Around the World in a Few Hours at Mach 5
Reusable Space Plane on the Horizon Courtesy: Reaction Engine Ltd, Oxfordshire, UK UK's Sabre Space Plane Engine Tech Flying Forward Travelling 3 and 5 times the speed of sound, Mach 3 and Mach 5. UK engineers are developing the Sabre, air breathing rocket engine to do just that. Sabre is designed to propel planes around the globe in just a few hours and take space planes into rapid orbit. The unique propulsion system just passed a big milestone. Big Test To work at Mach speeds, the rocket engine has to endure extreme high temperature airflows. Engineers at Reaction Engines LTD in the UK have designed a heat-exchanger to make that happen. At the Colorado Air & Space Port in the US, it just successfully endured a major test. In simulations it handled flying at 3 times + the speed of sound. In less than 1/20 of a second, the heat exchanger handled and "quenched" a 420C onslaught of airflow. Big Backers More big tests are up...