what's the sabre engine's secret sauce?

[Nuke]

we have all seen the sabre engine in various articles and videos on skylon. and reaction engines tells you how almost everything works, almost. their secret sauce is most definitely their anti-icing system. and we know it works because they have conducted pre-cooler tests. so what do the smarter people of the forum think? how would you keep a giant precooler from freezing up?

[tater]

The secret sauce to the warp drive unit in my carport is also a mystery. 
 

 

 

How long have they been working on that thing? I’m the first to complain about Blue Origin, but these guys seem even less interested in actually doing something.

A quick google suggests work since the 80s?!

[Spacescifi]

26 minutes ago, tater said:

The secret sauce to the warp drive unit in my carport is also a mystery. 
 

 

 

How long have they been working on that thing? I’m the first to complain about Blue Origin, but these guys seem even less interested in actually doing something.

A quick google suggests work since the 80s?!

 

For what it's worth, Chris Roberts has been working on on an unreleased uncompleted space sim game for over a decade.

Meanwhile Elon builds actual spaceships and flies them in less time LOL.

[tater]

I like Blue Origin. I want them to fly big, cool rockets to space. I want them to land stuff on the Moon, I want Bezos to get people "living and working in space."

I like SABRE and Skylon, seems really cool. But they seem to be doing this with money raised from bake sales or something. I recall reading some story where they got some millions (of Pounds presumably), and all I could think was that it wasn't even what a company in the US would get to make a powerpoint presentation rocket (Dynetics got $253M to submit a paper lander design incapable of landing).

I wish them the best, but at a certain point they need to just build the thing.

[Nuke]

1 hour ago, tater said:

I like Blue Origin. I want them to fly big, cool rockets to space. I want them to land stuff on the Moon, I want Bezos to get people "living and working in space."

I like SABRE and Skylon, seems really cool. But they seem to be doing this with money raised from bake sales or something. I recall reading some story where they got some millions (of Pounds presumably), and all I could think was that it wasn't even what a company in the US would get to make a powerpoint presentation rocket (Dynetics got $253M to submit a paper lander design incapable of landing).

I wish them the best, but at a certain point they need to just build the thing.

i think they plan on marketing the heat exchangers for other applications. lots of things require high performance heat exchangers. so any industrial process that needs to remove a lot of heat from a working fluid in a very short period of time is going to benefit from the technology.

[Xd the great]

"You see good sir, when you put money in this end, you get cool-looking spaceships fro the other end!"

3 hours ago, Nuke said:

we have all seen the sabre engine in various articles and videos on skylon. and reaction engines tells you how almost everything works, almost. their secret sauce is most definitely their anti-icing system. and we know it works because they have conducted pre-cooler tests. so what do the smarter people of the forum think? how would you keep a giant precooler from freezing up?

I remembered they use some new techniques to create channels that are about 0.1mm wide. That should allow heat to be rapidly exchanged, cooling the air and heating up the fuel.

[tater]

1 hour ago, Nuke said:

i think they plan on marketing the heat exchangers for other applications. lots of things require high performance heat exchangers. so any industrial process that needs to remove a lot of heat from a working fluid in a very short period of time is going to benefit from the technology.

I want the spaceplane

 

[SpaceFace545]

9 minutes ago, tater said:

I want the spaceplane

 

Same, it would reshape space access. And really let us use space to our benefits. But until then.

[tater]

It's only really useful for crew, but a spaceplane for crew would be an excellent resource. Depp space spacecraft could then mostly stay in space (where they belong), with crew safely brought up like so:

[wumpus]

19 minutes ago, tater said:

I want the spaceplane

Even with Sabre, that would be difficult.  The problem with SSTO is that approximately for every ton your SSTO can lift to orbit, a TSTO can be designed to do the same thing, and deliver the same tonnage to orbit.  And by tonnage, I mean the SSTO payload, plus the mass of the SABRE engines, plus the mass of whatever fuel tank is needed for all that extra delta-v (note that while SABRE 'first stage' might have extreme Isp, it is hydrolox, and that means a fuel tank with volume issues).

Officially, the secret sauce is the air/air cooling system for the intake air.

Really, the "secret sauce" is the magic of the promise of a "spaceplane".  That gets a lot of attention, but not enough money to really build anything but powerpoint.

[tater]

30 minutes ago, wumpus said:

Even with Sabre, that would be difficult.  The problem with SSTO is that approximately for every ton your SSTO can lift to orbit, a TSTO can be designed to do the same thing, and deliver the same tonnage to orbit.  And by tonnage, I mean the SSTO payload, plus the mass of the SABRE engines, plus the mass of whatever fuel tank is needed for all that extra delta-v (note that while SABRE 'first stage' might have extreme Isp, it is hydrolox, and that means a fuel tank with volume issues).

Officially, the secret sauce is the air/air cooling system for the intake air.

Really, the "secret sauce" is the magic of the promise of a "spaceplane".  That gets a lot of attention, but not enough money to really build anything but powerpoint.

TSTO is indeed better (the Pan Am Clipper from 2001 is in fact TSTO )

Spoiler

Regardless, even an SSTO is OK for crew if it's logistically easier. Skylon is shown delivering small sats to LEO... they'll lose their shirt if they ever try that. Better to just take humans in comfort.

[kerbiloid]

It could drop 007 from (sub)orbit.

[DDE]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

It could drop 007 from (sub)orbit.

Jokes aside, they might have better luck selling that tech to produce an SR-72 or any sort of suborbital strike platform than they do to stretch the mass ratio and produce a truly orbital spacecraft.

[Elthy]

10 years ago Skylon seemed extremly awesome, but then came SpaceX and bley them out of the water. Starship seems to be better in almost every metric, the only niche i see for Skylon would be crew transport since it has some passive security in case of engine failures.

[kerbiloid]

Currently both are 3dMax. Just Staship has a once-flown mockup.

[RCgothic]

And all of this presupposes the Sabre engine actually works.

Does it?

[Xd the great]

49 minutes ago, RCgothic said:

And all of this presupposes the Sabre engine actually works.

Does it?

Testings are underway^TM

[kerbiloid]

In KSP not just Sabre does, but also the Rapier.

[tater]

6 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Currently both are 3dMax. Just Staship has a once-flown mockup.

One, Starship SN15 is not a "mockup." The things sitting at JSC for human factors testing are "mockups," mockups don't actually do anything, definitionally.

The trouble of course is that while Reaction seems to be partnering with some larger companies (a good thing, since they otherwise didn't have any real money), the companies they partner with have no entrepreneurial bent to them—in short, they will build what some government will pay them for. I'm not seeing them get an orbital launch vehicle in advance of a world where—ignoring Starship entirely—we have F9, NG, and Neutron all competing for the commercial launch market with reusable boosters. SpaceX has had no reason to drop prices at all, that will require meaningful competition. We don't yet know where the floor is for retail launch cost on systems with reusable first stages.

[kerbiloid]

9 minutes ago, tater said:

One, Starship SN15 is not a "mockup."

Still not a spaceplane.

[tater]

Just now, kerbiloid said:

Still not a spaceplane.

No, not supposed to be.

[SpaceFace545]

8 hours ago, Elthy said:

10 years ago Skylon seemed extremly awesome, but then came SpaceX and bley them out of the water. Starship seems to be better in almost every metric, the only niche i see for Skylon would be crew transport since it has some passive security in case of engine failures.

But not really, it’s just a reusable heavy lift vehicle but it wouldn’t ever be able to be useful I the medium and small lift region and no way would be good for leo crew transport.

[tater]

3 minutes ago, SpaceFace545 said:

But not really, it’s just a reusable heavy lift vehicle but it wouldn’t ever be able to be useful I the medium and small lift region and no way would be good for leo crew transport.

I have no idea about crew safety, I think that's a long pole for Starship.

Small and medium lift? That's simply a cost issue. SpaceX bid Starship for a $7.95M contract to launch 6 cubesats (Astra won).

SS propellant costs are under $1M/launch, it was said that counting operations, maybe $2M/launch—that is their cost, of course, not what they would charge. Right now, they could charge $5M for that launch, and be cheaper than smallsat launchers.

So even single smallsats are not out of the range of possible payloads (obviously way cheaper if a rideshare already).

[magnemoe]

10 hours ago, DDE said:

Jokes aside, they might have better luck selling that tech to produce an SR-72 or any sort of suborbital strike platform than they do to stretch the mass ratio and produce a truly orbital spacecraft.

As I understand the engine is relevant for very high speed cruise missiles or an strike platform. 
But its not stuff we hear much of, its long term and classified. 

[SpaceFace545]

36 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

As I understand the engine is relevant for very high speed cruise missiles or an strike platform. 
But its not stuff we hear much of, its long term and classified. 

Reaction engines is deeply rooted in BAE so I bet their is a lot of progress that just isn’t being shared with the public.