Skylon would operate from a runway
People with all the right credentials have said this can’t be done. Looks like it will be done.
Not going to happen because the UK bureaucrats will regulate it out of existence.
So this is their newest piece of engineering. Very very nice.
They also have a successful space program.
Artistic license?
There is no way anything with that little of a wing can lift enough fuel & oxidizer to make it to orbit, let alone lift off only half way down the runway. With that long a fuselage aft of the main gear it could not have that much angle of THAT close to the runway.
/armchair aerodynamics
So this is their newest piece of engineering. Very very nice.
They also have a successful space program.
That's the most encouraging thing in the article.
He's predicting around $450/lb. to LEO, I think SpaceX will probably have a rocket providing that price to orbit before this ever leaves the ground.
It turns out you don't need any whiz-bang technology to get to orbit cheaply, you just need a properly managed company that doesn't fall into the cost-plus development traps that make development costs skyrocket.
Kind of reminds me of Disaster Area’s stunt ship from “The restaurant at the end of the universe”:
“It was a ship of classic, simple design, like a flattened salmon, twenty yards long, very clean, very sleek. There was just one remarkable thing about it.
“It’s so ... black!” said Ford Prefect. “You can hardly make out its shape ... light just seems to fall into it!” “
There are no more engineers at NASA. Just bureaucrats with technical degrees.
Hey, where’s the plan for Muslim outreach?
Sounds like Cylon...
I wondered what Professor Quatermass and the British Experimental Rocket Group had been up to lately...