Hypersonic Space Plane

Flight times from London to Sydney could be cut down by 80 per cent by the year 2030, should a hypersonic rocket engine being developed in the UK gets off the ground. The UK Space Agency has announced at the UK Space Conference 2019 that it would be working more closely with the Australian Space Agency in an agreement dubbed a ”world-first Space Bridge.” The Synergetic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine (SABRE) engine from Oxfordshire-based Reaction Engines, looks to be the jewel in the crown of this new enterprise. ”When we have brought the SABRE rocket engine to fruition, that may enable us to get to Australia in perhaps as little as four hours,” said Graham Turnock, head of the UK Space Agency. ”This is technology that could definitely deliver that. We are talking about the 2030s for operational service and the work is already in a very advanced stage.” Fans of supersonic flight have been yearning for a new way to break the sound barrier ever since Concorde stopped flying in 2003.

In April 2019, Reaction Engines announced successful tests of a precooler, simulating conditions at Mach 3.3. That is more than 50 per cent faster than the cruising speed of Concorde which used to make the journey between New York and Paris in around 3.5 hours and matches the speed record of the fastest jet aircraft ever made, the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird. The precooler tests took place at a testing facility at the Colorado Air and Space Port in the US.