You may never have heard of Skylon but if your age is greater than twice the sum of your shoe size and your hat size you have probably heard of Hotol (HOrizontal Take-Off and Landing), an idea from the 1980s that, it was hoped, would lead to cheap (relatively) space-travel and 2-hour flights from London to Sydney. The idea never took off (literally, as well as figuratively) due to the immense technical challenges involved but it seems that the engineers involved didn’t just give in; they have been working away at the problems ever since Hotol was cancelled.
The result of this persistence is Skylon, a 21st Century version of Hotol that seems to hold great promise. The key difference between Skylon and Hotol is technical feasibility. Where Hotol was a great idea held back by the engineering of the day, Skylon seems to be a lot closer to being feasible, to the point where the European Space Agency, charged by the UK Space Agency with evaluating the concept, has found no significant problems and have suggested that the project is ready to proceed to the next stage.
The company designing the system, Reaction Engines Limited, is conducting further tests through the summer. If all goes well they will soon be looking for investors to release a further £220m (which is a ludicrously small amount of money given both the possibilities and the other sums we’ve been spending recently) to fund a prototype of the revolutionary Sabre engine. It is still a hugely risky project - there are many things that could go wrong - but it is also enormously exciting.
The prize, of course, would be a world-beating technology, built and controlled by a UK company, giving the UK a serious advantage in space technology and, possibly, sparking a new phase in both the UK’s and the world’s development. Cutting the cost of launching satellites or other space-bound cargo could trigger all sorts of opportunities, from orbital manufacturing to power generation to tourism.
Is it fair to hang such huge ambitions on the outcome of a single product development project? Possibly not, but I would be willing to bet that this is exactly the aim of the engineers working on it. After all, if you are literally aiming to revolutionise near-space travel you might as well hope to achieve big things on the back of it.
So what can we do to help out? At the moment, probably nothing, but sooner or later the project is likely to need Government help, either as a customer, regulator or investor, and if this happens we should enthusiastically jump aboard.
The UK is already a major operator in the defence, aerospace and satellite manufacturing industries. Skylon might open new opportunities for the UK in space innovation, travel, satellite launching and next-generation industry, supporting our already significant activities in defence and aerospace. Whatever the costs and technical difficulties, that’s a huge prize and it’s definitely worth pursuing.
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