Horizontal Rocket Launching Made True - Blighty's Skylon Space Plane

An innovation in rocketry is about to take place. Now you will soon see rockets being launched through a runway instead of mounting them vertically. A single stage British concept spacecraft ‘Skylon’ based on Horizontal take-off and landing concept (HOTOL) will become a reality in decade to come. Reaction engines Ltd, the company responsible for its designing, production and manufacturing Skylon recently announced this last month.

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You might have seen a rocket mounted vertically or mostly at an angle; which is a very tedious process. Then reverse counting begins and the space craft takes off. Sometimes it fails. So, unlike other spacecrafts, Skylon is designed to use normal runways like conventional aircrafts. The company also claims that this will save a lot of money wastage. It seems that the claim is true too. The conventional space launches feature a two or sometimes three stage rockets. These stages, while launching separate from the satellite. The separated stages then mostly become useless. It is however a wastage of expensive technology. Researchers hence wanted to avoid this loss incurred and the result was a skylon plane with SABRE engine.

The concept is simple. Conventional space crafts carry oxygen with them which otherwise can also be tried to make in space shuttle itself. In other words, why not use oxygen present in atmosphere?

Making this idea a practically feasible and economical solution, researchers of Reaction engines limited seem to be designing ‘Skylon’ based on same theme. In this purpose, the SABRE engines helps a lot. Skylon is powered by a SABRE engine. Actually there are two of them. These engines feature a combustion chamber and pumps for it, a pre heater, air pre-cooler and a nozzle. The pre cooler is a very important component of engine which cools air to a liquid stage with the help of a cryogenic Hydrogen fuel the temperature is as low as -150oC. It also provides the combustion chamber with high pressure air. Hence from this design we can also conclude that SABRE engine is based on and evolved from liquid-air cycle engines.

The engine uses Hydrogen and oxygen to produce a thrust to move just as a normal jet does, i.e.; it uses Oxygen of atmosphere. This continues till the space craft attains an altitude of about 26 Km above sea level and a speed of Mach 5 to 5.5. Once this is done, it burns Hydrogen and Oxygen present on board. The action of consuming Oxygen not only saves a lot of money and everything as mentioned previously but it is also very safe to handle.

Just imagine how dangerous it is to handle a full bulk of Hydrogen and other fuel which a conventional space craft carries.
By the time I am explaining you these technicalities, it appears that you are already imagining an unmanned aeroplane like vehicle going to orbit around in Universe, then give those dreams a small pause. Sorry to intrude in your imaginations but there is a small hurdle away. This engine is awaiting a Big “June test”. The pre cooler just described is awaiting a test in June. If everything goes well then the project will receive a fund of about $350 million. This would pave a way for further technological development of Skylon and full engine test of 2014. The current general dimensions are The Space craft has a length of about 276 feet and a payload of 11.3 tons and weighs 303 tons. The payload will be tried to increase to 16.5 tons in future.

The CEO of Skylon Enterprises Ltd, Mr. Sam Hutchison expressed confidence about the success of Skylon. Skylon Enterprises ltd works for raising funds for the project. He has figured out a total cost for project to be $15 billion. According to company, the commercial flights are believed to start by the year 2020 while suborbital flights would start by the year 2016 to 2018. The day is not far when Skylon will revolutionize space missions.

Check out this video about Skylon Space Plane - Mission Animation :



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