4 ms·
The Skylon is not in the same bracket as Concorde. Concorde was largely an expensive route between London and New York, not an attempt to lower the costs to orb
by moocowduckquack 13y ago
The Skylon is not in the same bracket as Concorde. Concorde was largely an expensive route between London and New York, not an attempt to lower the costs to orbit, the economics of the situation are completely different.
If the Sabre engine does ever get used on a passenger plane, it will not be until after it has proven itself at getting into space, as getting into space is the job it is designed for.
- supergauntlet 13y agoThe SABRE's primary goal seems to be to get an SSTO (single-stage-to-orbit) into space. Anything else looks secondary.
- moocowduckquack 13y agoThere is the Lapcat http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/lapcat.html http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/lapcat.html which would be comparable to Concorde and uses a Sabre variant called Scimitar, however the article never mentions it. Personally I think whoever wrote the article did almost no research and just conflated the Skylon and Concorde in their heads, then just wrote down why what they had imagined did not make any sense without realising that it was not in fact what was being proposed. edit - thinking about it, they also only used the mach 5 number in the article. The Skylon is designed to go five times that fast to get to low earth orbit, the mach 5 figure is just the speed while air breathing.
- akiselev 13y agoPar for the course in science journalism.