Travel: Hypersonic rocket engine could revolutionize space flight

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http://news.yahoo.com/hypersonic-rocket-...44494.html

EXCERPT: Oxfordshire-based Reaction Engines are developing a new aerospace engine class that combines both jet and rocket technologies. They call it the greatest advance in propulsion since the jet engine; potentially revolutionizing hypersonic flight and dramatically reducing the cost of space access. [...] SABRE, which stands for Synergetic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine, is designed to enable aircraft to operate from a standstill on the runway to hypersonic flight in the atmosphere, and then transition to rocket mode for spaceflight....

[Yazata]

EXCERPT: Oxfordshire-based Reaction Engines are developing a new aerospace engine class that combines both jet and rocket technologies. They call it the greatest advance in propulsion since the jet engine; potentially revolutionizing hypersonic flight and dramatically reducing the cost of space access. [...] SABRE, which stands for Synergetic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine, is designed to enable aircraft to operate from a standstill on the runway to hypersonic flight in the atmosphere, and then transition to rocket mode for spaceflight....

I remember reading breathless-reports of emerging hypersonic aircraft technology back in the 1980's when lots of Cold War development money was going into it. (The perhaps mythical 'Aurora project' at 'area 51', external combustion engines, scramjets...) Nothing has come of it yet. (At least nothing that's become public knowledge.)

The Hiller Aircraft Museum near my home has a display showing an old (Boeing?) hypersonic concept that would accelerate into space on a shallow ballistic trajectory, dip back into the upper atmosphere where a ramjet would engage, thrusting it upward again into space. So it would move in a porpoise-like action into and out of the upper atmosphere at very high Mach numbers.

My impression is that the technical hurdles to actually doing that are pretty significant. (Heating, designing ramjets that perform as desired...)

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60 million pounds from the British government. Hopefully the taxpayers see something better than a perpetual motion machine.