Very mixed feelings about this
.Plus side.
It's an extra £20m in the REL war chest.
Minus side
It's BAe.
If you look up "Government con-tractor" in a British dictionary they would be the entry.
The UK's Reaction Engines Limited has announced a healthy injection of funds into the development of its revolutionary SABRE (Synergetic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine) power system. The company has inked a deal with BAE Systems, which will "invest £20.6m in Reaction Engines to acquire 20 per cent of its share capital and also …
BAe do have a habit of milking the the Defense budget for all its worth, but can you blame them or any company for that?
It's those responsible for awarding and overseeing the contracts that are to blame - if they are too ignorant to realise that they are paying BAe to re-invent the wheel then it's not BAE's fault.
Timeand again, we see various Defense Contracts being awarded which then overrun with absolutely no penalities being imposed or those responsible for awarding the contract being held accountable.
Interestingly being the local MP for a chunk of BAe can get you made a defence minister with an interest in procurement. His name is Sir Peter James Luff and I'm sure* this is entirely above board, just as his expenses were found to be**.
*Not at all sure,
**bent as a nine bob note
"t's those responsible for awarding and overseeing the contracts that are to blame - if they are too ignorant to realise that they are paying BAe to re-invent the wheel then it's not BAE's fault."
What also happens is that somewhere in the spec is a number that seemed like a good idea at the time, but in reality is very difficult to achieve. Large amounts of budget are spent trying to hit this number only to find that it was not particularly critical and a far easier value would have been perfectly acceptable in operation.
"BAe do have a habit of milking the the Defense budget for all its worth, but can you blame them or any company for that?"
Yes I bloody well can, and do so. Because it's just not fair. That's just like stealing cash from that blind, crippled, deaf kid selling newspapers in front of a disused tube station. And stealing the newspapers too.
The problem is that BAE don't bid fairly. Ever.
Here's what happens:
1) BAE smell fresh pork.
2) BAE remind Whitehall how many people in the UK they employ
3) "Nice jobs you have there. Shame if anything were to happen to them"
4) CONTRACT!
5) BAE smell more pork
6) "Nice Defence Project you have there. Shame if anything were to happen to it"
7) MORE PORK!
You'd need to be incredibly hard nosed to turn BAE down for an MoD contract.
And you both missed out the bit where the top civil servant who negotiated the financially disastrous contract, and/or the minister who signed it off, inexplicably end up about two years later earning a six-figure salary for two days work a week on the board of BAE.
"quietly siphon jobs from the UK to the US"
How else will the US allow a supersonic transport to operate in their airspace? If they don't build it or at least have a significant interest in it, it won't be allowed to fly supersonic in case it curdles the milk in cows.
@Sir Sham
You are of course, complete right - but how stupid must the Civil "Servants" or the relevent Minister be (or how corrupt) to fall for the same trick time after time after time?
BAe spot a ploy that works and HMG keeps falling for it - Blair/Brown are two notable muppets for falling for that ploy over the QE Class Carriers.
Timeand again, we see various Defense Contracts being awarded which then overrun with absolutely no penalities being imposed or those responsible for awarding the contract being held accountable.
Playing devil's advocate here, maybe some of the contracts are to build things that have never been built before* and probably on the bleeding edge of technology.
I'm not sure any company would give you a fixed price/time contract in such circumstances.
* I'm excluding the idea that another country may have already made it and you don't want to/can't buy from them.
US:Elon Musk we'll be on Mars.
UK:We might have an engine thats only taken 20 years to develop.
There's times when I am ashamed on how small our reach is. Remember when we just did things. For all their faults (and there are hideously many) thats one thing our American cousins dont lack.
"UK:We might have an engine thats only taken 20 years to develop."
...and the 30 years it has been in development so far. Reaction Engines are the current torchholder for the HOTOL project which was announced mid-80s and given minimal funding by HMG.
The Sabre engine would represent a genuine leap in technology, but wouldn't get you to Mars.
When (if?) it goes into production it will get you to LEO, and as any fule kno, getting to orbit means you're 90% of you way to anywhere, at least in terms of energy expended. So no, a sabre-powered craft probably won't take you directly to Mars, but it doesn't need to. It only needs to deliver you to ship that takes you on the last leg of the journey.
"The Sabre engine would represent a genuine leap in technology, but wouldn't get you to Mars."
No, but cheap and frequent trips to LEO, even with "only" 15 tonnes per trip might be a useful stepping stone to building or even just fuelling an interplanetary manned ship.
I can take your criticism of the UK, but holding the USA up as a better example? Come on. Elon Musk hasn't managed to make Tesla profitable yet; it only exists because of billions of dollars of government subsidies. I approve of his can-do attitude, but he hasn't gone to Mars yet. And he's more the exception rather than the rule, in any case.
I actually see Space/X and REL as nicely complementary.
The Sabre engine is good for the taxi service to LEO and the occasional satellite.
That frees up Space/X and their conventional (ish) rockets to concentrate on the heavy lifting and far-off destinations.
One might be more exciting than the other, but both are necessary.
US We'll build quite a good LOX Kero gas generator rocket engine, which has has been done 20-40 times already using the "Bank of Elon" to fund it.
UK. We'll build a deeply pre cooled turbo rocket engine (which is what SABRE technically is) that will deliver an Isp about 6x that of the best rocket engines (while in the atmosphere) and allow you to build a Single Stage to Orbit vehicle with the same payload fraction as a 2 stage rocket (something no previous SSTO has come anywhere near deliving)
And we'll have to raise the money from investors who will demand a return on investment at every stage of the process.
"something no previous SSTO has come anywhere near delivering"
Correct me if I'm wrong, but no one has ever built a working SSTO*, and this one is reusable as well. If they can make it work, it would be far more of a step forward in spaceflight than anything Space X has managed (and Space X have managed some bloody impressive stuff).
* Single Stage To Orbit, ie a single vehicle that can fly all the way into space, without having to drop empty fuel tanks or boosters off along the way
"Correct me if I'm wrong, but no one has ever built a working SSTO*,
True. A number have been proposed, some to high levels of detail.
"and this one is reusable as well. "
Virtually all have been proposed as reusable.
Historically all SSTO's have accepted you'd have to lose payload fraction, usually from the c3% of GTOW to about 1%.
Since people work out required funding levels from GTOW ("Cost Estimating Relationships") that is a very important secondary metric for anyone proposing an SSTO.
"it would be far more of a step forward in spaceflight than anything Space X has managed "
It would.
different technology
the Fireflash used a nuclear reactor to heat air passing through what were effectively ramjets. The heat transfer from the reactor to the jets was via Sodium-Potassium alloy - an extremely flammable/water reactive liquid metal which has good thermal conductivity (its used as the primary cooling circuit in nuclear subs)
Of course that wouldn't give any initial thrust at startup as the air needs to be moving through the jet before you can heat it, so initial takeoff was powered by what were described as "chemical engines" but were presumably solid fuel rockets
information remembered from TV21's Christmas annuals back in the 1960's, the technical detail was quite surprising given the target audience
The problem is less the ambition of getting to mars than the cost of doing so. Assuming the concept works, it's an ambitious enough project to engage that. One that the US doesn't really grapple with either. Note Boeing/Lockheed don't even compete on rockets, they conglomerated into United Launch Alliance instead; one of spacex's complaints being they weren't even allowed to bid, at one point. Of course BAE could probably lecture any of them on the conglomerate game; I'm sure it will be messed up, or made sufficiently expensive that there's no ultimate advantage (or like jets in the first place, given away).
The question is why the government put cash to the project now. It's not a chinese reactor, german rail company or korean/spanish investor and/or water company, and not even a bank. What's their angle?
"or like jets in the first place, given away"
To be fair, pretty much all British secret tech was passed to the Yanks on the basis that Germany was about to invade and it might be nice if anything we had developed should be passed over somewhere less likely to be used by an insane dictator. Further tech "secrets" developed later were also passed over in part payment for the various help given by the US. In hindsight it does seem like a silly thing to do, but it really was a very different time back then. Although AFAIK we never passed over the Colossus stuff.
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If you look to the investment in British aviation from 1945 to 1960 (roughly), when Britain had an edge in aircraft and aero-engine design, it's (nearly) all government (Ministry of Supply) money being used by the companies to get things done.
There's a few private-funded things going on in the big companies but not much as money was tight.
For an example, the Westland Westminster heavy lift helicopter. When the government funding was curtailed, Westland sent the loaned Sikorsky rotor/gearbox used in the prototype back to the States rather than pay import duty on it.
That is the M5 300 seat passenger aircraft project. LAPCAT and LAPCAT II. By Lapcat II their only competitor was the M8 German Kerosene SCRamjet, which seemed to have a lower heating load (if you could make a SCRamjet 10s of metres wide work).
It was funded under an EU framework agreement. Brussels paid the bill so they get to choose the reference flight path IIRC it was Brussels Canberra.
I really hope this project succeeds, however, it will be interesting to see how they manage the higher loading on the engine compared to a "standard" gas turbine.
If the text of the article is right, the plan is to compress air that is almost already in a liquid state, so there's not much more compressing that can be done before it becomes a liquid and is therefore almost incompressible.
i.e. the "relatively conventional turbo compressor" is going to be a pretty exotic design, relatively speaking...
EU rules sayath that UK Plc can't do that.
Apparently nobody in the government has the intelligence to simply gift a big wad of cash to the Crown Estate and then have them take shares, which can then be sold as an investment at a later point. (100% of the "profits" of the crown estate are remitted to HM Treasury, as per the 1701 act of settlement)
It's probably to ensure the thrust line goes through the centre of mass, bearing in mind that the engines are attached to wings on the underside of the craft, and thus below the centre of mass. Thrust line not being through centre of mass is Not Good once you're in space (or at such altitude that aerodynamic effects can't keep you stable).
"The top part was made with ESA funding and is measured in meters, the bottom in yards but if you push hard enough it still fits."
Have a pint!
Though I think it's more likely that it's something to do with slowing down the incoming air so the cooler thing has a chance to work and the turbines don't have to deal with supersonic airflows...