Posted on 09/25/2019 8:30:14 AM PDT by Red Badger
Tourists could fly from Britain to Australia in just four hours by the 2030s with a new hypersonic engine being developed by UK scientists, the head of the UK Space Agency has said.
Reaction Engines, who are based in Oxfordshire, are in the process of building a hybrid hydrogen air-breathing rocket that will allow a plane to fly at Mach 5.4 - more than twice the speed of Concorde - then speed up to to Mach 25 in space.
Not only would the new ‘Sabre’ engine allow speedier journeys - with a flight between London and New York slashed to just over an hour - but the hydrogen/oxygen engine would be far greener and cheaper than current air travel.
The team is currently trialling parts of the engine in Denver, Colorado, and is hopeful to begin test flights in the mid 2020s, before commercial flights in the 2030s.
The government has already invested £60 million in the engine, which has been matched by Rolls Royce, BAE Systems, and Boeing.
On Tuesday Britain agreed to work more closely with Australia in a ‘space bridge’ partnership and Graham Turnock, the CEO of the UK Space Agency, said that it was appropriate the two countries were moving closer together just as technology was speeding up journey times.
“I really like the concrete sense of a bridge linking us, and when we have brought the Sabre rocket engine to fruition, that may in a sense be the manifestation of that space bridge, enabling us to get to Australia in perhaps as little as four hours,” said Mr Turnock.
“Once you’ve got hypersonic engines operating then that kind of journey time is achievable.
“This is technology that could definitely deliver that. We’re talking the 2030s for operational service, and the work is already very advanced.”
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
The new ‘Sabre’ engine will allow faster, greener and cheaper air travel
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The hybrid engine allows a spaceplane to take off horizontally and reach speeds of Mac 5.4
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Ping!
Just thinking out loud, but I wonder if a suborbital trajectory for at least part of the trip would mitigate the issue with sonic boom.
I don’t think so. There will be one going up and one coming down................
Development of such an airframe and getting it certified could be a decade or more even if they can get manufactures to overlook how the Concorde never really "took off".
Could put a couple of these things on an Blackbird I guess...
Part of me thinks this will turn out just like the Concorde.
Scientifically possible, yes.
But economically unfeasible.
Even as a kid, I could never understand how Pan Am could possibly make money flying Dave Bowman to the moon.
I dont think so. This one isn’t going anywhere.
Greta will make sure of that. How dare you.
And we’ll be living on Mars by 1959!
On that train all graphite and glitter
Undersea by rail
Ninety minutes from New York to Paris
Well by seventy-six we’ll be A.O.K.
What a beautiful world this will be
What a glorious time to be free
Economically not feasible because people who can afford the ticket can also afford to have their own private jet or at least lease a NET JET.
They could do like they did with the F4. Create a really big engine, then wrap some aluminum around it, stick on a pair of wings, and oh, and a seat for the pilot.
It’s coming so soon that artists renditions are now available and parts are being tested. We hear this every few months about some amazing new thing. I hope it’s true and fruitful, but I’m skeptical. Whatever happened to Chet99 (or whoever that was - maybe Chet99 was the pitbull dude) and his magic thermo-energy device anyway?
We’ve come a long way from oil-sloshing radials!
Does it really matter how fast it goes? You’re still going to be stuck in the TSA queue for three hours anyway.
Musk’s Starship is more likely in that timeframe. Fewer technical unknowns. Plus the Starship is faster.
Biggest hurdle for Musk is re-entry. The plan is to use cryogenic fluid through microscopic pores at critical hot spots. We will know in a couple of years.
Obvious question: Lucas isn’t doing the electrics on this? Are they?
Many items have gone from Star Trek to reality in a generation and a half.
Yes, just like the flying car, commercial hypersonic jet travel is always just a few years away.
I am not sure how economically feasable it needs to be at this point, because supersonic air travel is not the ultimate goal. This engine was initially developed as part of a single stage to orbit rocket design. Investors asked the company for an intermediate goal, and so they are working on a supersonic aircraft first. As long as it works, they will probably continue funding development of the spacecraft.
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