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In the early imaginings of spaceflight, astronauts were carried into the
cosmos by rockets that took off and landed and took of again. It wasn’t
until we discovered just how much heft was required to toss a craft out of
Earth’s gravity that the single-stage idea was abandoned.
The reality of spaceflight since then has been multistage rockets that, like
giant eczematous centipedes, shed layer upon layer of rocket booster as
they clamber labouriously skyward.
Over the years, there have been many attempts to build single-stage
reusable spacecraft, but, plagued by technical and financial problems, they
have always been abandoned. Now a British firm, Reaction Engines, believe
they have the problem solved – and the solution is a brilliantly British
spaceplane, called Skylon.
Skylon, certainly looks the part – it has a dark, sleekness that seems to
have been summoned straight from science-fiction’s most erotic
mechanised dreams. But Skylon is much more than a comic book-derived
wet dream. Skylon is a completely new approach to space travel. Instead
of thrusting spaceward vertically, Skylon will take off from a runway like an
airliner. Rather than hauling huge fuel tanks, Skylon gulps fuel from the air
as it carves through the atmosphere and, in place of expensive, disposable
rocket boosters, Skylon has an innovative engine, called Sabre.
Sabre, or Synergistic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine, is the result of more
than two decades of research. When the craft takes off, it operates in
‘air-breathing’ mode that allows the engines to gather oxygen from the air,
which is mixed with liquid hydrogen from internal tanks. When the air
becomes too thin at higher altitudes, Sabre closes its air intakes and shifts
into rocket mode.
This design reduces the amount of oxygen the craft has to carry by some
250 tonnes, making take-off a less labourious affair.
In theory, Skylon could slash the cost of getting payloads into space and
become the sort of quick-turnaround, reusable spacecraft that the Space
Shuttle could only ever aspire to be.
A recent feasibility study by the UK Space Agency found no ‘critical
impediments’ blocking the development of Skylon, although critics have
pointed out there are still considerable technical hurdles that will need to
be addressed – not least the reinforced 5.4km-long runway needed to get
the beast of the ground.
If all goes according to plan (and Reaction Engines get the extra £7.5bn
they need to complete the project) Skylon could be ready to penetrate the
heavens by 2020...
...but does anything ever go according to plan in space travel?
Is the original space dream on its way to reality? Compare an
imaginary ‘future’ spaceport from 1953 (above) with Reaction
Engine’s concept of the Skylon spaceplane leaving its hangar
(below)
Skylon will take off just like a normal jet aircraft... albeit on
longer (and reinforced) runways
Skylon’s payload bay is 4.6m wide and 12.3m long and can
carry different configurations of payload containers.
It can also be adapted into a cabin for up to 30 passengers
which describes it further in layman terms:
