Skylon Space Plane Powered By SABRE Has Top Speed Of 19,000 MPH

UK's government wants to speed up the travel and don't want you to wait hours in flight while traveling from UK to Australia. They want to shorten the travel time to just 4 hours; and have taken the first step in the direction by announcing £60m investment in the Skylon Space Plane. David Willetts, minister for Universities and Science will reveal the announcement in SABRE - the British designed engine. The plane will fly so high & at such a speed that if you unclip your seat belt, you'll be able to float around in the cabin!

Spaceplanes are basically the 'single-stage-to-orbit' aka SSTOs and are designed to take off from a standard runway. However, unlike your regular planes, these planes can accelerate to speeds of 19,000 miles per hour. Mr. Willets said that SABRE has the potential to completely redefine the way we access to the space. He also hopes that the project will lead to creation of 21,000 jobs in the next few years. It's likely that the Skyon will directly compete with Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic.

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The spaceplanes have been an engineering dream for a long time. These would be a fully reusable planes that act just like the regular planes but travel to the space. If the plan executes well, it's estimated that the first test flight of Skylon will happen in 2019. Also, the Skylon will be able to visit the International Space Station as early as in 2022. These planes can carry about 15 tonnes of cargo on each trip.

The traditional rockets need to drop off the empty fuel tanks as they travel out of the stratosphere. They also need to carry the oxidising agent so that the fuel burns; which is Oxygen, stored in tanks. The Spaceplanes however will eliminate by using the air from atmosphere during the initial stages of the flight. The SABRE engines were designed by Alan Bond who founded Reaction Engines in 1989. SABRE stands for Synergetic Air-Breathing Rocket Engines.

In order to reach the orbit, the SABRE engines will power Skylon to speeds of 5 Mach (aka 5 times the speed of sound in air). Once in the orbit, the Skylon will use small amounts of onboard oxiders to push the speeds to about Mac 22; which converts to about 7.5 km per second.

Looks like UK's engineers are obsessed with speeds. Do not forget to read our exclusive interview with one such engineer who wants to achieve 1000 mph (1600 kmph) on land using a car!

Read: Mark Chapman - Bloodhound SSC: The 1000mph Engineering Adventure

Source: #-Link-Snipped-#

Replies

  • Sarathkumar Chandrasekaran
    Sarathkumar Chandrasekaran
    A breathtaking article that make me crazy.I found the news interesting where it gives job to 21000 jobs. Can it best thrust SSC?
  • Jeffrey Arulraj
    Jeffrey Arulraj
    Such high speeds come with a great price

    I am sure it is not suited for people with cardio impairment and other problems which can nearly kill them

    Humans are not that much accustomed to such drastic change in pressure tolerance

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