Why is skylon unmanned?

[sgt_flyer]

As someone said earlier, the flight corridors will be largely known for take off and landing, the runway will be using in priority for skylon, and the air traffic diverted from the skylon's path. Basically, no need to worry about air traffic. Concerning the weather, rocket launches are normally postponed in case of bad weather conditions. (Else, we have a challenger style problem when a spacecraft is launched under optimal weather conditions...)

For reentry, soyuz reentries can be delayed by 24 hours in case of bad weather near the LZ.

In the end, the situations which would usually need a human crew to intervene are not present in the case of a rocket / spaceplane (bad weather, ATC orders to change course, etc).

Plus, one spaceplane has already made a fully automated launch - reentry & landing : Buran (for the landing, it even aborted it's first approach and did a turnaround due to crosswinds)

So, the technology for automatic manned spaceplanes already exists and works

[Idobox]

Comparing UAV and airliner crashes is meaningless.

Because they don't have crews, it's not really important if a few crash. If you can save 50% on cost by removing safety features, and that means 10% of them will crash before being decommissioned, it is completely rational to choose that option for an UAV.

So drones don't have triple hydraulics systems, or twice the number of engines they need to fly.

[PakledHostage]

Comparing UAV and airliner crashes is meaningless.

It is relevant and far from meaningless in this case though because the discussion was in reference to skylon flying itself with human passengers aboard. Certainly the technology exists for UAVs and spacecraft to fly themselves, and it makes a lot of sense for skylon to be unmanned and to utilise that technology. The concerns raised in this thread are valid, however, when discussing a fully autonomous aircraft or spacecraft with human passengers.

[kiwiak]

Comparing UAV and airliner crashes is meaningless.

Because they don't have crews, it's not really important if a few crash. If you can save 50% on cost by removing safety features, and that means 10% of them will crash before being decommissioned, it is completely rational to choose that option for an UAV.

So drones don't have triple hydraulics systems, or twice the number of engines they need to fly.

Maybe crashes are not muh big deal (to ertain amount) if you are flying military missions.

But if we are talking about some unmanned commercial cargo planes that are regularry landing on civillian airports, flying trough cities?