
Rolls-Royce and Boeing invest in UK space engine - sjcsjc
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-43732035
======
ditn
>Key technologies include a compact pre-cooler heat-exchanger that can take an
incoming airstream of over 1,000C and cool it to -150C in less than 1/100th of
a second.

That seems incredible. I'd love to see in greater detail how the system works.

~~~
CarVac
Countercurrent exchange to the extreme.

It even uses countercurrent exchange of methanol as a deicer; it sprays in
pure methanol at the coldest parts of the heat exchanger, captures it somehow,
and sprays the increasingly waterlogged mixture farther and farther upstream
where it's warmer and doesn't need to be as concentrated to prevent freezing.

------
konschubert
The total amount of this round is 26 Million, so Boing has maybe invested 10
Million or maybe even less.

That's 10% of the money the engine company raised in the previous years.

If a company as big as Boing really believed into the technology, wouldn't
they have invested more?

My feeling is that this is more of a marketing/ stock value symbiosis than an
actual commitment.

~~~
akhatri_aus
Making a new engine technology takes a long time. The jet engine took decades
before its reliably seen for consumer use. It's likely there are still a
couple more funding rounds down the road.

Why put in a large amount when you could wait for it and still hedge yourself
in the meantime.

~~~
grondilu
> The jet engine took decades before its reliably seen for consumer use.

Wasn't the jet engine developed under very different circumstances? Like, with
much lower computing power for CFD analysis, no CAD software and stuff?

Also, you're talking about consumer use but RE hasn't even built a full
prototype and doesn't plan to test one (on the ground) before 2025.

Edit. 2020 instead of 2025, my bad. I may have read 2025 in a different
article, possibly about the first test flight.

~~~
le-mark
There's a lot of art in the production of truly high tech engines. See for
example China's difficulty creating a single crystal turbine blades for a
turbo fan to use in it's J20 stealth fighter. They can of course use a lesser
engine, but the capability of the fighter will be much less than its
contemporaries.

Boeing is most likely buying access to the this art.

------
jamestimmins
My (perhaps overly optimistic) hope is that the private space race begins to
look more like the autonomous car race. Rather than seeing a straightforward
battle of old vs new, we're seeing companies at different stages take entirely
different approaches by leveraging their own strengths. GM might be the best
comparison, as they've purchased Cruise while keeping several distinct R&D
groups within GM, all focused on different levels of autonomy. They have a lot
of resources and they're willing to spread their bets.

I'm hopeful that a similar thing is going on within Boeing, where they have
their own R&D groups (including their ULA teams), and then are making bets on
external projects as well. If they continue to invest in bold bets like this,
we could see more and more aerospace companies investing in new projects with
the intent of actually productizing their tech (just to keep up). That would
be a lot of fun to watch.

~~~
dmix
There seems to be far less competition and much more state-heavy financing in
the aerospace industry than autonomous cars. Not to mention higher capital
requirements than a mobile app + customer service + sales team.

It's really not surprising it hasn't taken on the same form of multiple high
growth startups + big company acquisitions all over the place.

But that said, it seems far more entrepreneurial, iterative, founders with big
dreams, etc than the space industry ever has in the past. They could certainly
use more of it.

Although, even the golden children like Planetary Resources failed to get a
financing round and delayed their "asteroid mining" project indefinitely. So
it isn't easy to aim high.

[https://www.geekwire.com/2018/planetary-resources-
asteroid-v...](https://www.geekwire.com/2018/planetary-resources-asteroid-
venture-misses-fundraising-target-forcing-cutbacks/)

------
trhway
between SABRE and pure rocket there is air-augmented rocket. The latter has
significantly increased specific impulse, ~2-3x, over pure rocket while is
significantly simpler and cheaper, no unobtanium required, construction
compare to SABRE. Basically it is just wrapping your first stage engine block
with an air-duct. 60 years ago USSR designed a very compact air-augmented ICBM
and actually fielded a smaller missile - an air-augmented tactical ballistic
missile.

[http://www.astronautix.com/g/gnom.html](http://www.astronautix.com/g/gnom.html):

"The concept was evidently been proved on a subscale tactical missile, the
PR-90, now on display at MAI's museum at Orevo, north of Moscow. The PR-90,
with a launch mass of only 1500 kg, of which 550 kg was payload, could reach
an altitude of 40 km and a range of 100 km. The booster unit used 200 kg of
RAM-10 ballistite with a specific impulse of 180 seconds to get the missile up
to ram-air ignition speed. Then the air-augmented unit, with a specific
impulse of 550 seconds, cut in and used 300 kg of propellant to boost the
vehicle to its 1 km/s cut-off speed. An equivalent liquid propellant missile
(such as the American Lance) weighed over twice as much. A solid propellant
equivalent (such as the French Pluton) would weigh three times more. "

USSR Lunar rocket
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N1_(rocket)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N1_\(rocket\)))
was supposed to partially use that effect too - the gap between the 2nd and
the wider 1st stages would serve as an air inlet ramming the incoming air down
into the channel formed by the circle arranged engines of the 1st stage (the
project failed for other reasons though).

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jernfrost
Really excited about this. Maybe good old Europe can have a SpaceX moment in
the future.

If we don't up the game, European Space agency will be utterly incapable of
competing with SpaceX. Perhaps this is what people are starting to grasp which
is why Sabre is getting more funding now.

~~~
gaius
_Really excited about this._

As a kid in the 80’s I had a HOTOL poster on my wall. Hope I get to see one
fly one day!

~~~
detritus
I the same! Was it a pull-out from a magazine, or something, do you recall? I
had it alongside a fold-out cross-section of 'the Chunnel' on my bedroom wall
:.)

Exciting times. I'm particulary happy that they appear to be not just focusing
on the space angle, rather global travel too, which seems a much more likely
use, at least in the short term.

~~~
gaius
I vaguely remember BAe giving out loads of stuff like that at my school. All
the kids had stickers of Skyflash and other missiles on lunchboxes!

------
ChuckMcM
Ah yes, the almost, but not quite, dead Skylon. It would be a remarkable
engine if they could build it, but to date they have run into engineering
problems for which they really don't have any solutions for (like a material
that can be 1000C at one end and -150C at the other and not lose all of its
desirable properties.

Conceptually as soon as they figure out how to make materials that can exist
and retain their properties in the extraordinary conditions this engine would
create, its only a matter of building a few of them to make a completely
reusable space plane.

Similarly if we figure out what causes gravity and then build a mechanism to
nullify it, we'll easily be able to move into space.

But it is kind of a big step.

------
justinclift
Interestingly (to me), they seem to be doing at least some of their design in
Solidworks:

    
    
      https://www.reactionengines.co.uk/manufacturing-solutions-division/
      "Our drawing data is produced to British standard BS 8888 using
      industry leading SolidWorks 3D CAD package, which integrates directly
      with our CNC machines and inspection department."
    

Was kind of expecting they'd be using something more specialist or exotic.
But, I guess as long as it gets the job done, why not? ;)

~~~
maxxxxx
Are there any better packages than Solidworks?

~~~
justinclift
From what I can tell, both Siemens NX and Catia/3DExperience seem to be widely
used for "high end" stuff. With Solidworks regarded as a lesser/mundane
package due to its limited functionality in comparison.

That could just be an incorrect impression on my part though. :)

Usability-wise on the other hand, Solidworks seems far ahead of
Catia/3DExperience and pretty much on-par with NX. Again, just my impressions
(to this point).

\--

The same page on the Reaction Engines website mentions they use RADAN, which
seems to be a sheet metal specific thing.

Not seeing mentions anywhere obvious on their website of FEM (etc) analysis
packages, so guessing it'll either be something that's a Solidworks add-
on/plugin, or perhaps something custom written.

~~~
maxxxxx
I used to work with Catia for a while and I had the impression that their
strength was more the ability to sell to enterprises and not the actual
product. But I never did a direct comparison to other products so that
impression may be wrong.

~~~
justinclift
Well... both Catia and NX (among others) have the ability to natively create
and use organic shapes. With Solidworks, it's not (or at least wasn't) a
native capability.

There is a company (nPower Software) making plugins for Solidworks giving
organic shape capabilities:

[http://www.npowersoftware.com](http://www.npowersoftware.com)

Addons vs native integration... I'd doubt the add-on approach is as in-depth
and practical to use. I could be wrong though. :)

Catia also has things like "Natural Sketch", used for ideation and general
concept development:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXYCaabNHCo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXYCaabNHCo)

NX may have similar, but I'm not sure.

Reputation wise... Dassault has a bad reputation for not listening to
customers / forcing customers to adopt stuff they don't want/need. Siemens has
a much better reputation. Autodesk's is mixed. That's all just my outsiders
perspective. ;)

~~~
justinclift
Just came across this. SpaceX seems to use Siemens NX pretty extensively:

[https://www.plm.automation.siemens.com/en/about_us/success/c...](https://www.plm.automation.siemens.com/en/about_us/success/case_study.cfm?Component=30328&ComponentTemplate=1481)

------
boznz
Awesome, but will there be a market now fully re-useable rockets are becoming
a thing?

Also the bits supporting the engine (ie the fucking spaceship) is not
mentioned anywhere, if they are going to fly this thing in 2020 (!!) making an
airframe for this which has to fly 5-10 times as fast as concorde and stores
hydrogen/oxygen is not going to be a walk in the park in terms of engineering.

------
zkirill
Does anyone know if they will be carying out test launches in UK, or will they
need to ship the rockets elsewhere to test them?

~~~
IIAOPSW
UK is at a bad latitude for launching into orbit. Maybe Gibraltar?

~~~
d33
> UK is at a bad latitude for launching into orbit.

Why? What would happen if one tried?

~~~
IIAOPSW
The closer you are to the equator, the less lateral boosting you need to do
because Earths spin helps you out. Less boost = less fuel.

That's why the US launches from Florida and the Soviets used to launch from
Kazakhstan

------
kingkongjaffa
SABRE has been a pipe dream for at least 6 years, Reaction engines are a con
just like bloodhoundSSC.

UK engineering projects like this are trash money sinks.

~~~
robin_reala
I’m not sure how Bloodhound is a con? It’s a record attempt with little
practical application apart from attempting to enthuse new engineers, but it’s
never been marketed as more than that.

~~~
kitd
More than that, it is run by Richard Noble, who has already taken one project
from plan to world land-speed record.

~~~
Lio
Totally agree.

Richard Noble originally set a new land speed record with Thrust2 in 1983.

Thrust2 held that record till 1997 when ThrustSSC, another car he developed,
broke it again.

ThrustSSC still holds the world landspeed record.

If anyone is going to break that record my money is on them doing it in
Richard Noble’s new car, BloodhoundSSC.

