ESA funding for revolutionary British spaceplane!

The European Space Agency are pumping 1 million euros into Oxford based Reaction Engines' British Skylon space plane project. In a new technology demonstration programme designed to test the feasibility of the plane's Sabre air-breathing engine, Reaction Engines hopes to determine whether Skylon could place up to 12,000kgs (26,400lbs) into Earth orbit using a single stage to orbit transfer.

Reaction Engines has a £6M budget and is currently paying EADS Astrium, the University of Bristol and German Aerospace centre DLR to further technology demonstration development work. The ESA funding advances the company's already lofty ambitions and allow a demonstration of the Sabre engine; the engine uses an air-breathing heat exchanger to cool incoming air that is compressed and burnt with hydrogen fuel (stored onboard in liquid form). The same hydrogen will then be used with a supply of liquid oxygen to provide rocket propulsion. According to Flight Global: The programme will see a representative heat exchanger ground tested, an oxidiser- cooled combustion chamber demonstrated at DLR Lampoldhausen facility and an adaptive nozzle design investigated by the University of Bristol.

Source: Flight Global

Photo Credit: Reaction Engines

Surrey Satellite Technology Limited looks into use of White Knight II for possible air launch...

Surrey Satellite Technology Limited and Virgin Galactic are said to be thrashing out ways in which White knight II can be adapted to launch small satellite payloads. The United Kingdom, whose record on realising the potential of a commercial satellite industry can be summed up with the words - Black-Knight - is clearly in need of a low cost, non governmental route to orbit - and what better way is there to the stars than through a US Pegasus (pictured) style air launch system?

SSTL are looking at lofting 50kg payloads into polar orbit with a minium altitude of 248 miles. The air launch rocket will be further adapted to enhance performance. Will Whitehorn of Virgin Galactic commented: "We'd be looking at a range from 50 to up to a maximum of 200kg because you'd want to do different sizes of satellite. " Dr Adam Baker of SSTL further commented: " In 1971, we cancelled our launch-vehicle programme and have never gone back into it despite the fact that launch vehicles are an essential part of a healthy space industry. If we had our own launcher - something modest, not an enormous vehicle - for a reasonable price, we could service our own needs, both scientific and military, and we could also sell the service on the open market. Hopefully we can do it for a lot less money than the current providers.
It costs something like $5m-$10m at the moment to get one of our smaller satellites into space. What we are targeting is to see if we can do this for a million dollars.
I think that's a very challenging number but I'm confident we can get very close to that - and if you could build the satellite itself for a couple of million dollars, all of a sudden you've got a very attractive package for well under $5m that lets your customers do something pretty capable in orbit"

SSTL are no mere vapour tech space wannabes either. Their credits include the Disaster Monitoring Constellation and Giove-B, a demonstrator system for Europe's pending Galileo Sat-nav system, so any partnership with VG is bound to be scientifically productive. Watch this space!

Image: BBC/Pegasus