Skylon: A Story of Great Britain

Postscript: The picture at the end includes Churchill and US President Roosevelt and I chose it for its symbolic quality between two countries, nothing more than that.

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Great Britain, under loose examination, is the cradle of modern civilization.
In 1660, the Royal Society was founded, the oldest national scientific institution, in the world.
By 1700 there were scientific institutions throughout Britain.
So much of the technology embedded in today’s society, trace their lineage to inventions realized in Great Britain, such as televisions and telephones.

But it’s engines that have been among Britain’s hallmark contributions.
Starting with the first practical steam engine, invented in 1712 by English inventor Thomas Newcomen.
It was this great invention that led Scottish Engineer James Watt and English Manufacturer Matthew Boulton to improved it and develop the Watt Steam Engine, completed in 1775.
The technology from the Watt Engine allowed factories to be built anywhere as they were limited to areas where they could harness wind and water power, factories that ultimately led to a new era of urbanization.
The Watt Steam Engine led to the technology used in locomotives and steamships which allowed for the rapid transportation of goods and people.
The Watt Engine and technology that came out of it drove the industrial revolution.
The revolution that led us to the modern life that we enjoy today, began, in Great Britain.
From Watt, we move on to Royal Air Force Engineer Officer Sir Frank Whittle, who single-handedly invented the turbojet engine.
Whittle came up with the idea to use a turbine and compressors to extract power from the exhaust and ultimately provide compressed air for the burner.
He was knighted for his accomplishments
It’s wonderfully befitting that today; Great Britain is developing the revolutionary Synergistic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine or SABRE for short.
SABRE will power the world’s first fully reusable, single-stage-to-orbit space plane called Skylon.
Skylon is being developed by Reaction Engines Limited (REL for short) which is headquartered out of Oxfordshire England

Both Skylon and REL were born from the ashes from Britain’s HOTOL program which began in 1982.
HOTOL stands for Horizontal Take-off and Landing, and the program aimed to design and build a single-stage-to-orbit reusable winged launch vehicle and was jointly developed by Rolls-Royce and British Aerospace.
Ultimately, the British government decided to withdraw funding for HOTOL and the program shut down 1988.
Alan Bond, the brainchild behind HOTOL and two principal engineers from Rolls Royce John Scott and Richard Varvill, who worked on the project, founded REL in 1989, determined to develop the world’s first single-stage-to-orbit reusable space plane.
By 1993, REL revealed the spaceplane proposal and its name, Skylon, after this futuristic looking structure built in 1951 for the Festival of Britain.
Skylon will be a spacecraft, unlike anything we’ve seen before.
It measures 83 meters long, with a 26-meter wingspan and an over 6-meter diameter.
And it weighs 325,000 kg fully loaded.
The frame will be constructed out of silicon carbide reinforced titanium with its skin made out of ceramic composite skin which will protect from re-entry.

Sources:
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ancient-art-civilizations/ancient-near-east1/the-ancient-near-east-an-introduction/a/the-cradle-of-civilization
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Boulton
http://shortsleeveandtieclub.com/examining-the-industrial-revolution-which-process-had-the-biggest-impact-on-modern-industry/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watt_steam_engine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_SZtGJJ7Yo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newcomen_atmospheric_engine
http://shortsleeveandtieclub.com/examining-the-industrial-revolution-which-process-had-the-biggest-impact-on-modern-industry/
https://www.reactionengines.co.uk/vehicles/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_Engines_Limited
https://web.archive.org/web/20160811121210/https://www.theengineer.co.uk/issues/april-2015-online/arfl-confirms-feasibility-of-reaction-engines-sabre-engine-concept/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SABRE_(rocket_engine)
http://aerospaceengineeringblog.com/turbine-cooling/
http://www.dpaonthenet.net/article/135967/LabVIEW-CompactDAQ-get-Skylon-space-plane-project-off-the-ground.aspx
http://projectbritain.com/nationality.htm

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