Skylon may fly this year, first SSTO spaceplane?

[Tommygun]

I can't see the video at the moment, but are they talking about the whole aircraft or just the engine flying?

I've seen test engines mounted to a regular production aircraft with its own separate set of engines as a way of testing.

Basically a step above a wind tunnel test.

[Rakaydos]

It sounds like the problem with the precooler wasnt actually cooling the air. The intake compressor is actually powered by the thermal differential between the hypersonic air and the hydrogen fuel.

[jwenting]

the whole point of the presentation is to build publicity and get investors on board. perhaps find buisness partners as well.

no business partners. Just people giving money blindly. And as soon as there's enough for the main characters to retire comfortably on the Bahamas or something else with no extradition treaties they're gone and the company evaporates.

[Nuke]

no business partners. Just people giving money blindly. And as soon as there's enough for the main characters to retire comfortably on the Bahamas or something else with no extradition treaties they're gone and the company evaporates.

i dont exactly think they are in it to game the system. they get a bigger payout if they succeed, and besides their patented heat exchanger manufacturing process is worth enough by itself to give all the top members a very nifty retirement package. that kinda thing has applications all over the industrial and energy sector.

that said they will not be pulling it off alone. they are going to need to team up with major players to pull this off. so yes buisness partners. probibly not at this conference (they are all under payed over worked astronomers after all) but there will be others.

[KerbMav]

Small companies can go a long way: Less people to interfere or having a say in stuff, shorter decision-making processes, more flexibility exactly for the absence of contracts ... etc.

[Nibb31]

Small companies can go a long way: Less people to interfere or having a say in stuff, shorter decision-making processes, more flexibility exactly for the absence of contracts ... etc.

Yes, but they simply lack the infrastructure.

A company like SpaceX is just about as lean as you can get while still having the operational infrastructure to build rockets and launch them. Yet SpaceX employs 4000 people directly and hundreds of subcontractors. They have two rocket test facilities, two launch sites, and a factory that used to build 747 fuselages.

If Skylon is to remain British or even European, then they have no other choice than to sell the idea to BAE Systems or EADS. Period. These are the two only industrial European companies that have the infrastructure to build something like Skylon on an industrial scale.

Skylon is bigger than an Airbus A380. Just to build a conventional heavy airliner requires a major airport with a reinforced runway, a production facility the size of a small city, and a supply chain involving hundreds of subcontractors. It took Boeing $32 billion and 10 years to develop the 787, which is just an airliner with fairly mature and well-understood technology, except for the carbon-fiber body. EADS spent $25 billion dollars to develop the A400M, which is just a conventional turboprop cargo plane.

Yet REL estimates that Skylon will only cost $12 billion, and that each unit will be cheaper than a good old Airbus A330, although just about everything in Skylon is new, unproven, and unconventional. The cost estimates are simply not realistic, and therefore neither is their business model.

Now, airliners and military aircraft projects have a market, with firm orders years before the first test flight and minimal risk. There currently simply isn't a mass market for hundreds of Skylons with daily or weekly orbital launches, even at the cost of an airline ticket. Which is why EADS, BAE Systems, Rolls Royce or Boeing and Lockheed Martin are not lining up to buy their idea.

Edited March 18, 2014 by Nibb31

[Seret]

ESA's contracts funded them. How else would they get through the SABRE's Precooler's research-and-development (R&D) phase alive?

Also, the SABRE works as far as they've tested it... but you're entitled to your opinion.

Well, then let's take the opinion out of it. What do we know for certain?

• REL are a small company with no significant production capability themselves. They are essentially an R&D outfit, and would need to contract out any major production work.
  
• The senior people at REL have been trying to build a spaceplane for many years.
  
• The UK government and ESA have funded work on the Sabre engine.
  
• No Sabre engines have been built, but major subassemblies have been tested.
  
• Skylon is currently unfunded, the funding agreement with the British National Space Centre, ESA and REL is for Sabre development, not Skylon.
  
• ESA rejected the Skylon design for their New European Launch Services project.
  

So what you have is an R&D company who are more than 90% privately funded, and don't have a lot of resources themselves (compared to a major player like Lockheed or Boeing). Companies like that live on publicity, so you can be pretty sure that the actual state of development will be reasonably well covered in the media. Sabre development is progressing well, but they're still in the testing phase. There have been no prototypes, ground testing or flight tests yet and these things do take years. Actual production Sabre engines are still some way away. Skylon is at a much earlier stage of development, it is only a paper aeroplane at this stage. It's development will depend largely on whether the Sabre project is successful.

[Comrade Jenkens]

A small company can do amazing things with the cost as they aren't held down by so much paperwork and wasted time.

A submarine company I worked for regularly did this.

[Nibb31]

A small company can do amazing things with the cost as they aren't held down by so much paperwork and wasted time.

A submarine company I worked for regularly did this.

Yes, but as I said above, a project like this requires infrastructure (much more than a pocket submarine oufit... think naval shipyard here, or a regional airport with heavy chemical and industrial manufacturing). Infrastructure requires paperwork. Paperwork requires manpower. Manpower requires facilities, training, human resources, etc...

Skylon is bigger and heavier than an Airbus A380. There's only a limited number of airports in Europe that have the reinforced runways that could handle it plus manufacturing facilities for large aircraft. The Airbus plants in Hamburg or Toulouse, and maybe a couple of others. So if Airbus is not a partner, and not willing to move their current production lines to make place for Skylon, they need to build a new factory and/or a new airport.

Skylon runs on LH2. It need lots of it if you want a fast turnaround. There are zero airports that have massive LH2 production or storage facilities nearby. So they also need to build that, which might not be possible at any of the existing manufacturing sites at all due to all sorts of environmental, industrial or political problems.

Now, things like factories, airports, or hydrogen plants don't get built over night. They require years of paperwork, planning, paperwork, money, paperwork, construction, more paperwork, and political lobbying at a very high scale.

Those are only some of the problems that they have to solve. There is no way a small R&D company can pull off such a large project. Even if there was a market for it, even if it was technically viable, and even if ESA, Airbus, and several European governments were on board, there's no way Skylon can fly in the next decade. And that's an awful lot of "ifs".

Edited March 18, 2014 by Nibb31

[Seret]

A small company can do amazing things with the cost as they aren't held down by so much paperwork and wasted time.

A submarine company I worked for regularly did this.

For sure, but it's a big project. If REL wanted to stay small it would mean contracting out a lot of the heavy lifting. Nobody's suggesting that small companies can't be effective in aerospace, just that making a whole new spacecraft on the scale of the Skylon isn't a job a small outfit could handle without a lot of help.

[Winter Man]

For sure, but it's a big project. If REL wanted to stay small it would mean contracting out a lot of the heavy lifting. Nobody's suggesting that small companies can't be effective in aerospace, just that making a whole new spacecraft on the scale of the Skylon isn't a job a small outfit could handle without a lot of help.

And who's to say they can't just contract out the construction to Airbus down in Filton? Pretty sure they'd love a slice of that sweet SSTO pie.

[The Jedi Master]

I thought SKYLON was still theoretical, not even a working prototype yet.

[Seret]

And who's to say they can't just contract out the construction to Airbus down in Filton? Pretty sure they'd love a slice of that sweet SSTO pie.

Nobody as far as I can see. The point folks are making is that a deal on that scale would have been announced. It's not like Skylon is going to pop into existence as some kind of surprise in the next few years. We'd hear about it if development was ramping up. At the moment all we're hearing out of REL is continued Sabre development.

[Seret]

I thought SKYLON was still theoretical, not even a working prototype yet.

Correct. It would also embody a lot of untried technology, so even once they did have a prototype development would probably be quite conservative. Bottom line: don't hold your breath. There are a lot of hurdles to clear before a commercial Skylon flies.

[andrew123]

I just hope that they can make a ssto. I bet it would encourage more space travel among the general population.

[Winter Man]

Nobody as far as I can see. The point folks are making is that a deal on that scale would have been announced. It's not like Skylon is going to pop into existence as some kind of surprise in the next few years. We'd hear about it if development was ramping up. At the moment all we're hearing out of REL is continued Sabre development.

Of course it would, yeah. Doesn't mean it couldn't be pushed through with relative ease before 2019 though, all it'll take is decent project management. Ceramic skin? There's a company in Newport that can make it. Airframe? You've got Airbus in Bristol. Engines? Rolls Royce also in Bristol. It's all right there, it just needs putting together.

[SargeRho]

2019 isn't very realistic. You can't develop and build an aerospace craft twice the size of an A-380 in 5 years.

[Rakaydos]

2019 isn't very realistic. You can't develop and build an aerospace craft twice the size of an A-380 in 5 years.

Depends on if they did the prepwork while they waited for the engine design to be finalized. All the "untried technoligy" in the hull basicallly amounts to a big flowerpot holding a hydrogen tank-not exactly complicated compared to a passanger aircraft.

[Winter Man]

Depends on if they did the prepwork while they waited for the engine design to be finalized. All the "untried technoligy" in the hull basicallly amounts to a big flowerpot holding a hydrogen tank-not exactly complicated compared to a passanger aircraft.

They did, and in the 20 years previous to the precooler testing. Hydrogen tanks have been built before.

[Nibb31]

And who's to say they can't just contract out the construction to Airbus down in Filton? Pretty sure they'd love a slice of that sweet SSTO pie.

Filton was closed in 2012. It was quite underdeveloped as factories go, the runway was probably a bit short for an SSTO (2000m) and because it was surrounded by housing estates, I doubt the locals would have appreciated the construction of the liquid hydrogen plant and regular test flights of experimental hypersonic aircraft.

Airbus has a more modern plant in Broughton where they make wings for the A380, but the runway is even shorter, so it would need major extension work. It would also mean that A380 production would have to move elsewhere.

Airbus Toulouse and Hamburg are in built-up areas, so the potential for expansion and building a major liquid hydrogen plant is limited. Actually, if I was to choose, I'd go for the Airbus Seville plant in Spain, where they build the A400M. It's a nice modern airport with a long runway made for heavy aircraft and there's lots of room for expansion.

Another problem is that Skylon segments are too big to fit inside the A300 Beluga, so they would have to ship them around with barges and trucks like they do with the A380 segments. This required special roads to be built.

However, more likely than not, if you intend on having regular flights, it would require a brand new spaceport anyway with its own giant payload integration hangars and technical facilities, so you might as well build it there in the first place.

Edited March 18, 2014 by Nibb31

[Vonar]

I have my doubts that Skylon will fly this year. Last time I checked it still needed a $12 billion Billion Pound investment in key technologies, and only a very small percentage of the research funding has been acquired.

[SargeRho]

They would likely have to build the fuselage wherever final assembly takes place. It IS twice as long and I think almost twice as thick as that of the A380 after all.

[Nibb31]

It's all hypothetical anyway. REL doesn't plan to actually operate Skylon. They want to sell it to operators.

However, when you add up all the costs, the demand, the flight rates that you have to meet, etc... the whole thing simply isn't viable. There simply are no customers for it.

[Winter Man]

It's all hypothetical anyway. REL doesn't plan to actually operate Skylon. They want to sell it to operators.

However, when you add up all the costs, the demand, the flight rates that you have to meet, etc... the whole thing simply isn't viable. There simply are no customers for it.

There's no customers because there's no SSTO precedent. There was no demand for 4 hour transatlantic flights before the first passenger plane was built.

[How2FoldSoup]

It's all hypothetical anyway. REL doesn't plan to actually operate Skylon. They want to sell it to operators.

However, when you add up all the costs, the demand, the flight rates that you have to meet, etc... the whole thing simply isn't viable. There simply are no customers for it.

I have a feeling you might have a lot of customers if you could discover an economical way to get to orbit. It opens up a lot of opportunities for both research and business.