A British aerospace firm, Reaction Engines Limited is busy developing an engine system that will reportedly be able to carry 300 passengers and shall be able to travel anywhere in the world within 4 hours. Its engines will also be capable of flying the plane to outer space.
The assembly is known as SABRE and is dependent on a gadget known as precooler. Precooler works by cooling down the air that enters the system by about 1,000 degrees Celsius in 0.01 seconds. This translates into a cooling rate of 400 megawatts and shall allow the plane to ‘breathe’ oxygen. In a nutshell, the system will be able to run at a much higher amount of power than the amount that is possible as of now.
As per Reaction Engines, SABRE will be employed in two plane models that will be coming up soon enough; LAPCAT A2 – commercial plane that will commute between Brussels to Sydney in under 2-4 hours – and the second plane is SKYLON – a pilotless and reusable spaceplane for providing economical access to space.
According to Chief Engineer Alan Bond, the LAPCAT A2 will be easily able to fly around at speed of Mach 5 (5 times the speed of sound). The Precooler system has been created from a swirl of thin pipes that contain condensed helium and weighs almost a tonne. The company is busy carrying out tests of the SABRE engine system and has even slated the first test flights for 2019. SKYLON will 82 meters as far as length goes and shall fly like a rocket. But it will undergo landing and taking off like a normal plane, thus imparting more versatility to it. The cost of the model will be $1.1 billion each. How many of you are already imagining yourselves on a flight to space?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqSHIv-z8wA