Just became aware of this thread, so I thought I would re-post something on Skylon here:
Wow! I'm surprised that I haven't heard of this before...coupled with all the research going into artificial photosynthesis, nano-slicing of water molecules to create hydrogen and oxygen, etc...this Skylon concept really could be a breakthrough ...once we have the problem of launch expenses licked, we pretty much have it made in terms of public accessibility to space. Next step after that is to move industry up there like Russia wants to with their orbital construction yard for creating space vehicles too large to launch from earth.
Interesting Observation: A typical small cruise ship weighs about 20k tonnes, which translates into 1834 launches of a Skylon vehicle...the proposal for a 10 billion investment in a Skylon program involves a 'small fleet' of the vehicles...with one craft being able to launch every two days, a cruise ship's worth of materials could be brought into orbit in 2.51 years with one vehicle, and 229.25 days (about 63% of a year) with four vehicles . As well, a single launch of one of these vehicles can include a 60 person crew module in place of the 12 tonne payload module. Anyone else want to go on a cruise around the moon in about 20 years?