Skylon earth/space aircraft

Nov 20, 2019
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I think perhaps the most exciting development is the British Skylon project which is a jet in atmosphere and a rocket ship when it reaches the edge of space. The problem with this in the past is the very high temperatures generated by Mach five travel in the atmosphere but they seem to have cracked it with an intake cooler which can cool down the airflow from 3000 degrees to minus several hundred degrees in the space of under a second. As far as I can see the craft uses normal jet fuel in atmosphere and will be able to travel at more than 4000 mph . Whilst flying it scoops up oxygen and mixes this with its other carried fuel ' hydrogen' and it uses those for rocket propulsion with which is will reach Mach 25. It is designed to take off and land normally from an airfield. There seems to be laborious progress but up to now they have proved that they can instantly quench the temperatures of a static testbed fighter jet engine, to minus zero temperatures when it is aimed straight into the air intake of their skylon engine
 
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