Spaceplan designs
Mach 5 also happens to be the limit of today's materials used in aircraft production. It is also more than twice as fast as the cruising speed of Concorde and over 50 percent faster than the SR-71 Blackbird aircraft – the world's fastest jet-engine-powered aircraft. That is more than 6,200 km per hour (3,800 mph). But the engineers wanted to reach the magic number of Mach 5. When used in the Sabre engine, it's hoped it will prevent its internal components melting in the high temperatures and ensure the engine runs efficiently.Įarly in 2019, the precooler had worked at 420C (788F) in conditions that replicated flight speeds of Mach 3.3, or more than three times the speed of sound. The aim of this precooler is to remove the extreme heat very quickly. The superheated air is blasted through a light-weight, ring-like device made up of thousands of thin-walled tubes through which coolant is passed. Today they are backed by big names in the industry, including Boeing, British Aerospace and Rolls-Royce, as well as the UK and European space agencies.īeyond the security fence, a modified engine from a Cold War-era fighter jet is used to replicate the very high temperature airflow generated at hypersonic speeds.
The European Space Agency's similar autonomous Space Rider flying laboratory is expected to blast off in 2023 and India's own mini spaceplane later this decade.īut we still rely on rockets to blast astronauts into space, bringing them back to Earth in capsules suspended by parachute. In September 2020, China appears to have launched its own Boeing-like reusable space plane and may have as many as seven crewed and non-crewed spaceplane projects in development. The dream of the graceful spaceplane is still live, even if the ambition for their actual role may have shrunk. Only the small, unmanned Boeing remains in service.
In Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), a large spaceplane maneuvers effortlessly in time with Strauss's Blue Danube waltz to dock with a huge spinning space station.ĭespite many plans, prototypes, and experimental flights since, only two spaceplanes have ever entered service, the Space Shuttle and the top-secret Boeing X-37B. Less than 70 years later, we had a thoroughly realistic example of what that might look like. The dream of flying all the way into space began when the first aircraft flew at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903.