I did my master's degree working with Reaction Engines, working on the design of the helium turbine inside the SABRE. Based on the design constraints of that turbine I am not surprised they've gone bankrupt... It was not going to be easy and I imagine the rest of it was also going to be pretty tough and extremely specific.
Do you think this precooled jet engine tech can be applied elsewhere outside of spaceplanes? Maybe in ships that are powered by turboshaft engines and run on LNG?
@@СваловСемен-в7р I'm not sure I'd see the application; the point of this precooler is to take high temperature air and drop the temperature (and thus raise density) rapidly so that you can maintain the mass flow rate you get from travelling at Mach 5. In a ship you don't have that high speed inlet air that you need to dump the heat out of. You could increase the engine efficiency by precooling the air, but that sea air is probably already coming in cool and you might need to spend more energy cooling it than your efficiency gains. In general a cooler inlet airflow to a combustion engine gets you more efficiency as it's denser so you get more oxygen in there.
I think they messed up when they tried to use three cryo tanks. Methane and Liquid atmosphere would probably work. Takeoff with an empty tank and one full of methane. Have an air intake big enough to run the engine and fill the empty tank. But at the end of the day landing gear and heat tiles aren't light.
I helped design a concept heat shield for the internal skin of the engine, as part of my university course about a month ago. The incoming compressed air can reach even 1500°C - they want(ed) to use Ceramic Matrix Composites, which could withstand that compressive pressure and heat, but getting it thin enough and making it manufacturable and joinable to the rest of the airframe was a big challenge. One of the pain points was our contact at Reaction Engines not getting back to us until the day before the deadline, the reason for which became obvious when just happened to announce their bankruptcy the same day we presented our design to our professors.
@@Three_Random_Words I don't know how you think the helium turbine and the internal heat shield are "almost like" each other. I did my Team Design Project (part of my undergrad course), with a professor who also works at Cross manufacturing, who are in the process of setting up their CMC prepreg manufacturing, who were going to be the suppliers of the CMC for Reaction Engines. What would I get out of copybotting anyways?
@@kerbaman5125 They look nothing alike. What they have in common is the notion that the SABRE project was anything more than a group-delusion, an engineering concept with no light at the end of the thermo-aerodynamic tunnel.
I remember the British Space Agency (or the equivalent) talking about it back in the 80's, they called it HOTAL then (which was more of a descriptive of the vehicle type, rather than it's name).
Sad news - as an Ex Director of Reaction Engines (the one in charge of the Skylon Airframe) can I say this is not a bad outline the technology involved. The key advantage of SABRE is its thrust to weight is much higher that other airbreathers so when you switch to rocket mode you still have the mass ratio to reach orbit. You are half right on the helium loop but the point you miss was that it enables the engine to more be efficient. The point to point engine for high speed flight was a different engine cycle (called Simitar) and this used a less ambitious heat exchanger without frost control.
Hi Mark, I remember you showing us the CMC skin and composite frame structure for Skylon when I joined Bristol University as an undergrad in 2005. I also remember the heat exchanger prototype and the plug nozzle research. I'd be curious to know what will become of the IPR developed at RE? Will the larger investors BAE and RR hold ownership?
@@StuHolmes Hi Stu. It is always a thrill when I get a contact from an old student. I am afraid I do not know the answer to this question and it is matter of great concern. There are hundreds of millions of pounds of research results and literally people’s life work at stake. I suspect it will all end up in a skip!
@@hempsellastro do you suspect any US corporate espionage? I found the Hermeus start up, though different to Skylon and Sabre. Has surprisingly similar designs, concepts and it out of know where develop a highly effective pre cooler. It just seemed odd to me that REL opened test site in US, then suddenly boom!! Hermeus.
I followed the development of this unique technology for many years. I kept updating the Wikipedia articles on the SABRE engine and Reaction Engines Limited up to last week. It is perhaps may be my last update. It should be noted that DoD and DARPA showed some interest in the technology. DARPA funded a high-temperature airflow test facility at Front Range Airport near Watkins, Colorado. The DARPA contract was to test the SABRE engine's pre-cooler heat exchanger. The test unit was completed in the UK and sent to Colorado in 2018, where an F-4 GE J79 turbojet exhaust was mixed with ambient air to replicate Mach 3.3 inlet conditions, successfully quenching a 420 °C (788 °F) stream of gases to 100 °C (212 °F) in less than 1/20 of a second. Further tests simulating Mach 5 were successfully completed by October 2019. DARPA stopped reporting progress since then and what happened to these promising developments has been kept under raps. I hope they just didn't shelve it.
I wonder what contract DARPA had with the British. If the DARPA test of the precooler was successful maybe a US defence contractor will use this technology for a future project. Not necessarily a space plane but something less ambitious. Who owns the patents for the precooler?
maybe it was so wildly successful DARPA thought they needed to go fully black project and this is all a cover story while they move the whole project to area 51 =D
I remember reading about Skylon back in the 90's thinking it might be the "holy grail" of rocketry and then it just kinda disappeared. Great video as always.
They did not have a budget commensurate with the complexity of this system. Rocket Lab spends more in a year than Reaction Engines has spent in its entire existence.
This whole Reaction Engines story is so British that it hurts. Very much like Frank Whittle, the inventor of jet engine, who instead of being famous had to seek help for mental issues he developed as his country treated him with such a respect ...
Frank Whittle went to the Air ministry, he should have gone to the Navy ministry instead. They had far more money and the people in charge weren't idiots.
Exactly. Frank Whittle, the father of the jet engine, ended up living in America, where he was loved and admire, abandoned by the leaders of the UK aerospace industry.
Hopefully the precooler tech, research and advancements aren't lost. My understanding was, and I could be wrong, that they were attempting to use acoustic vibration on the helium filled tubes to try and prevent frost buildup, which was the heat exchangers biggest hurdle.
Actually, the problem is worse than the mixed gas in the air that interacts with cryonics temperature as CO2 freezes at -30C, and water at 0C and any solid matter before the rocket engine will clog any injector. Reference look up at starship Raptor Ice problem.
Well, the Meteor missile is Europe-made (alongside the French, Italians and a few others) and would you guess, it uses an air-augmented rocket. Given current events, a good argument for space funding if you ask me.
@@mohdafnanazmi1674 SABRE doesn't liquify anything, that was the problem with its predecessor. The precooler just reduces the inlet charge temperature down to something you can put through a compressor and turbine, which is a jet engine.
@ 2:30 - BAE & RR were partnered on this, and were looking for yUK government funding (in part). The government simply went and rated the engine Top Secret, preventing non-governmental/civilian development of the idea as a whole. The project was essentially blocked as this point, and the engine remains rated TS. The British Interplanetary Society continued to promote it, and I believe they had a large-scale model of the HOTOL made for touring promotion. Alan Bond stepped sideways to form Reaction Engines, and a separate company to develop airframe designs to employ the new SABRE engine concept that RE began developing. The funding was essentially exhausted (sorry) by development costs of the supersonic capable inlet cooler assembly, which was the core technology of the design. There's still a chance the patents and IP may be of use, but like you say - sadly, I think it's dead. What a loss. 😞
_"and the engine remains rated TS...."_ Nonsense, it was declassified when it was realized that it was effectively useless "technology", impossible to actually build and thus had no purpose being classified.
@@awebuser5914 *Thank-you!* At least one commenter sees the forest for the trees; I was thinking I was the only one. Scott Manley and innumerable commenters have apparently drunk the SABRE Kool-aid.
As an Aero Eng graduate and lifetime aerospace addict, I was gutted to hear of this news last week. I'd been following their story for 20+ years. All they needed was a couple of billion from the UK Govt over that time and they could have made suborbital commercial flights a reality. But they only got about £200m. Meanwhile the UK Govt spaffed over £8bn on PPE equipment during Covid that never got used and ended up being burned/landfill. Britain, the home of so much innovation and talent, just gets p*ssed down a barrel by incompetent leaders.
_"All they needed was a couple of billion from the UK Govt over that time and they could have made suborbital commercial flights a reality..."_ Ummm, *no* Its was just highly theoretical fantasy with great CGI showing the Skylon "in-flight". The entire thing had bullshit boondoggle pasted over it from the get-go. Look, if this kind of thing were practical to build, it would have been built *decades* ago since there's no materials/engineering requirement that didn't already exist. Weapons uses would have been the first out the gate, let alone any commercial use.
A couple billion would not be remotely enough to get a working spaceplane. A couple tens of billions might be enough to have a small chance of reaching orbit and getting back in one piece, but more likely it would have just been enough to determine either that a couple tens of billions more was needed, or that the whole idea just had too many issues that couldn't all be solved at the same time.
That's sad news indeed. I worked with REL for years, doing all their early graphics and animations, ran their website for years, and loads of other stuff - that block diagram is one of mine BTW! I started doing stuff for them when it was just the three founding members and slowly, they generated interest, got some funding and started actually building stuff. I really learned an enormous amount about extreme engineering, rocketry and aerodynamics. A very interesting period, sorry to hear it's over. The precooler - the revolutionary part - actually worked. Well, if the Muricans don't get their hands on that technology, the Chinese will so we might yet get to see something fly! Thanks Scott - excellent presentation as always!
I made a couple of short tv documentaries about RE and Skylon in the early 90s ... using your animations, so thanks! I remember their HQ at Culham was a bit bare bones and they clearly were spending whatever money they had on hardware and salaries, rather than creature comforts! The prototype heat exchanger had only just been completed so Alan et al were understandably wary of me taking close-ups! In those days, I was told, the company was being mainly financed by mysterious 'private investors' ... I wonder whether we will ever find out who they were? R (Australia)
@@branscombeR I doubt we'll ever know! They were very... er... reticent in discussing certain things, probably with very good reason. I remember in the very early days, one investor was World's End Tiles - a tile shop and showroom in London! They were very generous too - in 2008 they bought me a fully tricked out Mac Pro!
Here is an honest question: if the precooler gets clogged up with ice or a bird ingestion or hail ingestion, the engine must surely fail completely? Correct me if I am wrong, I d really like an expert view on this. I always felt this would ultimately be an impediment for rating the system for manned flight....
@@DrWhom Quite right - the frost that would inevitably form in the precooler would be a showstopper - and that's the part they solved. It was thoroughly tested with actual precoolers on test stands and it really worked. Bird strikes - don't know, but they're going to be a problem for any engine.
I remember the first unveiling of HOTOL on News at Ten back in the 1980s. It looked like something from Thunderbirds - finally we were going to get our Gerry Anderson future!
I remember seeing this way back when. As an engineer working on refrigeration system design, I was floored by the design parameters of the precooler. Very impressive.
Typical of the UK government, never fund space tech to the extent it needs to be. Canceled Black Arrow in 1971 and went to sleep, dithered and faffed over Virgin Orbit until the systems were below par and failed on test, then didn't move quickly to buy the company when it folded. Now not funding Reaction Engines enough to get the job done. We are afflicted by politicians (Looking at YOU Greasy-Smogg) who thing a degree in "Greats" (WTF are "Greats") or Classics are more valuable / worthy than a degree on science or engineering. I despair 🤬
What a pathetic nation. Britain's problem is that it's always been a nation of peasants, and is only "great" when the wellbeing of the masses are ignored. Problem is, the masses can't be taken care of anyways. The average Brit lacks the vigor of the average American, German, or Japanese. Britain culturally is more on par with Russia than many of its English speaking descendants.
For decades was able to speak with Alan Bond, John Scott-Scott and others developing Sabre and Skylon. The major hurdle was scaling, basically you had to build a full scale engine and put it in a demonstrator vehicle. I think Richard Varvill (20-years ago) said they needed 50-million for that alone. Being British they were never going to get the funds needed even though the pre cooler worked do the required SA efficiency for Mack 5 propulsion. The Sabre was.a development of the RB545 for which Rolls Royce held the patents, which they wouldn’t release (Bond private conversation). So Sabre developed from a RB545 work around. Using Hydrogen as fuel had the advantage that the large tanks in a non-ballistic reentry wouldn’t require ablative shielding. New management took over a few years ago and attempted to change the direction of the company, I would like to blame the new guys for the bankruptcy but I think the day that SpaceX landed and reused their first booster, the complexity and payload (12-15 metric tons) Skylon was doomed, as it wasn’t going to be able to compete with reusable ballistic launchers.
It could easily compete with ballistic launchers - that same weight of 10-20 tonnes is how much the Falcon 9's legs weigh, and further to that it has to reserve 30 tonnes of fuel to land. More to return. The issue is not technical or operational validity, but needing someone to come along and just dump the money required to get the all-up demonstrator. Which, unlike ballistic reuse, needs to fully work the first time.
@@MDE_never_dies Correct, whichever US company hoovers up all the assets, patents and other IP from this is going to make an absolute killing once they get all of the remaining kinks out of the engine.
Reaction Engines bankruptcy has really sadden me. I was a follower of their work for years, always hoping for them to achieve their mega futuristic goal! That engine with the pre cooler tech was pretty impressive! But the engine complexity, somehow always seemed to me that was a bit too much to ever become a reality. An unfortunately the sad reality is that it never came to fruition. They were way ahead of their time but took too long to reach the ultimate goal.
I belive some principles of Reaction Engine subcooler seems find a way into F1 into Ferrari engine. SO yeah hats its inspiration and legacy i would say.
Thanks for covering this. I coincidentally emailed you to ask you to cover it a few days ago. My wife worked for them for many years and one aspect that I would disagree with is that spacex had effectively made the concept redundant. A large open secret in the industry is that spacex does not release any real costs associated with their reusable rockets. This makes it extremely difficult to know if they are truly cost effective compared to what sabre would have been once mass produced. Fantastic video though. RIP REL.
Well, we don't know what SABRE would have cost when it was produced either. We only know what it was *projected* to cost, and we all know how those estimates turn out. And while we don't know SpaceX's cost, it's clearly less than any other rocket in the industry. And a lot of people are rushing to copy them...
We can't confirm that SpaceX reuseable boosters are more cost effective than a hypothetical launch system. But we can confirm that reuseable boosters are more business effective than the alternatives.... :) Which is to say, having a fleet of frequently launched rockets puts you in a position to make your own satellite constellations and create the first self-funded space company, which is potentially a little better in business terms, than being the most cost effective per kg.
Not knowing something isn't the same as proving it wrong. Just because you don't know the final costs doesn't mean anything. You don't know what the final costs of sabre would have been or if it would even be reliable.
SpaceX does make a few public announcements, such as that they anticipate the company as a whole being very close to break even this year - despite spending billions on the Starship program that is still in the development phase. And they probably aren't lying about that, because while as a private company they don't have to show their books to the public, they do have to show their books to the dozens of people and companies that hold SpaceX stock. And somebody would leak if what SpaceX was saying publicly was too different from what the shareholders were seeing. Also, SpaceX hasn't done a funding round in over a year, and I'm pretty sure that can't be kept hidden.
Cool doesn't make it good... if there are more reliable and cheaper ways to do it then that is how it gets done even if it isn't quite as good it just has to be good enough.
i think starship is going to end people's fascination with SSTO. It's such a narrow margin of weight you can take it doesnt make sense. Starship uses economy of scale.
@@thomgizziz There is nothing more reliable or cheaper than a spacecraft where 90% of it's mass isn't just there to get it in to orbit. Nothing at all. The only reason SABRE isn't being used is because it does not exist yet, there are problems still to be solved before they can build one, they being whoever buys RE's assets.
Reaction Engines already had to sell out their IP to DARPA for pocket change to keep the lights on... US knows everything it needs to replicate already.
The usual modern British story, after defaulting to a service economy for Russian oligarchs. Older UK invented the steam engine, calculus, scientific method, the magnetron, and the science to go with it all. Thanks btw. I’d say WTH happened, but then a million dead young men WW1 would back anyone up.
Wow, the engineering in this engine is fascinating. What a clever method to running the compressors, using the heat exchangers to excite the gas to provide the pressure , clever stuff.👍
Great video Scott, there’s definitely other applications and iterations from Reaction that deserve a place in this video if you want to discuss with us…
I have a crazy idea, head me out what if, instead of having jet engines that switch at mach 5, we accelerated the spacecraft to Mach 5 by some other means, at which point it can then turn on its rocket engines. We could call this a "booster", make it reusable, which means we have to carry less crap to orbit
That is an interesting idea, gonna try that out in ksp lol xddd I could imagine a large external tank with it's own rocket engine (s) that accelerates the craft to mach 5+ then is recovered like a spacex booster. I do hope ssto's to low earth orbit become a thing one day ha
They did get some funding, UK government, Rolls Royce, BAE Systems, in the past few years. Even some from Boeing. In defence circles some think it should be nationalized, not for SSTO or advanced airliners but there are applications in this area as well as retention of capability/knowledge.
Good luck getting anything nationalised in today's political climate. You'll just get repeatedly denied with the "Power of the Free Market" mantra until you go away.
Alan Bond gave a guest lecture when I worked for Leicester University Space Physics dept some thirty years ago. He was clearly a bit bitter how the HOTOL thing panned out, there was MoD funding, and that meant he had to redesign the engines for Skylon to sever their involvement when that chapter ended. Shame it's ended like this.
Aerospikes are very much in the same category... that persistent idea of having one engine that could carry you from surface to orbit, realising the SSTO dream. But so far, they just don't solve any problem that's not more easily solved by abandoning SSTO and going with a multi-stage launcher.
I've been following this for years with great interest, and I'm really sad the company has folded, but it seemed they never really got the funding needed to make it a reality. Also ESA missed an opportunity to make this their next launcher, despite having evaluated and confirmed it was feasible. I met Alan Bond at a lecture he gave at the British Interplanetary Society some years ago, where I got a scale model of Skylon signed by him. Unfortunately this model will now remain a sci-fi concept like all the other sci-fi model ships on my shelves.
Why are you all trying to pretend like you were avid followers? I didn't even really care about the company and just pay attention to aerospace stuff and I knew they had went under.
I knew about the bankruptcy before this video, and I have followed REL for years and met and talked to the chief designer. This video gives me an opportunity to publicly comment over it.
Global open Internet Policies for a sustainable heliospheric economy Based on the size they cannot carry enough fuel, let alone oxygen to get to orbit. If you used atomic fuels and use air for reaction mass, that is something else that should work. if you do not generate ions in the process. I think the easier way it to use ground based energy sources and "atomic electric rockets" which are possible. They did not publish their model in a global open format, so of course no one can check their numbers, assumptions, data, calculations - let alone fuel economics, financial markets, investment scenarios and plans for all parts. When I worked for Phillips Petroleum I learned a valuable lesson about how much a company should be willing to spend to create a sustainable $billion+ project. Same working at FTA, USAID, UN and other groups on country and global scale projects. Do the numbers, make the model and plans complete, make it accessible. Use the ideas of the whole human species - not just a few inadequate insiders. Now I would add -- give the whole of things to a recursive set of independently operated AIs to review, critique and continuously improve. I was listening to the problems the US (and other) military organizations face with a sloppy, non-integrated, not open supply chain. Too many closed and greedy groups who beggar themselves when a Billion $Trillion space faring human species is at stake. Richard Collins, The Internet Foundation
Was following that project too since almost 2 decades. Kind of sad but I think you summed up quite well, rocket technology has progressed and closed the opportunity gap.
I was so rooting for the SABRE engine to succeed the moment I heard about it, it would have been a genuine new concept for space flight in decades. Crucially because a viable space plane would allow space flight to become more mainstream as it would eleminate the need for purpose-built and remote launch sites. Just launch and land it at any airport.
I was an apprentice at Hawker Siddeley Dynamics (Now British Aerospace) in the mid 1970's, when HOTEL, the predecessor to Skylon was first suggested. Here we are 50yrs later and absolutely nothing to show for all that hard work. Once Aan Bond retired the new management tried to take the company in a different direction, they were not interested in pursuing his dream of an SSTO spaceplane. it's a shame that Elon Musk could not be persuaded to take a stake in the company, if he had we would probably have a working space plane by now. 😪
I met the team behind the engine at worldcon 2014 in London. I’m normally quite sceptical of fanciful technology pitches, however talking to them it was clear they understood the problem space well and had sound ideas. However the issue even at that time was clearly funding. Since then, in my personal and professional lives I’ve been privy to a number of similar ‘moonshot’ technology projects, and the key difference between the successful and the stalled/shut-down has always been the approach to commercialisation. When companies push for an all-or-nothing, they run into trouble. When they look to commercialise the little steps and components they developed, they flourish. I’m saddened to learn that apparently the SABRE/skylon tea, went the way of the former, when they had a lot of tasty technology for the later 😢
Excellent explainer, and you hit the nail on the head by bringing up reusable first stages with traditional rockets. Probably better for your space launcher to accelerate out of the lower atmosphere as quickly as possible and avoid the drag losses, even if that requires more oxidizer.
@@JeffBilkins So many. I wonder how many times they tried to use H2 in the precooler before giving up because that helium loop is nuts... Talk about engineering your way out of a difficult situation!!
I worked for Reaction Engines for nearly 7 years and it really saddens me that this technology never made it off the ground. A lot of effort from some amazing people gone the way of the dodo as so many things do :( Thanks for giving it a mention, good to know it made a mark, if just a really small one in the end.
I'm surprised more governments aren't interested in single stage to orbit designs, especially ones like this, considering it could be cheaper, more rapidly reusable, and quicker to schedule specific payloads for launch (this is absolutely massive for certain government and military applications). Not to mention it would be more difficult to track where certain satellites are being put into orbit, which would be a plus for spy satellites. There are countless military applications that this would be useful for too (considering the military wants to use SpaceX rockets to do tasks that are more suitable for large supersonic aircraft). A design like this has way more applications than current reusable rockets do.
You've probably heard the story of the first jet airplane, which flew in Great Britain a few years before the Second World War broke out. It was denied continued funding of the British military, until the Yankees found out about this. The rest is history.
sweet video scott, seeing you fly a KSP spaceplane makes me miss a good old days of your KSP series. a RSS, maybe RP1 series would be so good, but i realize you went on from those days
SSTOs sound great, until you realize you get better payload to orbit by putting it on a TSTO system. Starship, for example might be able to marginally do SSTO if you stripped it of recovery hardware and didn't try to return it, but would have little to no payload to orbit. So, stick it on a booster, and now it can get 100+ tonnes.
One that a viable SSTO could be really good at is crew delivery. Especially if it could be robust enough to be Launch on Demand. Not every mission is going to require 100 tons to LEO. Myself l wish DARPA and the USAF would have pursued the Black Horse to at least hardware and flight test. That was a TSTO sort of. The first stage would have been a KC-10 or KC-135 that would refuel the Orbiter that would take off with a minimal fuel/oxidizer load. This would allow much lighter structure in the landing gear etc.
@@mpetersen6 That may be a use case, but even it depends. 100 tonnes to orbit and the accompanying payload volume would be great to send large numbers of people to LEO, like Rockwell's passenger module that could lift 74 people to LEO on the Shuttle. And if we're talking about future stations and outposts that will need far more crew members than we send up today, a few dozen people or more to LEO might be the new standard, in the same way we typically send up 4 people at a time to the ISS now. The question is, can you send meaningfully more people to orbit in a given amount of time on an SSTO vs a TSTO? If yes, SSTO's might have a niche use, if not, TSTO's are still better overall.
If you're interested in a more human friendly vehicle and not large payloads, it might have been an interesting solution. Rockets have to be launched from isolated facilities for safety and noise reasons. The promise of SSTO planes has always been that they could take off from and land at conventional facilities. Pretty handy if space tourism is to be more than shuttling billionaires in corporate interests into low Earth orbit.
Thanks for this, I'd seen a photo from one of the tests of the precooler they demonstrated to important people in the UK (gov't or the space agency or something) that you didn't include but I'd never seen the animated models of flow you included or some of the other bits so well done sourcing as much footage as you did, Scott. I have a little Skylon model on a stand and a T-shirt with the engine diagram on it from a European Astrofest they had a couple of people at on a stand selling to raise funds and talking about it. So sad to see it falter and like you I see the lack of investment it got (UK gov't offered it £30mn sometime in the last 10 years iirc when they wanted more like 60, said they had to go find the rest themselves but hoped the 30 would show solid support from the government, is how I understood that news release).
Bankruptcy doesn't necessarily mean it's over. It means it's going to be reorganized. Several large aerospace corporations, including general electric have huge investments in this technology. Maybe they'll just part it out or maybe they'll incorporate it into a new generation of product that actually gets built.
I had been following this project for years but updates were rare. So not suprising its not going to happen. Pretty sure there was a video of some kind of engine test.
When I was a grad trainee in rolls Royce in the 80s I remember going into a secret design section where they were drafting out the design of the RB545 for hotol . I’m very sad it finally all came to an end. Hope there is some use for the concept in future still.
Rockets only spends a small amount of time in the low atmosphere. At its slowest speed. The cost in weight, complexity, and aerodynamics for that short part of the ascent is way more than what is gained for the total mission to be carried out.
Yes and that is why it eventually was being pitched as fast travel because you could just always gulp air and you don't have to worry about carrying the oxidizer.
Thanks Scott. I remember the HOTOL models and artist depictions from the Farnborough air show as a teenager, now in my 50’s with lifetime in the aerospace sector it’s sad to see it finally die.
True, the concept, as Alan Bond put it, being to place the engines at the centre of Gravity. On Hotol the engines were at the rear which caused the whole length of the fuselage to act as a lifting body thus tending to a stall at high speed. Not a good look - or as the $6m dollar man put it "..I cant hold it chief its breaking up.."
It's likely the Firefly ship design was inspired by Reaction Engines' Skylon. Reaction Engines started in 1989, and there were models of Skylon in public by the mid 1990s or so, Firefly was filmed in 2002. Alastair Reynolds' "Lighthuggers" are described as having almost exactly the same layout as Skylon too (albeit far larger), also first published around 1997-2000. (I forget which story first described them)
My little pet plush travel ducky apprechiates the use of the old outro a lot :3 (humms along to it :-D ) and also thinks those engines are damn cool and is also a big sci fi fan!
Dang. I always was looking forward to more developments from Reaction Engines. I'm not at all surprised you were following along and waiting for a cool update you could make a video out of, just sad it has to be this one.
The Uk really does suffer from the fact that they are fantastically ambitus with brilliant scientists/engineers, however tend to fail before profit. This is not new. Best case scenario, its sold to the US for a quarter price to be developed into a success. worst case scenario the US nicks all research for nothing, and makes millions. Ever the long curse of British aviation/astronautics. The US, a friend, but a terrible one.
It’s not that the US is a terrible friend.. it’s that they actually have the industrial capacity to pull off what otherwise would have been ideas lost to austerity and lack of capabilities. Lets discount for moment that the DH Comet was basically designed and built by guys who’d only ever built wood and fabric airplanes (even the DH Vampire jet fighter was wood and fabric!) which was the root cause of its design flaws. They had a ton of global orders for a revolutionary new aircraft that “a few blokes in a shed” couldn’t possibly fill for years and years. This lack of industrial capacity was not lost on the British, and it was flat busted broke after WWII and losing its empire, which is why it tried to sell its secrets instead of manufacturing them. They needed cash and had jet technology… sell some to the Soviets. They had a new short range airliner that could land itself. They asked the Boeing if they would be interested in partnering with them to manufacture it and gave them all of their research data. Boeing went YOINK and went on to made the best selling airliner in the world at the time. The British needed the Americans to make the Harrier an operational aircraft. They needed the French to make the Jaguar and Concorde. They needed the Germans and Italians to make the Tornado. They left the world of large airliners entirely when they left Airbus.. with the diminutive HP Jetstream directly causing the bankruptcy of the last major independent airframer in Britain. The US was the only reason the UK even still existed thanks to Cash and Carry, Destroyers for Bases, Lend Lease, Breton - Woods, and the Anglo American Loan. There was a very large faction in the USA that couldn’t care less if Britain capitulated or defaulted.
a terrible friend? A terrible friend would steal and give you nothing. Nobody put a gun to their heads to sell anything. Learn how to select adjectives.
🎯 Key points for quick navigation: 00:00 *🚀 Introduction to SABRE Engine Concept* - Discussion on revolutionary space flight technology and its significance. - Background on Reaction Engines and their SABRE engine development. - Mention of the Skylon spacecraft and its relation to Kerbal Space Program. - Insight into British aerospace engineering and earlier concepts like HOTOL. 02:24 *🔍 Understanding Air Breathing vs Rocket Engines* - Explanation of single-stage to orbit space planes and their design challenges. - Overview of the rocket equation and its implications on propulsion. - Description of how air-breathing engines help reduce propellant needs. - Comparison of traditional jet engines to the innovative design of the SABRE engine. 05:44 *⚙️ Detailed Mechanics of the SABRE Engine* - In-depth look at how the SABRE engine operates and its engineering challenges. - Functionality of the precooler in managing high-temperature air ingress. - Explanation of the multi-step process involving compressors, turbines, and heat exchangers. - Discussion around the propulsion cycle switching from air-breathing to rocket mode. 11:00 *🧪 Challenges in Prototyping and Development* - Overview of the hurdles faced during the testing of the SABRE engine. - Insight on humidity issues affecting the precooler and operational integrity. - Mention of patents and research related to enhanced cooling technologies. - Reflection on the broader implications for spaceflight with changing engineering priorities. 14:30 *📉 The Future of SABRE and Spaceplane Concepts* - Discussion on the viability of the SABRE engine amidst new technology landscapes. - Comparison of reusable boosters versus complex air-breathing designs. - Commentary on competitive technologies like Hermes’ turbine-based combined cycle engine. - Analysis of financial constraints that hindered the full realization of the SABRE's potential. Made with HARPA AI
The main issue with Skylon is limited payload size and mass. It is possible to reach the same low operation costs with reusable/flyback conventional rockets now that we have Falcon, falcon Heavy and Starship (and soon other competitors).
This is true, payload to orbit was not good. However the prototype SABRE should have been built for testing at the end of the 2010s. REL were building (apparently) the ground test facility at Culham for completion 2019/2020. No more news emerged on this after lockdowns, must have been another Covid casualty. Ah well, safe and effective...lipid nanoparticles anybody?
Thanks for the explanation, Scott. I always thought the idea was to liquify the air with the precooler and use that as oxidizer in a pure rocket engine. Now I know better.😜
Before SpaceX, SSTO was just a Nice idea to get a cheaper launch. But, Falcon 9 made it redundant, and Starship full reusability would result in its death. No SSTO solution will be cheaper than Starship.
This encapsulates the history of British aviation. Some of the best ideas, but no investment. I'd had my eyes on this for ten years, but always suspected it would amount to this.
The problem with reaction engines is that they were constantly scaling back their goals. They started with a fully orbital vehicle, and then by the mid 2010s they were talking about a suborbital vehicle that could launch an upper stage to orbit, and by 2020, they were talking exclusively about a long distance atmospheric vehicle, all the while producing a small part of their proposed engine which was costing more for less and less. Unfortunately, as soon as SpaceX acheived their first successful landing, the concept of a spaceplane became a technological dead-end.
@@Tuxfanturnip They got hundreds of millions of pounds... more is better but the further along they got in the project the more the realized the reality of the thing they were building and had to tell people the truth of the matter.
Now the tech will get picked up by a American aerospace company and it will be claimed as an invention birthed from the USA. The movie with Tom Hanks will likely follow.
I really like this.Two stages would be better than one. One air breathing one rocket. The air breather separates and the rocket goes to space. After the mission, an air breather docks with rocket during reentry and slows the decent to land.
UK seems to care more about political agenda's, diversity, equality, legals, services, etc. Doesn't seem to care about construction, manufacturing, and engineering anymore. Hope it changes.
Back in the 1970s, multistage spaceplane concepts were a thing. Whatever happened to those? They would let you put engines for different flight regimes on different stages, so that you can make each type of engine much simpler, as well as cutting way down on the mass of airframe that actually has to get into orbit for a given amount of payloud.
SABRE was developed from the concepts behind the RB545, which Varvill and Scott-Scott brought with them from RR. Being one of the major investors, I'm hopeful that RR can secure the IP from the liquidation of RE's assets and continue to work on the design at some point in the future.
This is sad news. I have been a fan of this engine since I played Kerbal Space Program in school as well. It was the coolest engine to me. I do hope that airbreathing rocket engines will see a return someday. Even if you can recover the first stage, there is something to be said about the gains of using atmospheric air.
While back now, i read an engineering paper that was investigating if a Ranqur-Hilsch vortex tube could be used to produce large quantities of liquid oxygen for fueling rockets in remote locations. Paper reconned it was feasible . Perhaps infrastructure for fueling rockets worthy of a video in itself? I've mentioned it here because it got me thinking if the acheivable temperature drop was great enough and plant light/compact enough. that could be a way of avoiding jet engine aspects completely, and just use such to keep an oxygen tank topped up during early parts of flight
My tutor at Bristol 30yrs ago was ex-hotal, and I knew a guy who's PhD was on the precooler. About 16yrs ago I think I went to a RAeS do at Abby Wood where Alan Bond was the keynote speaker. At the dinner speeches he was touting for a few hundred grand to keep the research going. Then the RAeS president stood up asking for donations to a £3mil archive for their mouldling library collection. Says it all!
Thanks for the update, Scott. I've been aware of RE for maybe 15 years, and still do ( - did - ) the occasional search to see what's happening. Sadly, new info has been sparse for a long time, so I'm not very surprised.
How is that an update? All of that info has been around for years and years... which means you weren't researching anything and had heard about it and wanted to play pretend on the internet that you actually cared and are deeply invested in this concept.
ive been wondering about this just a few weeks ago. super cool tech but after not hearing from them in so long I already feared this outcome... I'm not really surprised though. the undertaking was just so big for such a small company with so little budget. hope the tech lives on somewhere else
No the main problem was the tech wasn't fit for purpose. It isn't a solution to go to space it is a solution to fly faster in the atmosphere but there are better solutions so the better mouse traps won out and this one died. The cooler in it has applications and will live on, the rest just wasn't good enough.
As you suggested, RE misunderstood the core requirement. The Sabre and Skylon was an attempt at getting off the ground, and up to a speed and height, where you transitioned to a second mode to complete the journey to orbit. But you are never going to beat a first stage rocket at doing the first part of that job "cheaply" and "efficiently". And once you have mastered - return to launch site - for the first stage, then there isn't a coherent business case for any alternative. The upcoming Neutron rocket will demonstrate this most succinctly. The whole first stage returns to base, intact, and ready for a quick turn around. (+90% of costs) The second stage is as skeletal as it gets, absolutely bare bones - and ultimately not that expensive to just throw away after using. (the best part is no part) That is a business case that closes - relatively basic engineering, and no un-necessary cost or complexity(developmentally or operationally). In mitigation though, the Skylon/Sabre was intially started well before Falcon 9 was a thing - so there is that.
I was always enthusiastic about this concept way back to the Hotol days. Like you, it seemed so cool to be able to have a SSTO spaceplane. Very sci fi. I was disappointed by the slow progress, although they did seem to make real strides in sorting out the precooler. Sad, but not surprising, to hear that Reaction Engines is out of business.
British Engineering is amazing, detailed, and sometimes quite impractical. E.G. the armrest adjustment thumbscrews of a Range Rover. Cool idea, yet entirely superfluous.
I remember sitting in class in grade 6 (1968) sketching rocket planes with added O2 tanks so we had an air breathing ramjet for takeoff then inject O2 when the air got to thin. Always wondered why it wouldn’t work. Sort of know now but. It was a fun exercise for a 10 year old.
Hi Scott...can you explain why the Skylon's illustrations usually showed the SABRE engine being curved from front to back? And it wasn't just the engine nacelles, either. The actual flow of the engine curved downward as it moved from the intake to the exhaust. I've never seen another rocket or jet engine designed like that, and I've never been able to find an explanation as to why they did it that way.
I've watched Reaction Engines' progress for - decades? - and I am greatly saddened by their demise. Even as SpaceX was demonstrating a different approach to reducing cost, I felt that Skylon would be the safest way to put people into orbit, and get them back down again. Certainly less outright terrifying than Starship's flip manoeuvre.
I did my master's degree working with Reaction Engines, working on the design of the helium turbine inside the SABRE. Based on the design constraints of that turbine I am not surprised they've gone bankrupt... It was not going to be easy and I imagine the rest of it was also going to be pretty tough and extremely specific.
Do you think this precooled jet engine tech can be applied elsewhere outside of spaceplanes? Maybe in ships that are powered by turboshaft engines and run on LNG?
@@СваловСемен-в7р I'm not sure I'd see the application; the point of this precooler is to take high temperature air and drop the temperature (and thus raise density) rapidly so that you can maintain the mass flow rate you get from travelling at Mach 5.
In a ship you don't have that high speed inlet air that you need to dump the heat out of. You could increase the engine efficiency by precooling the air, but that sea air is probably already coming in cool and you might need to spend more energy cooling it than your efficiency gains. In general a cooler inlet airflow to a combustion engine gets you more efficiency as it's denser so you get more oxygen in there.
wtf is your name bro 💀@@СваловСемен-в7р
SAY-BER or SAH-BRAY?? lol
I think they messed up when they tried to use three cryo tanks. Methane and Liquid atmosphere would probably work. Takeoff with an empty tank and one full of methane. Have an air intake big enough to run the engine and fill the empty tank. But at the end of the day landing gear and heat tiles aren't light.
I helped design a concept heat shield for the internal skin of the engine, as part of my university course about a month ago. The incoming compressed air can reach even 1500°C - they want(ed) to use Ceramic Matrix Composites, which could withstand that compressive pressure and heat, but getting it thin enough and making it manufacturable and joinable to the rest of the airframe was a big challenge.
One of the pain points was our contact at Reaction Engines not getting back to us until the day before the deadline, the reason for which became obvious when just happened to announce their bankruptcy the same day we presented our design to our professors.
Wow, almost like the post above from 3 hrs before you. Copybot much.
@@Three_Random_Words I don't know how you think the helium turbine and the internal heat shield are "almost like" each other.
I did my Team Design Project (part of my undergrad course), with a professor who also works at Cross manufacturing, who are in the process of setting up their CMC prepreg manufacturing, who were going to be the suppliers of the CMC for Reaction Engines.
What would I get out of copybotting anyways?
@@kerbaman5125
They look nothing alike. What they have in common is the notion that the SABRE project was anything more than a group-delusion, an engineering concept with no light at the end of the thermo-aerodynamic tunnel.
@@kerbaman5125 -1500C so water froze on the insides?
@@alphauno6614bro -1500C doesn’t exist
RIP Skylon. I remember reading about it and excitedly doing a school report about upcoming technologies on it... that was in 2012...
@@DmitriVanderbilt Did you discover the original Skylon too (1951)?
yeah, same, in 2013
I remember reading about it in 1995
I read Skylon, and my brain gives me a mechanical "By your command."
I remember the British Space Agency (or the equivalent) talking about it back in the 80's, they called it HOTAL then (which was more of a descriptive of the vehicle type, rather than it's name).
Sad news - as an Ex Director of Reaction Engines (the one in charge of the Skylon Airframe) can I say this is not a bad outline the technology involved. The key advantage of SABRE is its thrust to weight is much higher that other airbreathers so when you switch to rocket mode you still have the mass ratio to reach orbit. You are half right on the helium loop but the point you miss was that it enables the engine to more be efficient. The point to point engine for high speed flight was a different engine cycle (called Simitar) and this used a less ambitious heat exchanger without frost control.
Hi Mark, I remember you showing us the CMC skin and composite frame structure for Skylon when I joined Bristol University as an undergrad in 2005. I also remember the heat exchanger prototype and the plug nozzle research. I'd be curious to know what will become of the IPR developed at RE? Will the larger investors BAE and RR hold ownership?
@@StuHolmes Hi Stu. It is always a thrill when I get a contact from an old student. I am afraid I do not know the answer to this question and it is matter of great concern. There are hundreds of millions of pounds of research results and literally people’s life work at stake. I suspect it will all end up in a skip!
This always happens this is Britain a third would country
@@hempsellastro do you suspect any US corporate espionage? I found the Hermeus start up, though different to Skylon and Sabre. Has surprisingly similar designs, concepts and it out of know where develop a highly effective pre cooler. It just seemed odd to me that REL opened test site in US, then suddenly boom!! Hermeus.
@@seansands424 operation Tizard!
I followed the development of this unique technology for many years. I kept updating the Wikipedia articles on the SABRE engine and Reaction Engines Limited up to last week. It is perhaps may be my last update. It should be noted that DoD and DARPA showed some interest in the technology. DARPA funded a high-temperature airflow test facility at Front Range Airport near Watkins, Colorado. The DARPA contract was to test the SABRE engine's pre-cooler heat exchanger. The test unit was completed in the UK and sent to Colorado in 2018, where an F-4 GE J79 turbojet exhaust was mixed with ambient air to replicate Mach 3.3 inlet conditions, successfully quenching a 420 °C (788 °F) stream of gases to 100 °C (212 °F) in less than 1/20 of a second. Further tests simulating Mach 5 were successfully completed by October 2019. DARPA stopped reporting progress since then and what happened to these promising developments has been kept under raps. I hope they just didn't shelve it.
Absolutely crushed when I heard the news last week
I gonna be that nutter.
"They didn't shelve it. You just aren't going to hear about it anymore..."
I wonder what contract DARPA had with the British. If the DARPA test of the precooler was successful maybe a US defence contractor will use this technology for a future project. Not necessarily a space plane but something less ambitious. Who owns the patents for the precooler?
or it joined a black program which is possible
maybe it was so wildly successful DARPA thought they needed to go fully black project and this is all a cover story while they move the whole project to area 51 =D
I remember reading about Skylon back in the 90's thinking it might be the "holy grail" of rocketry and then it just kinda disappeared. Great video as always.
Disappeared just like HOTOL before it, which I remember from my own childhood.
Never expect any British aerospace company to succeed. Britain's government is openly hostile to innovation
All inspired by Eagle's Dan Dare.
They did not have a budget commensurate with the complexity of this system. Rocket Lab spends more in a year than Reaction Engines has spent in its entire existence.
Money is everything, and power is even more. 💪😎✌️
All the money went instead to fElon Musk and his rockets proven worthless by the rocket equation.
This whole Reaction Engines story is so British that it hurts. Very much like Frank Whittle, the inventor of jet engine, who instead of being famous had to seek help for mental issues he developed as his country treated him with such a respect ...
Alan Turing and i bet the list goes on.
@@eddjordan2399 Nikola Tesla
@@jurepecar9092Another missed opportunity like the Miles M52 and the TSR2.
Frank Whittle went to the Air ministry, he should have gone to the Navy ministry instead. They had far more money and the people in charge weren't idiots.
Exactly. Frank Whittle, the father of the jet engine, ended up living in America, where he was loved and admire, abandoned by the leaders of the UK aerospace industry.
Hopefully the precooler tech, research and advancements aren't lost. My understanding was, and I could be wrong, that they were attempting to use acoustic vibration on the helium filled tubes to try and prevent frost buildup, which was the heat exchangers biggest hurdle.
Actually, the problem is worse than the mixed gas in the air that interacts with cryonics temperature as CO2 freezes at -30C, and water at 0C and any solid matter before the rocket engine will clog any injector.
Reference look up at starship Raptor Ice problem.
Well, the Meteor missile is Europe-made (alongside the French, Italians and a few others) and would you guess, it uses an air-augmented rocket. Given current events, a good argument for space funding if you ask me.
Tony Stark: “how’d you solve the icing problem? Might wanna look into it”
@@mohdafnanazmi1674
SABRE doesn't liquify anything, that was the problem with its predecessor.
The precooler just reduces the inlet charge temperature down to something you can put through a compressor and turbine, which is a jet engine.
0@@Blaze6108
@ 2:30 - BAE & RR were partnered on this, and were looking for yUK government funding (in part). The government simply went and rated the engine Top Secret, preventing non-governmental/civilian development of the idea as a whole. The project was essentially blocked as this point, and the engine remains rated TS. The British Interplanetary Society continued to promote it, and I believe they had a large-scale model of the HOTOL made for touring promotion.
Alan Bond stepped sideways to form Reaction Engines, and a separate company to develop airframe designs to employ the new SABRE engine concept that RE began developing. The funding was essentially exhausted (sorry) by development costs of the supersonic capable inlet cooler assembly, which was the core technology of the design. There's still a chance the patents and IP may be of use, but like you say - sadly, I think it's dead. What a loss. 😞
_"and the engine remains rated TS...."_ Nonsense, it was declassified when it was realized that it was effectively useless "technology", impossible to actually build and thus had no purpose being classified.
@@awebuser5914 *Thank-you!* At least one commenter sees the forest for the trees; I was thinking I was the only one. Scott Manley and innumerable commenters have apparently drunk the SABRE Kool-aid.
Bits of the cooler technology got licensed / sold out to F1 teams, so some of it did get used.
@awebuser5914 mfw: the SAS battles the Russians and Chinese by boarding their stations via their secret Skylon shuttles.
@@-danR the pre-cooler actually worked, you neglect to acknowledge this
As an Aero Eng graduate and lifetime aerospace addict, I was gutted to hear of this news last week. I'd been following their story for 20+ years. All they needed was a couple of billion from the UK Govt over that time and they could have made suborbital commercial flights a reality. But they only got about £200m. Meanwhile the UK Govt spaffed over £8bn on PPE equipment during Covid that never got used and ended up being burned/landfill. Britain, the home of so much innovation and talent, just gets p*ssed down a barrel by incompetent leaders.
Just a couple of billions to make this work....WHY WHY WHY....GOVERNMEEEEEEEENT....only a few more billions....🤑🤑🤑
Lions being lead by donkeys
You're assuming it would have ever been viable. Even if it had, that 'couple billion' would have mushroomed to dozens of billions.
_"All they needed was a couple of billion from the UK Govt over that time and they could have made suborbital commercial flights a reality..."_ Ummm, *no* Its was just highly theoretical fantasy with great CGI showing the Skylon "in-flight". The entire thing had bullshit boondoggle pasted over it from the get-go. Look, if this kind of thing were practical to build, it would have been built *decades* ago since there's no materials/engineering requirement that didn't already exist. Weapons uses would have been the first out the gate, let alone any commercial use.
A couple billion would not be remotely enough to get a working spaceplane. A couple tens of billions might be enough to have a small chance of reaching orbit and getting back in one piece, but more likely it would have just been enough to determine either that a couple tens of billions more was needed, or that the whole idea just had too many issues that couldn't all be solved at the same time.
That's sad news indeed. I worked with REL for years, doing all their early graphics and animations, ran their website for years, and loads of other stuff - that block diagram is one of mine BTW!
I started doing stuff for them when it was just the three founding members and slowly, they generated interest, got some funding and started actually building stuff. I really learned an enormous amount about extreme engineering, rocketry and aerodynamics. A very interesting period, sorry to hear it's over. The precooler - the revolutionary part - actually worked. Well, if the Muricans don't get their hands on that technology, the Chinese will so we might yet get to see something fly!
Thanks Scott - excellent presentation as always!
I made a couple of short tv documentaries about RE and Skylon in the early 90s ... using your animations, so thanks! I remember their HQ at Culham was a bit bare bones and they clearly were spending whatever money they had on hardware and salaries, rather than creature comforts! The prototype heat exchanger had only just been completed so Alan et al were understandably wary of me taking close-ups! In those days, I was told, the company was being mainly financed by mysterious 'private investors' ... I wonder whether we will ever find out who they were? R (Australia)
@@branscombeR I doubt we'll ever know! They were very... er... reticent in discussing certain things, probably with very good reason. I remember in the very early days, one investor was World's End Tiles - a tile shop and showroom in London! They were very generous too - in 2008 they bought me a fully tricked out Mac Pro!
Here is an honest question: if the precooler gets clogged up with ice or a bird ingestion or hail ingestion, the engine must surely fail completely? Correct me if I am wrong, I d really like an expert view on this. I always felt this would ultimately be an impediment for rating the system for manned flight....
@@DrWhom Quite right - the frost that would inevitably form in the precooler would be a showstopper - and that's the part they solved. It was thoroughly tested with actual precoolers on test stands and it really worked. Bird strikes - don't know, but they're going to be a problem for any engine.
I remember the first unveiling of HOTOL on News at Ten back in the 1980s. It looked like something from Thunderbirds - finally we were going to get our Gerry Anderson future!
I remember seeing this way back when. As an engineer working on refrigeration system design, I was floored by the design parameters of the precooler. Very impressive.
Typical of the UK government, never fund space tech to the extent it needs to be. Canceled Black Arrow in 1971 and went to sleep, dithered and faffed over Virgin Orbit until the systems were below par and failed on test, then didn't move quickly to buy the company when it folded. Now not funding Reaction Engines enough to get the job done. We are afflicted by politicians (Looking at YOU Greasy-Smogg) who thing a degree in "Greats" (WTF are "Greats") or Classics are more valuable / worthy than a degree on science or engineering. I despair 🤬
When rage is reasonable:
The US forced us to shut down our space programme. They threatened to withdraw the WW2 loan if we did not comply. My father worked in it in the 1950s.
*_Jakes's Reeking Smuggly_* should never be trusted with anything going or ending well when he's involved..
In the UK, space is always responded with a: "We've got to solve problems here on Earth first."
Tommow never comes, of course.
What a pathetic nation. Britain's problem is that it's always been a nation of peasants, and is only "great" when the wellbeing of the masses are ignored. Problem is, the masses can't be taken care of anyways. The average Brit lacks the vigor of the average American, German, or Japanese. Britain culturally is more on par with Russia than many of its English speaking descendants.
For decades was able to speak with Alan Bond, John Scott-Scott and others developing Sabre and Skylon. The major hurdle was scaling, basically you had to build a full scale engine and put it in a demonstrator vehicle. I think Richard Varvill (20-years ago) said they needed 50-million for that alone. Being British they were never going to get the funds needed even though the pre cooler worked do the required SA efficiency for Mack 5 propulsion. The Sabre was.a development of the RB545 for which Rolls Royce held the patents, which they wouldn’t release (Bond private conversation). So Sabre developed from a RB545 work around. Using Hydrogen as fuel had the advantage that the large tanks in a non-ballistic reentry wouldn’t require ablative shielding.
New management took over a few years ago and attempted to change the direction of the company, I would like to blame the new guys for the bankruptcy but I think the day that SpaceX landed and reused their first booster, the complexity and payload (12-15 metric tons) Skylon was doomed, as it wasn’t going to be able to compete with reusable ballistic launchers.
Alan Bond wrote the patents for the RB545, so well that he then had to find a way to get around the patents he wrote!
It could easily compete with ballistic launchers - that same weight of 10-20 tonnes is how much the Falcon 9's legs weigh, and further to that it has to reserve 30 tonnes of fuel to land. More to return. The issue is not technical or operational validity, but needing someone to come along and just dump the money required to get the all-up demonstrator. Which, unlike ballistic reuse, needs to fully work the first time.
@@iskierka8399Correct.
Britain is it’s own worst enemy when it comes to innovation.
@@MDE_never_dies Correct, whichever US company hoovers up all the assets, patents and other IP from this is going to make an absolute killing once they get all of the remaining kinks out of the engine.
Reaction Engines bankruptcy has really sadden me. I was a follower of their work for years, always hoping for them to achieve their mega futuristic goal! That engine with the pre cooler tech was pretty impressive! But the engine complexity, somehow always seemed to me that was a bit too much to ever become a reality. An unfortunately the sad reality is that it never came to fruition. They were way ahead of their time but took too long to reach the ultimate goal.
I belive some principles of Reaction Engine subcooler seems find a way into F1 into Ferrari engine. SO yeah hats its inspiration and legacy i would say.
Think about how other companies survive without bankruptcy... shrinkflation!
Thanks for covering this. I coincidentally emailed you to ask you to cover it a few days ago. My wife worked for them for many years and one aspect that I would disagree with is that spacex had effectively made the concept redundant. A large open secret in the industry is that spacex does not release any real costs associated with their reusable rockets. This makes it extremely difficult to know if they are truly cost effective compared to what sabre would have been once mass produced.
Fantastic video though. RIP REL.
Well, we don't know what SABRE would have cost when it was produced either. We only know what it was *projected* to cost, and we all know how those estimates turn out.
And while we don't know SpaceX's cost, it's clearly less than any other rocket in the industry. And a lot of people are rushing to copy them...
We can't confirm that SpaceX reuseable boosters are more cost effective than a hypothetical launch system.
But we can confirm that reuseable boosters are more business effective than the alternatives.... :)
Which is to say, having a fleet of frequently launched rockets puts you in a position to make your own satellite constellations and create the first self-funded space company, which is potentially a little better in business terms, than being the most cost effective per kg.
Not knowing something isn't the same as proving it wrong. Just because you don't know the final costs doesn't mean anything. You don't know what the final costs of sabre would have been or if it would even be reliable.
SpaceX does make a few public announcements, such as that they anticipate the company as a whole being very close to break even this year - despite spending billions on the Starship program that is still in the development phase. And they probably aren't lying about that, because while as a private company they don't have to show their books to the public, they do have to show their books to the dozens of people and companies that hold SpaceX stock. And somebody would leak if what SpaceX was saying publicly was too different from what the shareholders were seeing. Also, SpaceX hasn't done a funding round in over a year, and I'm pretty sure that can't be kept hidden.
I also commented somewhere (community) and great to see this video with more than I hoped for in detail and history on it.
This makes me sad. I've been following Reaction engines for about a decade, too, watching to see where they'd go. It is such a cool engine!
Cool doesn't make it good... if there are more reliable and cheaper ways to do it then that is how it gets done even if it isn't quite as good it just has to be good enough.
i think starship is going to end people's fascination with SSTO. It's such a narrow margin of weight you can take it doesnt make sense. Starship uses economy of scale.
@@thomgizziz There is nothing more reliable or cheaper than a spacecraft where 90% of it's mass isn't just there to get it in to orbit. Nothing at all. The only reason SABRE isn't being used is because it does not exist yet, there are problems still to be solved before they can build one, they being whoever buys RE's assets.
The USUAL British story. The IPR will now be sold to the US at a knock down price.
Pocket change for Musky.
Reaction Engines already had to sell out their IP to DARPA for pocket change to keep the lights on... US knows everything it needs to replicate already.
@@robertbrown3413Yep. End up buying it for an IP, and waiting for the right time to utilise it
The usual modern British story, after defaulting to a service economy for Russian oligarchs. Older UK invented the steam engine, calculus, scientific method, the magnetron, and the science to go with it all. Thanks btw.
I’d say WTH happened, but then a million dead young men WW1 would back anyone up.
@@robertbrown3413musky doesn’t invest in stupid ideas, which is why he’s musky.
Your last comment about Hydrogen looking for any way to leak is important. A factor that is never mentioned in the auto industry. 🇨🇦
Or domestic central heating for that matter.
Hydrogen doesn't look for anything. It's part of its nature (size and mass).
Also hydrogen enbrittlement of metals.
Yeah, hydrogen embrittlement will be the "material compatibility issue" Scott alluded to briefly in the video.
Wow, the engineering in this engine is fascinating. What a clever method to running the compressors, using the heat exchangers to excite the gas to provide the pressure , clever stuff.👍
This was sweet, need a similar video on rotating detonation engines
ruclips.net/video/rG_Eh0J_4_s/видео.html
Simpsons did it.
Great video Scott, there’s definitely other applications and iterations from Reaction that deserve a place in this video if you want to discuss with us…
I have a crazy idea, head me out
what if, instead of having jet engines that switch at mach 5, we accelerated the spacecraft to Mach 5 by some other means, at which point it can then turn on its rocket engines.
We could call this a "booster", make it reusable, which means we have to carry less crap to orbit
That is an interesting idea, gonna try that out in ksp lol xddd
I could imagine a large external tank with it's own rocket engine (s) that accelerates the craft to mach 5+ then is recovered like a spacex booster.
I do hope ssto's to low earth orbit become a thing one day ha
SRB (solid fuel rocket) you mean?
Damn... I thought I thought it first...
Search up Energia II Uragan
how about a huge slingshot
They did get some funding, UK government, Rolls Royce, BAE Systems, in the past few years. Even some from Boeing.
In defence circles some think it should be nationalized, not for SSTO or advanced airliners but there are applications in this area as well as retention of capability/knowledge.
Good luck getting anything nationalised in today's political climate. You'll just get repeatedly denied with the "Power of the Free Market" mantra until you go away.
It sounds like parts of it have already been licensed to other companies
I saw the concept of SABRE engine first time at Farnborough International 2010, it was really cool 😊
Alan Bond gave a guest lecture when I worked for Leicester University Space Physics dept some thirty years ago. He was clearly a bit bitter how the HOTOL thing panned out, there was MoD funding, and that meant he had to redesign the engines for Skylon to sever their involvement when that chapter ended. Shame it's ended like this.
"Too cool" is a good way of putting it. Reminds me of things like VASIMR, aerospike, and similar "Whoa bruh! Err, wait a minute..." type of things.
Aerospikes are very much in the same category... that persistent idea of having one engine that could carry you from surface to orbit, realising the SSTO dream. But so far, they just don't solve any problem that's not more easily solved by abandoning SSTO and going with a multi-stage launcher.
@@simongeard4824 Yup. Even elevators in buildings involve a shaft change at a certain point. SSTO is an epic delusion of grandeur.
@@simongeard4824 There's a dual-expander aerospike nozzle, which shows some promise for upper-stage engines
Your hard work is greatly appreciated. I am a simpleton. You make life understandable for me.
marc f1 team used the super cooler tech from RE to make smaller and more efficient radiators. alan bond also worked on the uk's black arrow programme.
Interesting co-incidence that the F1 wind test tunnel was practically next to RE at Culham ... R (Australia)
No ads, no sponsors, no Patreon, just Scott Manley being the GOAT of RUclips. Thank you, Scott.
so... similar to and related to Welsh designations or important for SHEEP?
Press F for the UK, first Virgin Orbit then this.
....at least they are still in the ESA.
Virgin Orbit was strictly American, even though it has the Virgin name.
They're designed to fail, with their technology being handed over.
First, Black Arrow.
The UK loves coming up with spaceplanes that they never build
@@mccleod6235 First, Megaroc’s rejection
KSP + Scott Manley is magic. I loved watching your Kerbal vids years ago and I'm glad you've returned to that format. Love your newer stuff too!
I've been following this for years with great interest, and I'm really sad the company has folded, but it seemed they never really got the funding needed to make it a reality. Also ESA missed an opportunity to make this their next launcher, despite having evaluated and confirmed it was feasible.
I met Alan Bond at a lecture he gave at the British Interplanetary Society some years ago, where I got a scale model of Skylon signed by him.
Unfortunately this model will now remain a sci-fi concept like all the other sci-fi model ships on my shelves.
Why are you all trying to pretend like you were avid followers? I didn't even really care about the company and just pay attention to aerospace stuff and I knew they had went under.
I knew about the bankruptcy before this video, and I have followed REL for years and met and talked to the chief designer. This video gives me an opportunity to publicly comment over it.
Global open Internet Policies for a sustainable heliospheric economy
Based on the size they cannot carry enough fuel, let alone oxygen to get to orbit. If you used atomic fuels and use air for reaction mass, that is something else that should work. if you do not generate ions in the process. I think the easier way it to use ground based energy sources and "atomic electric rockets" which are possible.
They did not publish their model in a global open format, so of course no one can check their numbers, assumptions, data, calculations - let alone fuel economics, financial markets, investment scenarios and plans for all parts.
When I worked for Phillips Petroleum I learned a valuable lesson about how much a company should be willing to spend to create a sustainable $billion+ project. Same working at FTA, USAID, UN and other groups on country and global scale projects. Do the numbers, make the model and plans complete, make it accessible. Use the ideas of the whole human species - not just a few inadequate insiders.
Now I would add -- give the whole of things to a recursive set of independently operated AIs to review, critique and continuously improve. I was listening to the problems the US (and other) military organizations face with a sloppy, non-integrated, not open supply chain. Too many closed and greedy groups who beggar themselves when a Billion $Trillion space faring human species is at stake.
Richard Collins, The Internet Foundation
Didn't a few of the US military companies invest into RE so that they could access the cooler tech? Seem to remember reading this somewhere?
yep and i bet they striped that info from the company leaving them with nothing to sell so they went bust.
SSSSSHh!
DARPA provided them with some funding and test facilities, yes
@@86pp73 Yes, and that was pretty much the last I heard, until now...
Was following that project too since almost 2 decades.
Kind of sad but I think you summed up quite well, rocket technology has progressed and closed the opportunity gap.
I was so rooting for the SABRE engine to succeed the moment I heard about it, it would have been a genuine new concept for space flight in decades. Crucially because a viable space plane would allow space flight to become more mainstream as it would eleminate the need for purpose-built and remote launch sites. Just launch and land it at any airport.
I was an apprentice at Hawker Siddeley Dynamics (Now British Aerospace) in the mid 1970's, when HOTEL, the predecessor to Skylon was first suggested. Here we are 50yrs later and absolutely nothing to show for all that hard work. Once Aan Bond retired the new management tried to take the company in a different direction, they were not interested in pursuing his dream of an SSTO spaceplane. it's a shame that Elon Musk could not be persuaded to take a stake in the company, if he had we would probably have a working space plane by now. 😪
I met the team behind the engine at worldcon 2014 in London. I’m normally quite sceptical of fanciful technology pitches, however talking to them it was clear they understood the problem space well and had sound ideas. However the issue even at that time was clearly funding. Since then, in my personal and professional lives I’ve been privy to a number of similar ‘moonshot’ technology projects, and the key difference between the successful and the stalled/shut-down has always been the approach to commercialisation. When companies push for an all-or-nothing, they run into trouble. When they look to commercialise the little steps and components they developed, they flourish. I’m saddened to learn that apparently the SABRE/skylon tea, went the way of the former, when they had a lot of tasty technology for the later 😢
Excellent explainer, and you hit the nail on the head by bringing up reusable first stages with traditional rockets. Probably better for your space launcher to accelerate out of the lower atmosphere as quickly as possible and avoid the drag losses, even if that requires more oxidizer.
Wow the SABRE engine is complicated... Madlads. Would love to see a thermodynamics deep dive on this, so many shenanigans.
So many things to design and get right. I wonder how often they reevaluated this was the right approach.
Maby Alexander the okay wil do a vidio on them one day
@@JeffBilkins So many. I wonder how many times they tried to use H2 in the precooler before giving up because that helium loop is nuts... Talk about engineering your way out of a difficult situation!!
@@hygrii wonder if this idea would work with methane?
@@fakestory1753 Hm me too - maybe the methane isn't nearly cold enough to run the precooler, H2 boiling point is some 100K lower than CH4
I worked for Reaction Engines for nearly 7 years and it really saddens me that this technology never made it off the ground. A lot of effort from some amazing people gone the way of the dodo as so many things do :(
Thanks for giving it a mention, good to know it made a mark, if just a really small one in the end.
My favorite SSTO, and the most sophisticated technological proposal. Bitter end.
Thanks Scott!
The fact that this thing took off is a strong indication that the Earth is not flat.
Counter: thats the real reason why the company failed.
Wow no. Im surprised you aren't a flat earther with logic abilities like that.
Good one😂
Got through high school on your KSP content, glad you've tied it in with your current content style!
I'm surprised more governments aren't interested in single stage to orbit designs, especially ones like this, considering it could be cheaper, more rapidly reusable, and quicker to schedule specific payloads for launch (this is absolutely massive for certain government and military applications). Not to mention it would be more difficult to track where certain satellites are being put into orbit, which would be a plus for spy satellites. There are countless military applications that this would be useful for too (considering the military wants to use SpaceX rockets to do tasks that are more suitable for large supersonic aircraft). A design like this has way more applications than current reusable rockets do.
You've probably heard the story of the first jet airplane, which flew in Great Britain a few years before the Second World War broke out. It was denied continued funding of the British military, until the Yankees found out about this. The rest is history.
sweet video scott, seeing you fly a KSP spaceplane makes me miss a good old days of your KSP series. a RSS, maybe RP1 series would be so good, but i realize you went on from those days
Scott, could you make a video about Skynet 1a and how you think it ended up in the wrong gravity well at 105 degrees west
I remember this over 7 years, and it is an awesome topic!
As extinct as the Dynasoars...
I'll see myself out .. thanks.
🖖😎👍
I understood that reference.
GET OUT RIGHT NOW ! How could you! My beloved DynaSoar.🤯
Yeah, dont give up your day job.....!
Thanks for finally making a video about this. It’s sad that the occasion for doing so is the company’s failure. 😢
SSTOs sound great, until you realize you get better payload to orbit by putting it on a TSTO system. Starship, for example might be able to marginally do SSTO if you stripped it of recovery hardware and didn't try to return it, but would have little to no payload to orbit. So, stick it on a booster, and now it can get 100+ tonnes.
One that a viable SSTO could be really good at is crew delivery. Especially if it could be robust enough to be Launch on Demand. Not every mission is going to require 100 tons to LEO.
Myself l wish DARPA and the USAF would have pursued the Black Horse to at least hardware and flight test. That was a TSTO sort of. The first stage would have been a KC-10 or KC-135 that would refuel the Orbiter that would take off with a minimal fuel/oxidizer load. This would allow much lighter structure in the landing gear etc.
Multiple stages are no longer a drawback anyway when they get recovered. What good is a space plane vs fully reusable rocket? Better mileage😅
@@mpetersen6 The problem with using SSTO for crew delivery is that nobody has still come up with a crew that has negative mass.
@@mpetersen6 That may be a use case, but even it depends. 100 tonnes to orbit and the accompanying payload volume would be great to send large numbers of people to LEO, like Rockwell's passenger module that could lift 74 people to LEO on the Shuttle. And if we're talking about future stations and outposts that will need far more crew members than we send up today, a few dozen people or more to LEO might be the new standard, in the same way we typically send up 4 people at a time to the ISS now.
The question is, can you send meaningfully more people to orbit in a given amount of time on an SSTO vs a TSTO? If yes, SSTO's might have a niche use, if not, TSTO's are still better overall.
If you're interested in a more human friendly vehicle and not large payloads, it might have been an interesting solution. Rockets have to be launched from isolated facilities for safety and noise reasons. The promise of SSTO planes has always been that they could take off from and land at conventional facilities. Pretty handy if space tourism is to be more than shuttling billionaires in corporate interests into low Earth orbit.
Thanks for this, I'd seen a photo from one of the tests of the precooler they demonstrated to important people in the UK (gov't or the space agency or something) that you didn't include but I'd never seen the animated models of flow you included or some of the other bits so well done sourcing as much footage as you did, Scott. I have a little Skylon model on a stand and a T-shirt with the engine diagram on it from a European Astrofest they had a couple of people at on a stand selling to raise funds and talking about it. So sad to see it falter and like you I see the lack of investment it got (UK gov't offered it £30mn sometime in the last 10 years iirc when they wanted more like 60, said they had to go find the rest themselves but hoped the 30 would show solid support from the government, is how I understood that news release).
Bankruptcy doesn't necessarily mean it's over. It means it's going to be reorganized. Several large aerospace corporations, including general electric have huge investments in this technology. Maybe they'll just part it out or maybe they'll incorporate it into a new generation of product that actually gets built.
It tends to be more final in the UK, there's no version of chapter 11 here.
they laid off most staff
Yeah, it's a real bummer. Let's hope someone continues the project.
Thanks, Scott! 😊
Stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊
I had been following this project for years but updates were rare. So not suprising its not going to happen. Pretty sure there was a video of some kind of engine test.
I don't think they managed to test the entire engine so far, just the precooler.
@tz8785 Yes but I believe it was connected to a jet engine. Probably just a regular one.
When I was a grad trainee in rolls Royce in the 80s I remember going into a secret design section where they were drafting out the design of the RB545 for hotol . I’m very sad it finally all came to an end. Hope there is some use for the concept in future still.
Rockets only spends a small amount of time in the low atmosphere. At its slowest speed. The cost in weight, complexity, and aerodynamics for that short part of the ascent is way more than what is gained for the total mission to be carried out.
Yes and that is why it eventually was being pitched as fast travel because you could just always gulp air and you don't have to worry about carrying the oxidizer.
@@thomgizziz Then you would be competing with ram jet / scram jet which are further along with less constraints.
Thanks Scott. I remember the HOTOL models and artist depictions from the Farnborough air show as a teenager, now in my 50’s with lifetime in the aerospace sector it’s sad to see it finally die.
I just realized how much the Skylon looks like Firefly.
True, the concept, as Alan Bond put it, being to place the engines at the centre of Gravity. On Hotol the engines were at the rear which caused the whole length of the fuselage to act as a lifting body thus tending to a stall at high speed. Not a good look - or as the $6m dollar man put it "..I cant hold it chief its breaking up.."
It's likely the Firefly ship design was inspired by Reaction Engines' Skylon.
Reaction Engines started in 1989, and there were models of Skylon in public by the mid 1990s or so, Firefly was filmed in 2002.
Alastair Reynolds' "Lighthuggers" are described as having almost exactly the same layout as Skylon too (albeit far larger), also first published around 1997-2000.
(I forget which story first described them)
Interesting stuff, for sure. Thanks for sharing.
My little pet plush travel ducky apprechiates the use of the old outro a lot :3 (humms along to it :-D ) and also thinks those engines are damn cool and is also a big sci fi fan!
Dang. I always was looking forward to more developments from Reaction Engines. I'm not at all surprised you were following along and waiting for a cool update you could make a video out of, just sad it has to be this one.
HOTOL - Horizontal takeoff using a sled? Sounds like Fireball XL-5. (Starship is but a feeble imitation)
My thought exactly 😂
Effectively cancelled by Ken Clarke (Minister of Science & Industry) - sorry chaps no more government money & BTW it's Top Secret!
My desire for Skylon-related content is nearly infinite despite the fact that it will never happen.
The Uk really does suffer from the fact that they are fantastically ambitus with brilliant scientists/engineers, however tend to fail before profit. This is not new. Best case scenario, its sold to the US for a quarter price to be developed into a success. worst case scenario the US nicks all research for nothing, and makes millions. Ever the long curse of British aviation/astronautics. The US, a friend, but a terrible one.
Today more likely China, the USA is on its own British stupidification arc
It’s not that the US is a terrible friend.. it’s that they actually have the industrial capacity to pull off what otherwise would have been ideas lost to austerity and lack of capabilities.
Lets discount for moment that the DH Comet was basically designed and built by guys who’d only ever built wood and fabric airplanes (even the DH Vampire jet fighter was wood and fabric!) which was the root cause of its design flaws. They had a ton of global orders for a revolutionary new aircraft that “a few blokes in a shed” couldn’t possibly fill for years and years.
This lack of industrial capacity was not lost on the British, and it was flat busted broke after WWII and losing its empire, which is why it tried to sell its secrets instead of manufacturing them.
They needed cash and had jet technology… sell some to the Soviets. They had a new short range airliner that could land itself. They asked the Boeing if they would be interested in partnering with them to manufacture it and gave them all of their research data. Boeing went YOINK and went on to made the best selling airliner in the world at the time.
The British needed the Americans to make the Harrier an operational aircraft. They needed the French to make the Jaguar and Concorde. They needed the Germans and Italians to make the Tornado. They left the world of large airliners entirely when they left Airbus.. with the diminutive HP Jetstream directly causing the bankruptcy of the last major independent airframer in Britain.
The US was the only reason the UK even still existed thanks to Cash and Carry, Destroyers for Bases, Lend Lease, Breton - Woods, and the Anglo American Loan. There was a very large faction in the USA that couldn’t care less if Britain capitulated or defaulted.
@@calvinnickel9995 Isn't ambitus related to ambidextrous and mellitus?
Time to learn German yet?
a terrible friend? A terrible friend would steal and give you nothing. Nobody put a gun to their heads to sell anything. Learn how to select adjectives.
🎯 Key points for quick navigation:
00:00 *🚀 Introduction to SABRE Engine Concept*
- Discussion on revolutionary space flight technology and its significance.
- Background on Reaction Engines and their SABRE engine development.
- Mention of the Skylon spacecraft and its relation to Kerbal Space Program.
- Insight into British aerospace engineering and earlier concepts like HOTOL.
02:24 *🔍 Understanding Air Breathing vs Rocket Engines*
- Explanation of single-stage to orbit space planes and their design challenges.
- Overview of the rocket equation and its implications on propulsion.
- Description of how air-breathing engines help reduce propellant needs.
- Comparison of traditional jet engines to the innovative design of the SABRE engine.
05:44 *⚙️ Detailed Mechanics of the SABRE Engine*
- In-depth look at how the SABRE engine operates and its engineering challenges.
- Functionality of the precooler in managing high-temperature air ingress.
- Explanation of the multi-step process involving compressors, turbines, and heat exchangers.
- Discussion around the propulsion cycle switching from air-breathing to rocket mode.
11:00 *🧪 Challenges in Prototyping and Development*
- Overview of the hurdles faced during the testing of the SABRE engine.
- Insight on humidity issues affecting the precooler and operational integrity.
- Mention of patents and research related to enhanced cooling technologies.
- Reflection on the broader implications for spaceflight with changing engineering priorities.
14:30 *📉 The Future of SABRE and Spaceplane Concepts*
- Discussion on the viability of the SABRE engine amidst new technology landscapes.
- Comparison of reusable boosters versus complex air-breathing designs.
- Commentary on competitive technologies like Hermes’ turbine-based combined cycle engine.
- Analysis of financial constraints that hindered the full realization of the SABRE's potential.
Made with HARPA AI
The main issue with Skylon is limited payload size and mass. It is possible to reach the same low operation costs with reusable/flyback conventional rockets now that we have Falcon, falcon Heavy and Starship (and soon other competitors).
This is true, payload to orbit was not good. However the prototype SABRE should have been built for testing at the end of the 2010s. REL were building (apparently) the ground test facility at Culham for completion 2019/2020. No more news emerged on this after lockdowns, must have been another Covid casualty. Ah well, safe and effective...lipid nanoparticles anybody?
Thanks for the explanation, Scott. I always thought the idea was to liquify the air with the precooler and use that as oxidizer in a pure rocket engine. Now I know better.😜
Methinks SSTO is a dead end.
Before SpaceX, SSTO was just a Nice idea to get a cheaper launch. But, Falcon 9 made it redundant, and Starship full reusability would result in its death.
No SSTO solution will be cheaper than Starship.
Not quite, but it is very difficult!
Most of the designs that appear to be feasible are very large!
It may be with chemical rockets. A workable fusion engine might change things.
This encapsulates the history of British aviation. Some of the best ideas, but no investment. I'd had my eyes on this for ten years, but always suspected it would amount to this.
The problem with reaction engines is that they were constantly scaling back their goals. They started with a fully orbital vehicle, and then by the mid 2010s they were talking about a suborbital vehicle that could launch an upper stage to orbit, and by 2020, they were talking exclusively about a long distance atmospheric vehicle, all the while producing a small part of their proposed engine which was costing more for less and less. Unfortunately, as soon as SpaceX acheived their first successful landing, the concept of a spaceplane became a technological dead-end.
as one would when repeatedly failing to secure enough funding to accomplish those goals
But there are so many people that were so sure that this untested idea was going to work perfectly and be the answer for everything.
@@Tuxfanturnip They got hundreds of millions of pounds... more is better but the further along they got in the project the more the realized the reality of the thing they were building and had to tell people the truth of the matter.
@@thomgizziz There always are. The problem is that when you start, you don't know which of the 4 or 5 crazy untested ideas is the one that will work.
Great video 💯
Now the tech will get picked up by a American aerospace company and it will be claimed as an invention birthed from the USA. The movie with Tom Hanks will likely follow.
America invented the jet engine you know😂
@@Margarinetaylorgrease And the English language
USA #1 possibly instead of bitching about usa you could wish for your country to be less shit
I really like this.Two stages would be better than one. One air breathing one rocket. The air breather separates and the rocket goes to space. After the mission, an air breather docks with rocket during reentry and slows the decent to land.
16:13 So when is Skunkworks buying the rights…Skunkworks Slylon When!?!
It would be the ultimate spy plane and hypersonic strategic bomber
Finally, Scott Manley is talking about SABRE! I have also been interested in this project for a decade. Starship could be like that!
UK seems to care more about political agenda's, diversity, equality, legals, services, etc. Doesn't seem to care about construction, manufacturing, and engineering anymore. Hope it changes.
Back in the 1970s, multistage spaceplane concepts were a thing. Whatever happened to those? They would let you put engines for different flight regimes on different stages, so that you can make each type of engine much simpler, as well as cutting way down on the mass of airframe that actually has to get into orbit for a given amount of payloud.
Yay finally a Skylon video!
SABRE was developed from the concepts behind the RB545, which Varvill and Scott-Scott brought with them from RR. Being one of the major investors, I'm hopeful that RR can secure the IP from the liquidation of RE's assets and continue to work on the design at some point in the future.
This is sad news. I have been a fan of this engine since I played Kerbal Space Program in school as well. It was the coolest engine to me. I do hope that airbreathing rocket engines will see a return someday. Even if you can recover the first stage, there is something to be said about the gains of using atmospheric air.
While back now, i read an engineering paper that was investigating if a Ranqur-Hilsch vortex tube could be used to produce large quantities of liquid oxygen for fueling rockets in remote locations. Paper reconned it was feasible . Perhaps infrastructure for fueling rockets worthy of a video in itself? I've mentioned it here because it got me thinking if the acheivable temperature drop was great enough and plant light/compact enough. that could be a way of avoiding jet engine aspects completely, and just use such to keep an oxygen tank topped up during early parts of flight
My tutor at Bristol 30yrs ago was ex-hotal, and I knew a guy who's PhD was on the precooler. About 16yrs ago I think I went to a RAeS do at Abby Wood where Alan Bond was the keynote speaker. At the dinner speeches he was touting for a few hundred grand to keep the research going. Then the RAeS president stood up asking for donations to a £3mil archive for their mouldling library collection. Says it all!
Thanks for the update, Scott. I've been aware of RE for maybe 15 years, and still do ( - did - ) the occasional search to see what's happening. Sadly, new info has been sparse for a long time, so I'm not very surprised.
How is that an update? All of that info has been around for years and years... which means you weren't researching anything and had heard about it and wanted to play pretend on the internet that you actually cared and are deeply invested in this concept.
@thomgizziz The fact they've folded is a very recent update that I hadn't heard. Missed your meds today?
ive been wondering about this just a few weeks ago. super cool tech but after not hearing from them in so long I already feared this outcome...
I'm not really surprised though. the undertaking was just so big for such a small company with so little budget. hope the tech lives on somewhere else
No the main problem was the tech wasn't fit for purpose. It isn't a solution to go to space it is a solution to fly faster in the atmosphere but there are better solutions so the better mouse traps won out and this one died. The cooler in it has applications and will live on, the rest just wasn't good enough.
It's a ridiculously cool concept that I really hope we'll see fly one day.
As you suggested, RE misunderstood the core requirement.
The Sabre and Skylon was an attempt at getting off the ground, and up to a speed and height, where you transitioned to a second mode to complete the journey to orbit.
But you are never going to beat a first stage rocket at doing the first part of that job "cheaply" and "efficiently".
And once you have mastered - return to launch site - for the first stage, then there isn't a coherent business case for any alternative.
The upcoming Neutron rocket will demonstrate this most succinctly.
The whole first stage returns to base, intact, and ready for a quick turn around. (+90% of costs)
The second stage is as skeletal as it gets, absolutely bare bones - and ultimately not that expensive to just throw away after using. (the best part is no part)
That is a business case that closes - relatively basic engineering, and no un-necessary cost or complexity(developmentally or operationally).
In mitigation though, the Skylon/Sabre was intially started well before Falcon 9 was a thing - so there is that.
I was always enthusiastic about this concept way back to the Hotol days. Like you, it seemed so cool to be able to have a SSTO spaceplane. Very sci fi. I was disappointed by the slow progress, although they did seem to make real strides in sorting out the precooler. Sad, but not surprising, to hear that Reaction Engines is out of business.
British Engineering is amazing, detailed, and sometimes quite impractical. E.G. the armrest adjustment thumbscrews of a Range Rover. Cool idea, yet entirely superfluous.
Its nice seeing some KSP gameplay in 2024. I wish KSP2 would have worked. I miss that game. I want to experience the magic again
This cooling system solves something I was thinking about.... Hmmmmm... May need to revisit that project of mine.
I remember having been excited for the Skylon, since the first days when they talked about this project. So sad it will probably never exist IRL...
I remember sitting in class in grade 6 (1968) sketching rocket planes with added O2 tanks so we had an air breathing ramjet for takeoff then inject O2 when the air got to thin. Always wondered why it wouldn’t work. Sort of know now but. It was a fun exercise for a 10 year old.
Do you know now? Ramjets work because the air is being rammed in. You can't use a ramjet from a stand still.
Hi Scott...can you explain why the Skylon's illustrations usually showed the SABRE engine being curved from front to back? And it wasn't just the engine nacelles, either. The actual flow of the engine curved downward as it moved from the intake to the exhaust. I've never seen another rocket or jet engine designed like that, and I've never been able to find an explanation as to why they did it that way.
I've watched Reaction Engines' progress for - decades? - and I am greatly saddened by their demise. Even as SpaceX was demonstrating a different approach to reducing cost, I felt that Skylon would be the safest way to put people into orbit, and get them back down again. Certainly less outright terrifying than Starship's flip manoeuvre.
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