an Aussie space program that failed to eventuate due to the same political ineptitude that has only recently been slightly improved. Very sad. 😔
Our politicians always grab defeat from the arms of success
So true. The mind boggles as to why reaction engines hasn’t been fully supported by the UK government.
You seldom hear about British aerospace projects ... it's a shame we ( the U.S.) can't work with them due to reasons bureaucratic. I wish them all the best .
Those tiny tubes used in that engine. Tiny tubes clog easily...I wonder how many can get clogged and the engine still function?
Great presentation!
In the past the US used to work against the UK in technology matters - check out the history of the TSR2 /F111
The US will sabotage an ally to maintain technological supremacy. It is a sad fact with many proven cases.
what's going to clog them?
@@jocramkrispy305 I used to work in a maintenance job...Crud can appear anywhere.... including places it isn't supposed to..
" ... it's a shame we ( the U.S.) can't work with them due to reasons bureaucratic."
Actually it's more political than bureaucratic. The US uses it financial clout through the World Bank and the IMF to manipulate other countries economies. There is a history of Britain's technological programs being undermined by Washington leveraging financial pressure on Sterling and access to international loans at critical time. One example is the development of the Harrier 'jump jet' that became a US development, depriving Britain of the aerospace technology development and the potential profits. The already flying TSR-2 was cancelled in favor of the yet to exist F111. The F111 arrived seven years late and at a far higher cost than Britain was promised when they cancelled the TSR-2. There are numerous other instances where the USA political ambition to dominate the entire world resulted in UK and other countries suppressing viable alternatives to buying US military systems.
Britain's so called "Special relationship" coined by the 'British Benedict Arnold' Winston Churchill has always been that when the US says bend over, we grab our ankles.
For British context in the 60s and especially the 70s the UK was in a debt crisis, a currency crisis (which lead to an IMF bailout) and couldn't fund many of its public services such as rubbish/trash collection. There's many pictures of tons of trash building up on the streets. They were called the sick man of Europe, the poor couldn't afford coal to heat their homes, rolling brownouts became a thing, and it was cheaper to import coal from Australia cause its public services became such an inefficient nightmare, leading to a 3 day work and school week (cause of the lack of coal and union protests). So a rocket program as cool as it was, just wasn't something we could afford
It was a dark time and it's important to remember that these decisions aren't made in isolation. Still perhaps a little better planning early on would have helped. Britain could have been number one in jet aircraft manufacturing with a little more foresight and that would funded the rest. The US is no better than Australia or Canada. We just try to keep out of each other's way. Or at least we used to.
@@terranspaceacademy : WW2 and the dissolution of the British Empire were major factors, planning wasn't ever going to be enough.
While extremely interesting, I can't shake the feeling that this 12tons to LEO is going to be about as expensive as Starship's 150tons to LEO...
They're just not going fast enough.
12 tonnes of live human cargo is a lot.
correct, but the piece that does not work well, if at all is this: The Lockheed Mach 3.2 supersonic SR 71 aircraft could not take off with all the fuel, the only solution was to take off with minimum fuel, climb to altitude , load the fuel from a tanker, climb to operational altitude of 90000 feet acelerating. The Skylon with the small span wings could not have taken off, even with a 50 km runway, the induced drag is so high with the low wing span shown, that wing borne flight would require too much fuel , to minimize gravitational losses the vertical component of the acceleration must be higher than say 0.8 g plus one g to just hold weight.
The refueling approach with liquid hydrogen is untried and not likely to succeed from the tanker via the flexible line, the receptable in a humid environment would freeze with 7 Kelvin hydrogen temperature.
So vertical lift off is the only option. Having long span wings used only a short time is not reasonable, landing requires small wings, because the weight is so much smaller.
Horizontal TO, single stage is not possible, with hydrogen/oxygen fuel, when practical constraints like thermal insulation to prevent ice accumulation, etc come into play. That was our finding when we worked out our Shuttle proposal at Martin, which had a flyback booster, fully reusable, Nixon gave the contract to NA for political reasons. With enourmous cost ramifications, that were made with the NA approach. Using atmospheric oxygen for a single stage to orbit might be possible, but not with a winged runway horizontal TO
atleast its called hodor
Another enthralling video on spaceflight science. A thoroughly engaging work of visual art. Thank you! 🙂
Thank you so much! Glad you enjoyed it :-)
Well done ! Fascinating video! 😀
Thank you so much!
Brilliant content.
Thank you so much!
Lovely piece deep dive with all the trimmings 😊
Thank you! 😊
An extremely interesting and informative programme. Exactly what this platform should provide. Thank you.
You are most welcome.
Wow - this is a nice presentation! You do good work!
Thank you very much!
the sabre engine is an absolute monster and i just want to see it fly in something, anything
We do too.
do you guys think we’ll see it in a virgin galactic vehicle?
Wow Joseph you've outdone yourself with this video (documentary)! Liked and commented for the algorithm :)
Thanks you so much!
I had been wondering what was going on here.....thank you for this report and update.
You are most welcome.
excellent
Many many thanks
The complicated heat-exchanger and all the plumbing around the engine makes me think they would greatly benefit from 3D printing the HEX and the plumbing. I'd love to see this work in reality!
I thought the same thing.
Excellent detailed explanation of the evolution of HOTOL and Skylon with SABRE. I've been following this since the 1980s. I expect SpaceX success will see more investment in Reaction Engines as SSTO will prove to be the ultimately most efficient solution. Note the example of Alan's example of throwing away a 747 after a transatlantic flight now used by mr musk....
Indeed! SpaceX is visionary in its execution but the ideas have been around a long time.
@@terranspaceacademy Elon owes a lot to Sergei Korolev in general engineering phoilosophy and even many solutions.
Fascinating presentation! I only wish there were a way of displaying his slides in full size on my screen. I can guess a lot from his excellent descriptions though. Thanks for your excellent work.
You are most welcome and thank you for your kind words Stephen.
As a Canadian I would like to see significant participation from us in creating a fleet of Sabre powered aerospace planes. It'd be great if Australia and New Zealand would come in as well to give us all autonomous access to LEO. With proper support even the original concept - two stage with the An-225 could have been flying for decades by now!
check out space engine systems 🤞 they're based in edmonton alberta but have opened offices in the us and uk to form agreements with spaceports , seeing as though we dont have much space launch infrastructure
I would love to see Canada maximize its potential.
hopefully soon🤞 a spaceport was recently under construction in Nova Scotia by Maritime Launch Services , i believe they're first launchs are using the older Ukrainian made cyclone-4m rockets, it would be nice to see a collaboration between them and the space engine systems from edmonton , and they are prototyping the dass gnx turbo ramjet engine for use in they're in house hello 1/2 ssto ships
I think this technology was reference to a StarGate episode with a death glider using such technology.
Sci-fi movies or shows can acts as a recruiter for technology research.
Always my friend. Always. Science fiction stretches the imagination and gets it ready for new ideas.
That heat exchanger is fuggin nutty. I can't help but think it could have more uses.
I'm not sure I see your point. I like it to cool the air at hypersonic speeds so we can get to space :-)
@@terranspaceacademy The uses in manufacturing and chemical processes are numerous. Almost any time you create something that pushes the boundaries of what is thought possible it will have enumerate uses. That's part of why NASA was founded. We use technology every day that comes from the aerospace industry. It's fantastic for its original use but the knowledge to manufacturing is what's really valuable in the end.
Thank you very much for this video. Could this engine funtion for point to point super sonic flight?
Yes, absolutely
cool
Thanks!
Yours is the only channel I've found that brings us this this type of in depth content--thanks! Interesting that at the beginning of the talk Alan Bond brought up the hypothetical question of "What if we had to throw out an airliner after use" to make the case for reusability. I had always credited Musk with that observation. The wall thickness of the tiny tubes in the heat exchanger bother me in terms of resiliency and manufacturing, so I'd be curious to learn more about that.
Glad you enjoyed it! It is common for people to reinvent phrases independently or to read a good one and have it subconsciously presented to them later without remembering where it's from. Any good rocket enthusiast/engineer would come to that conclusion having seeing how much they cost to build :-)
HOTOL and SKYLON as concepts pioneered just about ALL of the things the world credits SpaceX and Elon Musk with. The main distinction is that Alan Bond is an actual engineer. Just wish someone here in the UK would back the man and make SKYLON come to pass.
Good stuff
I feel like i just had a look at the future. In an interspace economy, putting stuff into space is only half the goal, we need to bring things back economically.
Has any one looked at doing a pulse jet for this? The engine would run as an air breather near ground. Near the edge of space liquid oxygen would gradually augment the thin air. At a given speed the vehicle would transition into space and 100% oxygen. The pulse valves would remain closed turning into a rocket engine. A catapult on a the ground would aid in the launch.. A carriage would take the load off the landing gear which would be designed for landing empty.
Thank you so much!
Flutt-stage, or stage recapture are long awaited dreams. Scale matters and matter scales well.
It does indeed.
Lack of investment by the British government cost this project 20 years of stagnation. The technology was put under the shroud of ITAR and closed off from private investment and international collaboration. Alan Bond in later interviews spoke at length about the lackluster support of the government a measly 2 million was all that the government spent on the sabre engine. ESA only chimed in with 60 million over 5 years after the concept had been proven and then it was sold off behind closed doors to Lockheed. As Alan Bond is now retired the project is dead .
..."the project is dead."
If true, that's very sad. 😢
It was a lost opportunity.
If you can retrofit a rotating detonation engine to the cooler concept of the Skylon that would make a interesting combination.
An air breathing RDE would be astounding. That is what Dr Reiken is working on.
That is exactly right, significantly simpler because the cooling is not necessary and a smooth transition to airless space can be achieved.
But the horizontal take off is not useful.
Another thought, I wonder if there would be a way to use this concept of compressing, cooling, and liquifying air during reentry of a spacecraft in order to use the liquid air to transpirationaly cool the reentry heat shiel. Idk, perhaps not as easily done as said as they say….
That's a good question... The concept of heat rejection through an engine using cryogenic propellant is the key I think. Stoke space will be using liquid methane to cool their reentry.
@@terranspaceacademy : Yeah, it fundamentally requires a cryo-fluid to power the cooling process. For reentry, going slow (so the instantaneous temperature is never too high) is probably the better approach.
Hi
So what year was the video/lecture? It looks 1980-90ies
It was the late 90s by Reaction Engines to the British Aerospace Society
@@terranspaceacademy Thanks I have always had a keen interest in engineering, I still make @ "Frankenstein" things, but I never got much past the vegetable math & science.
Love you videos, they are always interesting.
What year was this presentation from?
Mid to late 90s?
My question would be doesn't the heat exchanger's use of supercooled fuel heat that fuel up and rendering it unstable?
The fuel needs to be heated prior to running it through the engine. Heat exchangers do this for hydrogen rockets. We are just putting that cryo to good use.
I'm wondering how much fuel the initial takeoff uses compared with the rest of a flight into space & could that be saved by the use of a linear magnetic ramp to provide the initial thrust? Also what if such a ramp was built at a high altitude in line with the direction of the Earth's spin near the equator?
I've always like the idea of a train track across a plain then up a mountain. Electric motors to get it up to speed then a rocket motor boost. When the car hits the apex of the mountain crest the ship launches... Near mach 1 at least :-)
@@terranspaceacademyor even better why not a maglev style track build inside a tunnel tube where a vacuum could be created and once run up to speed there’s no friction and the vehicle bursts out off a soft material at the launch end
22:12 - The guy looks like a Beatles and laughs at "rocket lipstick", this is just the laughter of history.
It is indeed!
I want to see this happen, but as you note, we've literally been reading about this technology since the 1980s. I'm hopeful, but skeptical. I live about 30 miles from the facility in Watkins, CO, but you never hear anything about it.
All space technology, and fusion, was delineated in the 50s. We just need to make it happen :-)
I bel that the pre- cooler unit design is used in the Mercedes F1 power unit intercooler
Hmmmm... Off the shelf. I like that.
Great video, but it was a shame to shrink the Alan Bond part down so much. I couldn't see the slides.
I wish the resolution had been better but it was the best I could find.
reaction engines make the radiators for mercedes formula 1 team. they are smaller & more efficient than traditional methods.
I did not know that! I bet they are :-)
I think that Air breathing plasma jets could help in acceleration to orbital velocity.
If we can just get the power source.
@@terranspaceacademy I have a potentially controversial in the International Atomic Energy Agency based suggestion.
Using liquid helium to cool the brakes on a rejected takeoff instead of water. Would increase onboard fuel to allow higher orbit or payload.
Indeed... and at 4K should be very effective.
Britain cancelled its launcher BEFORE it got into space. The guys working on it took the attitude "we've got all the parts so we may as well do it anyway" (source: I worked with one of them)
WHY it was cancelled is mindboggling: The Mandarins in Whitehall saw no commercial future in space flight. The USA was offering free space on NASA launches so a need for launchers for its own military purposes was regarded as superfluous
As soon as the cancellation was announced, the free ride offer went away (surprise surprise)
I'm shocked! That Britain fell for it actually. Where was Bond? Alan Bond? Seriously though it was a massive error.
Now with CFD, the heat exchanger must be much more efficient.
Indeed... But cryogenic methane should be able to do the job...
Seems like the heat exchanger should be built into the cone segments.
On which ship?
@@terranspaceacademy On the SABRE driven SSTO. I'm sure they have reasons it's not feasible, but seems you could build the heat exchanger into the retracting cone segments that control the size of the intake opening, rather than stuffing it between the the intake and the engine. I feel like you need blank sheet of paper to come up with a design that fully integrates the heat exchanger with the design of the whole ship.
Eu pensei algo do gênero, mas usando combustível sólido. Tecnologia de combustível sólido por camadas. Uma camada optimizada para ambiente atmosférico, e a outra optimada para ambiente já chegando no espaço.
Eles geralmente fazem isso apenas com estágios, mas seria bom se o primeiro estágio fosse ajustado de acordo... Acima de 10 km, a contrapressão da atmosfera geralmente pode ser desconsiderada.
Interesting concept but how would it compare on capital costs and operating costs to reusable Falcon 9? F9R is currently the gold standard and the cheapest way to orbit (cost/kg) until Starship is proven to work.
Comparable with many more launch location options.
Also a much quicker turn around mission time so could in theory carry out maybe a mission every few days if not maybe daily missions also you could have a fleet off spaceplanes taking off every few hours delivering building material’s into leo
A 5 minutes search would result in finding that HOTOL space plane used a still classified Rolls-Royce RB545 engine not the SABRE engine. Alan Bond, one of the engineers involved in HOTOL space plane project move forward to create Reaction Engines Limited that continued the development of SingleStageToOrbit space planes, resulting in Skylon space plane and SABRE engine. Is this error important, don't think so, but make me wonder how many errors/omissions are in the other videos.
That's correct. The technology from HOTOL was developed into the current SABRE design.
The technology’s they worked on was put under the official secrets act until the mid 90s or maybe even later and mr bond wasn’t aloud to follow up on his work until the act was declassified
Even better would be rotating detonation rocket engines. Much simpler and quite a bit more efficient. The experiments look very promising.
Indeed... We would like to pair the intake technology of Reaction Engines with NASA's Rotating Detonation Engine!
@@terranspaceacademy I'm not 100% sure, but I had feeling that rotating detonation engine wouldn't need cooling in air intake at all... well unless the temperatures would reach limits of usability for materials used there. Therefore that technology wouldn't be needed making the engine much more light and simpler with lower number of failure points.
Heat dissipation is a very big problem for RDEs.
@@terranspaceacademy It is not that big problem when advanced methods of part creation is used- 3D powder printing using high melting point high heat conductivity metals. Thanks to 3D printing the cooling capillaries can be integrated easily. These engines even work much better because of high heat generation.
Thanks for upload I would recommend not editing the video so that it looks like it's playing in a small TV you have made it impossible to reference the slides except to see some other video graphics but any text or anything he is pointing to with his laser pointer is impossible to see although maybe the original was just as bad to view lol thanks again for thus video 😊
If I had made it full size they would have been completely blurry. I added a link to the original under Extra Credit in the description.
Wait, wait. Isn't this same Skylon that has been promising a space plane for around 30 years ago? Why do I not believe this guy??
Because the video was about 30 years ago :-) Seriously engine development has been apace but the rest of the ship was not funded.
When was the original presentation from? Late 1990s? Shuttle came and went, Soyuz is still with us.
And now we have rocket stages landing vertically on their own.
And if they have an engine out everyone dies... Cargo to orbit is great with VTOL, people need the safety of a glide landing.
@@terranspaceacademy I prefer capsules... with escape systems...
@@zapfanzapfanescape systems would be much safer on htol craft I think, no matter what way you look at it this is the future off space flight and as far as rocket tech has come it’s still the past and it’s reached it’s limits in my mind
We like a B1 style escape capsule.
Always wondered why not ditch the turbojet parts and just use a big pulsejet. Sure pulsejets arent as efficient and are a bit noisy. But a pulsejet is simple to build, more efficient than a rocket engine (in terms of atmospheric ISP) and can run on anything. A pulsejet carrying your craft up to almost mach 1 and then transition to a ramjet to carry to mach 5. Both engines could easily be incorporated into one body since they both have next to no moving parts. After reaching or nearing mach 5 you switch over to some other regime. But the point is you can simplify your air breathing system enormously by removing all that ordinary atmospheric turbo machinery and its maintenance headaches. Pulsejets excel at low speed or static thrust, the pulsing nature of the exhaust allows you to use devices like a "augmentor" to slow the exhaust for the tradeoff of more thrust, these could be retracted or ditched since they are just metal cones. I'm not going to propose going full hog and building a pulse detonation engine as they are still in development, pulsejets however are well established and can be constructed in your backyard's garden shed.
I like it! Who cares how loud you are at high altitude?
pure vapor ware , like fusion
Until they aren't.
@@terranspaceacademyNo chance, no system engineering effort, that would have brought up the not addressed aspects, so the comment was ok
Today , not a SSO system exists, that is the REALITY.
FUNDING REQUIRES CLEAR TRIED AND PROVEN elements, that can support a project based on real economic benefits, not a proof of concept alone.
Dream on. Nothing wrong , waiting for a game changer in the future.
You wanna drive to a space port... I wanna take a high-speed train to, well, anywhere in the USA would be a good start.
Indeed. It's sad that an American scientist designed Maglevs and we don't have a single one.
Whoever put a solar array on that spaceplane was just pulling your leg.
You would be amazed at how many patents are full of bullshit, while vaguely covering a single idea that it is actually meant to protected.
Not really. It is designed to stay in orbit for extended periods. It would turn the array toward the sun and stay charged.
The heat exchanger - If this thing can liquify 400 kg of air per second, perhaps they should get into the liquid air products business.
But liquid hydrogen is so expensive to produce it would wipe out all of your profits.
What does hydrogen have to do with it?
Sure, it's the fuel, but it's not what's being liquified, it's already on board, right?
But imagine how inexpensive the product would be from a ground based oxygen/nitrogen liquefier that uses this technology. @@terranspaceacademy
put one of these instant LOX stations together with a SpinLaunch station, lifting LOX to orbit that way - @@terranspaceacademy
The take off run of the HOTOL looked like a scene from Thunderbirds, my fave kids show from the Sixties. Looked rather like the Fireflash.
Amstrad. Dual floppies. That’s a blast from the past.
It was indeed :-)
Fireball XL5 !
@@MattOGormanSmith
That too!
Some day....
Fingers crossed
And then SpaceX happened, and reminded everyone why multiple engineering studies, going back decades, had each concluded that VTOL was vastly superior to HOTOL.
Unfortunately Skylon just didn't produce good enough cost savings to make it viable. For the above reason. It would simply be too easy to build a cheaper reusable rocket and cut any realistic version of Skylon off at the knees.
Though the Scimitar variant of Sabre may yet be useful for hypersonic flight.
VTOL will never be as safe as HTOL
@terranspaceacademy Evidence required. Especially given that the energy requirements are higher for HOTOL, and supersonic gliders do not have a terribly good track record when it comes to emergency landings, and the engines required have a non-existent safety record.
Also the whole "It's wondrous! But it's not for the timid" thing.
Once htol is perfect it will be able to have a much quicker turn around plus you can have fleets taking off every day compared to being sitting ontop off a massive vertical bomb
@user-td8ls5mn5q Incorrect. Trying to come up with clever ways to sidestep the mass ratio requirements for SSTO doesn't do anything about minimum energy requirements for orbit. If you're flying into orbit in anyway (as opposed to riding a teather) the bomb is always going to be there.
Minimum energy needed to get to LEO is ~50MJ per kilo. Flying sideways through the atmosphere first, as opposed to getting above it as fast as possible, dramatically adds to gravity losses and aerodynamic losses, and also requires lots of extra mass for plumbing and cooling the rocket doesn't need to bother with, all of which requires extra energy.
Setting aside that it isn't that much harder to fuel a rocket than an aircraft, and you need fleets of shuttles to match one starship... Sorry, but you're been lied to.
Skylon will be surpassed by detonation engine NASA just tested which is a whole new ballgame.
That is very true. RDEs will change everything. I wish they would publish the Isp they got out of it. I could start doing some math.
A pulse detonation engine will not get you into space will it ? And would the heat still not be a factor in such an engine? As I was lead to believe the main problem for all engines was not getting the speed but rather the cooling issues hence the pre cooling technology being the main hold up hence the main component in sabre being the pre cooler ?
How would a pulse detonation engine control the heat let’s say if the engine is traveling at mach ten or mach 15 as I’m sure that’s what the sabre engine with pre-cooler was designed to achieve, sorry I’m not a scientist or someone who knows much about such things but they really interest me
The British were very very good at developing high tech. Now in the second world war to a certain extent the US could deliver the numbers. While the US and the British had a lot of bad feelings towards each other still they were able to swallow their differences long enough to demolish the axis nations. I think the US (I am an American) should have helped the British recover from the economic damage the war did to the British economy. Of course the British wanted to keep their empire and the US did not support that, in this the US was IMHO correct and that the third world nations would want to be independent in a very short time. We should have picked up the British economy and extended the Marshall plan to the British writing off their war debts since they had been our steadfast allies.
I would agree. As a requirement of decolonization we could have helped them rebuild more.
The Horizontal take off on existing runways had one fundamental problem.
Explained by the closest analog:
The triple sonic SR 71 could NOT take off fully loaded with fuel, it had to take off with minimum fuel and refuel in the air .
One : the tire load was excessive, given the large speed on TO tearing the tire apart.
Two : The delta wing requires a high angle of attack and resulting in a high induced drag due to the small wing span.
Thee : The runway length was far longer than a normal length runway.
Four : There was no adequate redundancy for a failure of an engine or tire, which did not result in a Concorde like catastrophe.
None of these problems was addressed by Skytol.
The wings were far too small to execute a transition to vertical flight, with a reasonable fuel consumption that allowed a single stage to orbit vehicle to lift significant payload.
* )No complete system engineering was conducted
* )The wing span and area was too small.
* )No crosscheck with the SR-71 mach 3.2 was even attempted to get an opinion of the only experts in high mach flight, Kelly Johnson and his team
Very real issues... 1; same system as An 225
2; variable wings like the B1B and F14 are possible but it is possible to balance the drag and lift for acceptable performance.
3; true but with better thrust you wouldn't need to...
4; array of aerospikes on the back allow redundant propulsion
@@terranspaceacademy correct but then why not start vertically to begin with? So much easier to strap on reusable boosters.
Start vertical and come back horizontal? The problem is that the launch point is limited to extensive infrastructure build outs. We need something that just needs a long runway and LOX/Fuel tankers.
Plot the fuel consumption vs the vertical velocity component and integrate to obtain weight vs altitude. Compare with vertical launch, do not neglect the structure the wings must be designed for with the full starting weight, as opposed to the empty landing weight.
That alone kills the horizontal TO
@@terranspaceacademy Yes, the problem is that it is meant to be SSO, which is possible with a small payload only. I worked on Lockheed's concept.
The proof is Starship as the presently best solution, from a reliability point of view.
The undercarriage would look like the multi strut AB 480 with twice the number of wheels.
Also, the whole vehicle would need the thermal protection tiles.
The original concept on the Skytol reentry was using sharp stainless steel wings, which were 'confirmed' by the European space people but never proven, again the Starship put that important consideration into a realistic realm.
Skylon covered with tiles does not appeal. A team of runway tile collectors after every TO?
All this does not mean that a future game changer will not be adopted.
Skylon SSTO is well beyond current structural state of the art.
In a good way?
No, in that the design won't close. Structure will be too high of a percentage of the gross weight. @@terranspaceacademy
Though Alan Bond dismisses a piloted Skylon, a smaller craft as depicted is likely
a much safer way to get to space and the infrastructure placed there; by whoever.
Even this smaller craft can have considerable automation.
How then, do you make this mode of transport available to the masses, and affordable.
Skylon flying on a regular basis, also of value , even though it's considered the DC 3
of space planes; and yes Boeing have shares in Reaction Engines.
Alan Bond doesn't discuss the transportation of heavy loads on and off of Mars.
Check out Cochrane...
yes I've seen that is it a space plane though ?
I was hoping to see the Sabre succeed rocket engines, it’s a shame this wasn’t funded, remember reading that NASA was researching with the Sabre company, but I guess it fell through to deaf ears. The reason it was not funded because it was not American USA technology, so now it’s SpaceX & NASA’s SLS main booster & Orion capsule Artemis vehicle.
It is truly sad that we can't focus on transformative technology.
Advancements in post additive sintered metallurgy I se no reason this could not be produced and run today in this form, if not in a full fuel cycle, Stoke Aero may be on to to quite possibly the most brilliant payload to be incorporated into the program if not take the entire project on themselves.
They are extremely innovative!
I was hoping Sabre rocket engine would take off, I thought it was innovative and cutting edge technology. Now SpaceX has better rocket return landing technology and can do it cheaply. Now we NASA’s SLS & Artemis capsule
It would be very cool to see one fly.
+1
+2 :-)
I wonder why they used helium to cool the intake air. I guess the hydrogen isn’t cold enough or the hydrogen doesn’t have enough thermal mass… any ideas?
Hydrogen would ignite and when it burns increase the temperature, at the intake the cooling agent is actual mixed with air, otherwise hydrogen have the highest specific temperature and is the best cooling agent possible (in the terms of weight, otherwise have a low density).
@@theOrionsarms yeah… sounds reasonable. Another thought i had was that a leak in that heat exchanger would probably be catastrophic. He described the tubes the coolant runs through as very thin.
That's correct. They had planned in the HOTOL to use hydrogen but a leak would be catastrophic so they added a helium loop. I want to see methane used...
Oops. I just repeated what you said. Quite correct.
They wouldn't be storing it. They burn the liquid air in the rocket engine, with the nitrogen along for the ride. The LOX for space use in its own tank at liftoff.
The Helium within the sabre engine isn't expended.
As a pressuriser for the liquid hydrogen and oxygen, that does sound problematic;
what does SpaceX do in this instance ?
The don't use aerocapture.
What do you mean by aerocapture and who uses this ?
The Skylon project will not work in it's current format. if anything goes wrong with one of the engines @ mach 9 it's going to shred the aircraft into unfindable parts, as the Americans found out with their SR71's. The engines need to be in line and stacked just as the English Electric Lightning were.
Interesting... I don't remember any SR-71s shredding though. Except for the one launching the hypersonic drone. But that wasn't an engine problem.
@@terranspaceacademy SR-71A (61-7952 / 2003)
This aircraft disintegrated on 25 January 1966 during a high-speed, high-altitude test flight when it developed a severe case of engine unstart. Lockheed test pilot Bill Weaver survived although his ejection seat never left the plane! Reconnaissance System Officer (RSO) Jim Zwayer died in a high-G bailout. The incident occurred near Tucumcari, New Mexico.
Thank you! I will read up on that. Especially how Mr. Weaver survived staying in the plane... Amazing. @@sichere
@@terranspaceacademy The SR71 had many accidents.
Allegedly the RAF "Bounced" the SR71 that was setting the Atlantic Crossing record in 1974 with an EEL Lightning.
The Sabre Engine is an old design from the 1970's of the Rolls-Royce RB545 "Swallow" The concept works but not without a suitable heat exchanger.
This is straight up sex! It would be rad to have the bypass air bleed and burn through the center and hybridize it his engine w/ the aerospike allowing the ignited bleed air to cool the center and insulate it from the more stoichiometrically mixed main burn. You could also of course run the hydrogen heat-exchanger through the center to actively cool as well. This concept may be just what the aerospike needs to be a success. Also, I fucken need one of these bitches to play with! Would be so bitchin’!
It would indeed my friend! But a few #@$ would be appreciated :-) I'm sensitive. I wish they would just put one in a demonstrator and watch it fly.
It's always a political issue when these crafts are so much more advanced. The reason is actually quite simple. They want a greater stake. It's how these people either push or leave .the most popular companies have backing and employmentship . They haven't developed any new facilities or learned how to adapt and upgrade but yet the car industry has learned this principle from time and the real funny about that , is that both rocket and cars share engine technology. It also has been a narrative from the beginning and still practiced today. Btw I have a better concept for travel beyond our atmosphere, it's a Spaceplane hybrid and it uses less moving parts to do the same job and with a difference. It's not meant to park up , it's meant to explore the deeper reaches of Space, like way beyond Mars and no nuclear required unless dropping it off for colonization. It's about the resources and manufacturing and getting rid of pollution here . Here's my end quotes, one by a man who made fun yet will continue to do so, well in to our future. Walt Disney said "Keep Moving Forward " and I say "H.E.M.P which stands for Human Evolution Making Progress" have a wonderful day y'all
Cheers 🥂🍻🥂🍻
You too and best of luck! :-)
when do you think this can be finished? 2030?
At this point? That 's a good guess.
This is all going to be deep sixed in Area 51, because it's just to good.
I hope not!! :-)
Helium as an expendable resource would be problematic....if that is the case.
It is. Supplies are definitely limited.
I wonder if there are sufficient amounts of it near the ionosphere?
The question is, how can you compete with SpaceX fully reuseable two stage Space ship, where the whole problems with hydrogen are eliminated.
Since The liquid fuel is the much warmer methane.
Use methane instead of hydrogen.
It’s still the past mate, the future is htol and maybe not today or next year but eventually all the other components needed will be perfected but the engine cooling management was the main hold back and now it has been solved the rest should follow much more quickly now, also the big military companies such as BAE systems and boing are involved so this should speed up commercial applications hopefully for the technology, also BAE systems are building and designing a hypersonic drone with the sabre engine at its core and eventually I can see boing using the sabre engines possibly for hypersonic passenger air travel, That’s the beauty off this technology it has many more applications than just shuttling space cargo, it could Also be used to remove old satellites and space junk from orbit fully unmanned and could you imagine having a fleet off htol stealth bombers which could fly into leo with a bomb bay full off tungsten rods that could orbit enemy territory ? There would be no answer to such a threat and tungsten rod hitting enemy territory would be like a nuke strike with out the radioactive fallout, it would make the ultimate bomber possible as the enemy wouldn’t be able to hit or intercept such a vehicle unless they had similar technology
@@user-td8ls5mn5q I know about Reaction Engines, SABRE engine they were subsidized by the government, and RR, but it did not proceed past getting a NASA comtract to demonstrate the heat exchanger with the extreme small tubes, to cool the Mach 5 air from 1000 C to lower temperatures, compatible with a turbo jet compressor, The vast majority of the thrust is in the subsonic diffusor after the initial oblique shocks and the final normal shock.
That part is close to the Mach 3.2 SR-71 inlet, for which we built the air inlet controls. Not without suffering an 'unstart' which Kelly Johnson did not appreciate at all.
But I do appreciate your more detailed knowledge of RE efforts.
seems we are on the same waveleght.
Will this ever be viable, now that SpaceX is on the cusp of successfully developing an enormous reusable rocket that dwarfs the capabilities of this engine. The only uses I can see for this are Military and point to point travel through suborbital flights.
It's such a shame, because this looked to be very promising.
It should get us to LEO with greater safety.
Miguel
Hello Miguel...
He said it: it is too expensive
The SpaceX solution of a single type engine , both stages reusable, is the better solution.
But many ideas are ingenious and useable in others applications.
The project was too late to be funded.
By the way entropy is the integral of
ds = dq/T
q heat flow into the system
T absolute temperature.
for constant entropy stagnation temperature increase:
Ts = Ta ( 1 + 0.2 × Mach²)
a quadratic temperature increase not exponential.
Mach = 5
Ts/Ta = 6
Ta : ambient temperature at altitude exceeds Ta ~ 240 K
Ts = 1440 K
Thank you!
Is this a dead project ? Couldn't find anything on Google (June 2024)
Sabre? Working with DARPA / USAF but no flights yet.
I wonder why Britain doesn't use the technology to build hypersonic missiles that could hit Moscow 30 seconds after launch.
Treaties... That's called an IRBM. Banned in Europe after the GLCMs were removed.
STTO is out of reach for our current tech. Maybe with some more advanced materials, maybe. Somebody already went past it with stainless steel two-stage monsters.
It's like you didn't watch the video.
It described exactly how it CAN be done plus three sentences statement about how another, earlier project would have also worked.
So how can you make the statement? 😅
Some SpaceX fanboy in love with giant tubes taking off vertically.@@bmobert
@@venturefanatic9262
I am a Space-X fan boy and I think Space-X is doing exactly what it should to make orbit accessible.
That is what THEY can best do. It's not the only way and it's not what others can best do. A Skylon-like spaceplane would be an excellent addition to quiver of orbital launchers.
Nore are either the spaceplane or the rocket the best way to get to orbit ultimately. IMHO, that would be the combination of orbital rings and Atlas towers. Railroads to orbit, effectively. But this "best way" is not economically practical just yet, with as small an economy as space is right now.
The tech needed for skylon (heat shield, weight fraction, the engines themselves) is very advanced and not yet proven. It may be future technology.
@@Witnaaay
If it doesn't exist, then it's speculative/future tech by definition.
There is an interesting tech scale designed to indicate how close to reality it is.
It would be interesting where each tech needed for Skylon is on that tech scale.
I suspect it's all in the demonstrated... which I think is level 6.
But I'd like to know for sure.
UK governments of the last 60 years couldn't find their own backsides with both hands and a torch. The list of successful, but still cancelled, leading tech projects is a National disgrace.
Sad but it sure seems true.
Did that i d t say mars? Is this entertainment? What a cr p!
What i d t? Yes this is meant to be entertaining. And your grammar could use some work.
Liquid air combustion will produce nitrous oxides.
As does all combustion but true.
Carry enough liquid helium to liquify air at the rate of a ton every 5 seconds - non-starter
Use 70% liquid nitrogen 30% liquid oxygen for an oxidizer - non-starter
How about a proof-of-concept where a tank 70/30 mix and a tank of any fuel you want is used to test the thrust
Will the ISP be equal to a pure LOX run on the same equipment?
Way too many liquefaction, condensation cycles to be efficient, much less coming near hundreds of pounds per second
Combined cooling system works just fine.
That;s why it doesn't liquefy the air
You may doubt the concept, but NASA gave the engine their stamp of approval.
If the SABRE Rocket Engine is as great as you claim it to be. Then why is Elon from SpaceX, or Jeff from Vergin not expressing interest in this technology?
Because they don't know everything and it wasn't necessary to their goals. If you put safety over speed you get spaceplane SSTO.
The British government is frankly an embarrassment..At every opportunity they manage to let world leading British technological advancements slip through their fingers. With this tech, had it been properly supported, Britain could have had a fantastic business as world leaders in the space industry. Just like the jet engine, or mag lev trains…it has fallen through their fingers, for another country to capitalise on..
Considering their potential they have truly fallen short.
i wonder if Elon Musk looks at this and has someone showed it to him?
I'm sure he's aware. Mass to orbit is his sole focus right now.
@terranspaceacademy quick question, what would happen if you put a small amount of hydrogen into the raptor engine like nitro oxide in a car engine? Also what would you think of having a star raker design space plane dropped from a dark sky station and boosted into orbit by possible scram jet engines and 2 mini super heavy boosters to get up to space and use the wings to fly back to the station once down?
Hydrogen is a none starter. To many issues.
Hydrogen can work but I like methane a lot better.
TLDW
It's worth watching.
There's a presentation that goes into detail about the Sabre.
Oh well thank you for letting us know. Also, work on your attention span.
TBFY
@terranspaceacademy
😄😄😄
I hadn't heard that before!!
50 years and it still hasn't flown.
By the time it does, we'll have zero point energy , anti gravity and warp drives. ( might have them already in the US military industrial complex black projects world) 😅
Zero point energy is not something I can foresee us being able to take advantage of. You don't get work done with energy, you get work done with a difference in energy. Since zero point energy is very equally distributed, there is not a gradient to take advantage of. There's a reason why they don't build dams in the middle of the ocean to harvest power.
Exactly the problem Chad! Unless we can somehow access a dimension at a lower energy state, there is no flow, and no flux = no bucks.
@@terranspaceacademy : Might be usable in far-future cooling/anti-noise systems though... it turns out that the relevant "demon" (Maxwell's?) _is_ actually possible with external power.
Saying the Soviets had an advanced aircraft industry following WWII behind the British is laughable. They hadn't stolen enough tech to be functional beyond slapping engines they couldn't build onto old piston airframes.
Canada? It isn't even a real country. What did Canada have in 1946 or 1947 remotely close to the B-36, or B-47? (1946, and 1947) The F-86? (1947)
The British had some great designs, and had pushed the envelope in many ways. I would say they were on-par to ahead of the US in many areas without reservation.
However as Skylon seems to be learning, there will be some politician who will give away, remove funding, or turn into a cobbled 'partnership' mess any decent idea a British firm manages to come up with. (See also: Atlee and the RR Nene to the Soviets, Eurofighters, etc)
Nonsense. The Soviets were doing very well in aviation after WWII. And Canada is not only a real country but one of the best on the planet. A lot of British and American aviation research was done there during the war and they were comparable to anyone on the planet at that time.
@@terranspaceacademy Canada? The place only a few hundred miles from where I live, where the citizens come here to get cancer screenings so they aren't dead by the time their government schedules them one.
The Canada where they tell sick vets to consider death instead of therapy or medical care?
The Canada where normal people can barely afford food, and new homes are out of the question?
The Canada that has become a neo-marxist hellhole and the laughing stock of the western world?
THAT Canada is "one of the best?"
At what?
The CCCP was dead in the water until Atlee's socialists gave them the engine for the Mig 15 and jumped their metallurgical tech 10 years overnight. The Rosenbergs did the same for their nuke program.
Is this satire? Who are you trying to impress?
I don't think the sabre engine will be durable
Hard to know but I would love to see one fly.
COUGH, COUGH, COUGH, COUGH, COUGH, COUGH! Jeez!
Did I cough? Or should I cough? Or did Mr. Bond cough? By the way, being British the name Bond is not a bad thing.
No! To much dilly dallying about, Should be in the air already, if its successful it will not be "British" anymore.
It'll be Murcan by golly!