

Oxygen-Powered Jet Travels The World In 4 Hours - yottoy
http://www.psfk.com/2012/12/oxygen-power-jet-engine.html

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chrisbennet
The article title is misleading. An oxygen powered jet _did not_ travel the
world in 4 hours. An oxygen powered jet did not travel at all. An oxygen
powered jet does not exist.

But someday, using this new engine technology, it might be possible.

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c1u
"An oxygen powered jet did not travel the world in 4 hours" - TRUE, as I know
of no aircraft that can carry a human at mach 9.

But without an oxidizer combustion is not possible. I don't know of any
airplane (jet or propeller) that uses anything but oxygen as it's oxidizer.

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sgentle
Oxygen-Powered Jet Might Someday Travel The World In 4 Hours If Technology
Proves Viable And Meets Actual Market Demand At Acceptable Cost

Near as I can tell, the article is mixing up two different things. SABRE is
being tested as a rocket engine - it recently got some press on here because
they had a successful heat exchanger test which, while pretty cool, does not
an engine make. As I understand it since that test the ESA has given the nod
to SABRE and believes there isn't any technical reason why the engine won't
work.

The article mentions that the main advantage will be that "aircrafts can carry
less load in terms of on-board liquid oxygen". This is presumably actually
referring to rockets, not aircraft, since conventional jet aircraft already
use regular old air. "massive throw-away first stages", again, hopefully
refers to rockets, otherwise there might be some expensive property damage
when your passenger jet drops its first stage on La Guardia.

There is an actual passenger jet piece, though. A separate initiative called
the A2, a hypersonic passenger jet based on a derivative of SABRE. If built,
it could apparently travel at Mach 5 and take you halfway around the world in
something like 4.6 hours, which is pretty close to 4 if you squint.

All of this stuff is being planned by the same company, and Wikipedia says the
plane's coming within 25 years "if there is market demand" - so although this
all sounds good, and it's nice they've had a successful test, I think it's
safe for now to treat this new oxygen-powered jet as vapourware.

(sorry)

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typpo
The wikipedia article[1] is about 100 times as informative as this article.
Apparently the technology was conceived of in the 50s, and it looks like basic
hardware testing took place earlier this year.

I have no aerospace background but this reminds me of ramjets, which have been
flying since the 40s but aren't used to transport people.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SABRE_(rocket_engine)>

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aspratley
This has a far better explanation of what the engine is about:
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20510112>

There's also a documentary on the developers:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZ_a21fPkYM>

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stcredzero
How is the SABRE engine any more oxygen powered than any other jet engine in
air breathing mode?

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jlgreco
From what I can grok from the article, the engine isn't interesting because it
is an air-breathing jet engine, but rather because it is an air-breathing
rocket engine. "Oxygen powered" seems to just be confused reporting.

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Turing_Machine
Isn't "air-breathing rocket engine" a misnomer? A rocket is a jet engine that
carries all of its propellant (fuel + oxidizer) on board, right?

From looking at the info posted, this thing appears to have two modes: jet
(air-breathing) and rocket (non-air-breathing). It smells like they came up
with the name first, then figured out an acronym to fit. :-)

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oboizt
If the load is lighter because the aircraft doesn't need to carry liquid
oxygen, then does that mean it requires less fuel?

Or does oxygen-powered mean it requires no fuel?

I'm a bit confused by the brevity of the article...

