L'articolo ..... http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articl ... ne-379609/British engineers 'crack secret of reusable spaceplane' .....
The dream of airline-style orbital flight operations has come a step closer to reality with a successful demonstration of the critical technology behind a radical air-breathing rocket engine concept.
After years of work that has consumed some £250 million ($400 million), Oxford-based Reaction Engines has declared success in its attempt to devise a pre-cooler that can liquidise oxygen from intake air, before mixing it with tanked liquid hydrogen to generate thrust like a normal rocket engine.
Da "Aviation Week & Space Technology" .....
L'articolo ..... http://www.aviationweek.com/Article.asp ... 516711.xmlReaction Engines Tests Hypersonic Air-Breather Rocket .....
Seeing is believing, as the saying goes. That's certainly what Reaction Engines hopes as it moves deeper into advanced tests of a novel pre-cooler that it believes could revolutionize air-breathing access to space.
Designed to chill engine inlet air by more than 1,150C (2,100F) in less than one hundredth of a second, the pre-cooler is one of the key enabling technologies at the heart of the Sabre (synergetic air-breathing rocket engine). The hybrid propulsion system is designed for either atmospheric transport at speeds around Mach 5 or as the air-breathing element of a single-stage-to-orbit spaceplane dubbed Skylon.
