Re: Skylon SSTO



On Jan 29, 2:28 pm, Pat Flannery <flan...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Ian Woollard wrote:

I think they're easier than you would expect, but they're a very new
type of engine; and they're closed cycle which is never entirely fun
to R&D. To put this into perspective the SR-71's engines were thought
to be capable of Mach 4.5,

In the pilot's manual they state that the engines are going to start
melting at around Mach 3.4 due to the heat of the air coming into the
intake.

but this engine is only aiming for another Mach but the precooler
takes out most of the nasties from travelling at high speed- the
engine sees almost identical conditions from Mach 0 all the way up to
Mach 5.5. In other words, it works the same on the bench as it does in
the sky

...Run one up on the bench, and let's see what it does.
If it was that amazing of an idea, someone in Europe or here would have
bought the patent rights to it, and put it into production due to its
revolutionary nature, either openly or in the black world.
But even the HOTAL engine is pretty well known now due to the fact it
didn't do what was advertised, and Sabre is in the unclassified world.
I assume the reason for that is that major aerospace firms have had
their boffins look at it, and they have reported that it's not going to
do what's claimed for it.

As Henry Spencer points out, many investigators have discovered that
airbreathing engines--despite a superficial attractiveness--are
completely
unpromising for accelertion missions.

I went to North American in 1960, with the hope that the B-70 might
be
the key to designing a good space transport. It didn't take long for
me
to discover that pure rocket approaches held much more promise for
acceleration missions --even if the space transport looks more like
an
airplane than a missile.

I was unable to deter the mid-1960s Aerospace Plane debacle--nor the
1980s NASP debacle. I was not in a position to do anything but
shake
my head at the HOTOL promises. I suspect that a lot more money and
effort will go down the drain chasing the airbreathing-to-orbit
rainbow.
I suppose that's good in one way: it keeps some of the competition
busy pursuing a worthless approach.

Pat

Best regards,
Len (Cormier)
PanAero, Inc.
x@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (change x to len)
http://www.tour2space.com

.

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