UK GOVERNMENT BACKS LEADING-EDGE SABRE ENGINE: MEANTIME, YOU CAN FLY HIGH WITH THE HERPA 1:250 SCALE MODEL
SKYLON UPDATE: The UK Government is investing £60m GBP ($92m USD) on the Skylon's revolutionary Sabre engine, to enable a full-scale prototype to be built - so maybe this special edition model isn't pie-in-the-sky. That political vote of confidence means that the designers now hope to see Sabre engines powering the Skylon spaceplane on operational flights by 2022, each ship carrying a 15-tonne payload into orbit. First test flights for the uncrewed vehicle are tentatively scheduled three years earlier, in 2019. As a passenger-carrying machine, a skip-glide flight across the top of the atmosphere could enable a London-Sydney journey in as little as four hours. The British-designed Skylon is the brainchild of engineer Alan Bond, reports Mat Irvine. Bond heads his own space business, Reaction Engines, and now i t may not be too many years before the single-stage-to-orbit aerospaceplane soars into orbit. Until then we can dream on with this Herpa 1:250 scale model kit. Alan Bond (...
