What does /sci/ think about Skylon or any other space planes

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A meme to be had

>>8995424
>Skylon
I really, really want to believe.

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really love to hear some update or where they are at the moment but it seems not much is going on

>>8995504
They are starting tests for the SABRE engines

https://www.theengineer.co.uk/new-uk-facility-to-test-space-plane-engines/

It's a meme. Uneconomical compared to the Falcon 9.

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>>8995525
>Meme
>SpaceX

>>8995525
spacex cant into mach5 airplanes

>>8995424
I see absolutely no purpose for spaceplanes other than as temporary replacements for shot-down satellites in a hypothetical war between first world nations.

>>8995424
In order to judge we should first finance them enough to realize their full potential.
So we will never know.

It might be a workable idea but the project is too underfunded to succeed.

>>8995424
It has to go into hydrolox mode at half the speed of F9 separation and depends on many exotic technologies while retaining all disadvantages of hydrogen and provides little upside vs reusable rockets that are now a proven tech.Once rockets scale up to heave reusable second stage 5-10 years the Skylon will still be a pipedream of a spaceplane

>>8995865
And all the advantages of Liquid Methane instead of LH2 would also apply to this meme engine
Strange that they picked the wrong fuel.

>>8995874
90s meme SSTO spaceplane fad.
Skylon is the last surviving meme of that generation and does not even use slush hydrogen to help with the 70kg/m^3 cancer or composite construction and on top of that they add a helium precooler

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SSTOs are the future of LEO transport

Two-stage "reusable" rockets are ancient technology by comparison.

>>8995424
The point of space planes was the ability for quick takeoff, landing and reuse.

So the whole concept is pretty much redundant atm since Elon showed you can do this with normal boosters just fine.

>>8995910
>since Elon
>Elon
Did he? I thought that it was SpaceX that did that.

>>8995910
you don't have to integrate stages and fairings together with an SSTO

>>8995928
SSTO is a meme, the ability to shed dead weight will always be more economical

>>8995963
Not if that dead weight costs you millions of dollars.

>>8996911
which it doesn't because, reusable.

Reusable fairings by end of year, fellow shit-poster

>>8995424
might as well rename it memelon, it's loved by reddit because it's so futuristic but the technology to support it isn't quite there yet

>>8995899
Hammers are still hammers, anon.

>>8996962
You should probably go back there.

>>8996990
most people on here frequent both websites

>>8997003
>/sci/ - Science and Math
At any other board, this comment wold go unnoticed. But here you will have to back it up with some statistical data or get the fuck out. To leddit.

>>8996911
when both systems are fully reusable, SSTOs will be cheaper

>>8995424
If brexit happens the UK govt could finance this. Currently funds are limited due to EU rules.

>>8995441
Why does /sci/ hate engineers? Why does /sci/ hate anyone who's not a complete mathfag?

>>8997603
I've never wanted to believe anything harder than I want to believe this.

>leave the EU
>master SSTO tech
>British Empire 2: Space Boogaloo

>>8997612
not if lockmart can steal it first
oh wait they already have xD

i won an engineering competition and got a tour of a (the?) Skylon office and got some PR goodies and stuff like a model of their spaceplane and the RAPIER engine and stuff last year

>>8997654
PS: i did learn some stuff that they said was classified ahaha

Firstly apparently the biggest holdback has been that the French delegation of the ESA have been trying constantly to sabotage the project so they can get their own imitation off the ground. It took over a year for them to be able to book a vacuun chamber to test the SABRE with because the French kept stalling and filing complaints

We also saw a quick testfire and saw a video of a longer test run that was cool, but we were told we werent allowed to record it because potentially the unique cooli g technology that enables the SABREs compressor could be reverse engineered from a recording of the test

uhhhh, what else...
i think thats all the salient stuff i can remember. it was almost a year ago, and i have a v poor memory

>>8995525
>>8995865
>>8995874
>>8995884
>>8995910
>>8995963
>Triggered Musk cucks
Fuck off back to plebbit.
>>8997660
Never trust the French

>>8996922
Thats impossible itd fall at the speed off sound the air would burn it

>>8995928

You have to integrate payloads anyway, make your second stage a vehicle with a cargo bay that can close and you only need one extra integration step without needing magic materials and meme engines.

>>8995424
>Reaction Engines Limited

I don't think it will get out of the R&D department.

>>8997371
Not per kilogram of payload. The slightly increased cost of operation of a fully reusable TSTO would be more than offset by the 3x or greater increase in useful payload mass to orbit per launch. Since cheap launch systems allow us to pack payload capacity to the brim with bulk building material instead of wasting a lot of it per flight, getting the cost per unit mass down is more important.

Besides, the ability to deliver 300 tons in a single launch of a TSTO is more useful than the ability to orbit 20 tons with an SSTO, interplanetary ship modules, base components, and station parts can be much bigger and heavier that way.

>>8997612

>first flight of Skylon
>bird sucked into meme cooler
>shatters the thousands of tiny tubes and causes helium coolant to flow into the compressor intake
>engine fed with non-combustible cold gas instead of oxygen
>Flame-out causes torque that tears the ultrathin structure apart instantly

>

>>8997654
>RAPIER

Ksp user detected

>>8997880
And there is nothing that will ever recoup the billions of dollars spent on this thing even if it did work perfectly

Which it won't, I don't expect it to ever fly to orbit
Maybe they'll make some suborbital plane and close down the company

>>8997967
>I don't expect it to ever fly to orbit
Oh well, best tell go tell them to stop designing new technology, some anon on 4chans science board said that he doesn't think it'll work, and that SSTO's are better.

>>8997888
Fucking birds always ruin everything.

>>8997660
At this point, capitalism, not physics, is the greatest hindrance to our technical progression.

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>2017
>not using anti-gravity tech.

>>8995525
SpaceX is more meme.

>>8999454
anti-gravity tech is not real

>>8995424
>britshit
At best they might sell the the engines to the USAF and call it a prayer day.
Now, if India or China show interest instead...

>>8999470
it is though
it just requires so much fucking energy that it's not remotely viable for single craft

>>8997003
no they don't
go home you parasite

>>8995424
wont be viable until we get metallic hydrogen or something of similar power
the fuel costs are just too high, you can't sustain single stage craft on 95%+ fuel by mass

>>8995899
low payload fraction

>>8999477
The UK leads the world in jet engine design and is top 2 in rocket engine design
its pretty much the only thing we're still good at ahaha

>>8999488
You obviously know nothing about Skylon
the gimmick is that its a hybrid engine that is an airbreating jetengine in-atmosphere and a rocket engine in space

so it hs incredibly low fuel costs

>>8999488

>the fuel costs are just too high

fuel costs are miniscule, so this is nonsense

>>8997606
Because they don't know what engineers do and they think pure>applied (civilfag here). Also math major so...

>>8999515

literally does not matter

reusability is key, if spaceplanes can be made more reusable than rockets then they are better, if not then they arent