Skylon Space Shuttle To Be Launched In Ten Years
The Skylon spaceplane would take off from a conventional aircraft runway, carry over 12 tonnes to orbit and then return to land on the same runway. This is supposed to happen in ten years from now.
But Skylon isn’t a new idea as it’s extremely close to a previous British space project dubbed Hotol from the 1980s. Hotol was an aircraft-like space launcher that took off and landed on normal runways, and relied on a revolutionary rocket engine that breathed air for thrust. The engine was the Rolls Royce RB545 and it received serious design, planning, and testing attention from RR as well as British Aerospace. Due to financial, technical and patent issues (compounded by the government classifying the RB545), Hotol was canceled in 1988.
Now, this reusable launcher is part jet engine, part rocket engine. It burns hydrogen and oxygen to provide thrust - but in the lower atmosphere this oxygen is taken from the atmosphere. Upon take-off, the plane would suck air into its engines to burn with liquid hydrogen fuel and propel itself skyward. On reaching speeds of Mach 5.5 and an altitude of 26 km, where the air is to thin to be of use, the engine would then switch to using liquid oxygen in its place. Thus, at high speeds, this requires Sabre propulsion system to be able to cope with 1,000-degree gasses entering its intake. These need to be cooled prior to being compressed and burnt with the hydrogen. Arrays of extremely fine piping plunge the hot intake gases to minus 130C in just 1/100th of a second.
The small size and jet engine technology would mean that the Skylon doesn’t suffer from many if the safety risks and noise pollution issues of conventional rockets, so it could even be launched in populated areas. “I would say that we could have a Skylon plane leaving [London's] Heathrow airport sometime during this century,” said Alan Bond, the Oxfordshire firm’s managing director.
In addition, the shuttle got 1m euros (£900,00/ around $1.25 million U.S.) of investment from the European Space Agency (Esa). The money will help prove the vehicle’s core technologies, including its Sabre air-breathing rocket engine.
Alan Bond said: “Traditional throw-away rockets costing more than a $100m per launch are a drag on the growth of this market. The Holy Grail to transform the economics of getting into space is to use a truly reusable space-plane capable of taking off from an airport and climbing directly into space, delivering its satellite payload and automatically returning safely to Earth.”
The 82-metre plane is totally reusable, unlike most current launch technology. NASA’s Space Shuttle is partly reusable and can carry 24.4 tonnes of cargo to low Earth orbit, but has to be launched like a conventional rocket at phenomenal expense.
Skylon’s designers estimate that their shuttle could slash the cost of launching into orbit from US$100 to 700 million per launch, to just US$10 million, and in doing so, encourage a new age of space exploration. Besides, the plane could later be adapted to carry a pilot and 30 passengers and used for space tourism, said Bond – and, if all goes to plan, would be ready to take tourists by 2030.