Engineering news
The government is to provide £60 million for a rocket engine that can reach the Earth's stratosphere in 15 minutes and accelerate aircraft to five times the speed of sound.
David Willetts, minister for universities and science, said the investment in the "Synergetic Air-Breating Rocket Engine", or Sabre would help enable a prototype to be built in the UK.
The prototype is expected to be completed by 2017, with flight tests to start in 2020. Additional funding form other sources is required to complete the prototype.
Reaction Engines, the company developing Sabre, wants to use the engine on a "spaceplane" called Skylon. It will be a new type of reusable space plane designed to lower the cost of reaching space.
The spaceplane would take off from a runway like a normal aircraft and have the ability to carry a 15-tonne payload into low Earth orbit. After landing, it could quickly be turned around for another launch.
The Sabre engine uses both jet turbine and rocket technology. Its air-breathing characteristics from take-off to Mach 5 mean Skylon will be able to reduce the amount of heavy liquid oxygen carried. This cuts the weight of the vehicle, dramatically lowering fuel consumption. The weight reduction enables Skylon to be designed as a conventional, reusable aircraft.
Central to the engine is the pre-cooler, an assembly of very thin tubing made from inconel 718, a strong and highly corrosion-resistant alloy. The pre-cooler is designed to cool the incoming airstream from over 1,000°C to -150°C in less than 1/100th of a second without blocking with frost. The cooling is needed to allow the compression of air before it is injected into the combustion chamber.
Reaction Engines also say that the engine could power Mach 5 passenger jets, cutting the flying time from the UK to Australia to less than four hours.
The money will be spent over the next four years to improve the lightweight heat exchanger technology and manufacturing capability, and fund flight tests of the rocket's nozzle design. A ground demonstration engine will also be created.
According to the government, the technology has the potential to create 21,000 high value engineering and manufacturing jobs, maximise the UK’s access to a £13.8 billion launcher market and drive growth in related technology areas.
Willetts said investment in future technology was needed to sure Britain can be “serious about being a world leader in space”.
The funding for Sabre was announced at the UK Space Conference in Glasgow, where Willets also announced that Astrium has been awarded a £134 million contract to develop instruments for the next generation of weather satellites. This is a direct result of increased UK investment in the European Space Agency (ESA) and will be led by a team at the company’s Portsmouth site.
He said: “This contract shows that the UK’s increased investment in the European Space Agency is already paying dividends and getting us ahead in the global space race.”