Does anyone really believe that’s possible: UK to Australia between breakfast and lunch? Apparently the British government considers it worth some money to find out; it’s invested £60 million ($92.2 million) in grants to a company developing a radical engine that might power it.
The money has gone to Reaction Engines, which has been working on its SABRE (Synergistic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine) for about 20 years. The engine is a combination of a rocket with a jet propulsion system that works by cooling incoming air from 1000C to -150C in less than a hundredth of a second.
It would be used to propel a plane that could reach Mach 5 before leaving the earth’s atmosphere and switching to rocket power.
Nigel Whitehead, the managing director at BAE (which just bought a 20% stake in Reaction Engines), told the BBC: “The potential for this engine is incredible. I feel like we’re in the same position as the people who were the first to consider putting a propeller on an internal combustion engine: we understand that there are amazing possibilities but don’t fully understand what they are.”
But don’t get too excited too fast; he also pointed out that “It’s easier to get into space than fly to Australia because making a vehicle that is safe for passengers is more complicated by orders of magnitude.”
