What a great time to be an aviation/space watcher!
As we know, smart people are investing big money into the “electrification” of aircraft—so much so that it would be hard to believe that it won’t happen eventually, if not a whole lot sooner.
Now, in the last few days, I have been introduced to a new idea about which many people already know a lot. An English company, Reaction Engines Ltd., has invented/developed an engine that they say can get a spaceship directly into space single-stage to orbit.
Jets—as we all know—extract oxygen from the atmosphere. Rockets, which operate mostly outside the atmosphere, must carry an oxidizer—typically liquid oxygen—on board. This creates extra weight.
Reaction Engines Ltd. has created a two-mode space engine that will operate as a jet inside the atmosphere and as a rocket engine outside the atmosphere. Therefore it will carry liquid oxygen for use only after it leaves the atmosphere. Up to the edge of our atmosphere, it will extract oxygen from the air around it.
What else do I know about these engines? Not much at all, and I wouldn’t understand what I do know if the great folks on AVSIG hadn’t cleared it up for me.
But I do know that this is one of the many breakthroughs that make aviation/space so exciting these days.
