[ExI] UK Skylon spaceplane passes key review

[Keith Henson]

On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 8:18 AM, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
> ----- Forwarded message from Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> -----
>
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13506289
>
> UK Skylon spaceplane passes key review
>
> By Jonathan Amos - Science correspondent, BBC News
>
> Forbes - May 24, 2011 - Skylon, an revolutionary UK spaceplane concept has been boosted by the conclusions of an important technical review.

I have been aware of this since the Space Access conference in April
where Roger Longstaff of Reaction Engines gave a well received
presentation.

Reaction Engines worked in my request for a suborbital payload release
which you can see on page ten of the User's manual.

http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/downloads/SKYLON_User_%20Manual_rev1%5B3%5D.pdf

If you go into their cost graphs (Figure 10, page 23 here:

http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/downloads/ssp_skylon_ver2.pdf0)

at three launches an hour (25,000 per year) the predicted cost is
about $150 per kg.  Double that to get to GEO and it is to high for
power sats by a factor of 3.

However, if you use the same number of flights suborbital with a 30
ton payload and laser propulsion for the delta V between suborbital
and GEO, the amount of cargo arriving in GEO is between 3 and 4 times
for a moderate investment in lasers and GEO bounce mirrors.  (~20 tons
per flight vs 5 tons)

That reduced the cost to GEO to $100/kg or less.

As I have been ranting about for some months.

Keith