Monday, 2 March 2009

Skylon is Go III


6 comments:

jayessell said...

I suspect the Skylon requires a boost stage, an air-breathing lift to the stratosphere as the B-52 was to the X-15.

Excellent use of music tracks 1 and 3.

I tried something similar at YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wi5Xe2V0d2o (Pause at 00:00.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oy-iA1HlXFA
(Pause at 00:00, Set volume to 0%, Cover all but the control triangle of the previous clip. Get the two triangles as close as possible.)
In rapid succession double click the first then second triangles.
With luck you get the clarinet during refueling.

Anonymous said...

That helps...
When I watched this before I thought there was something wrong with my sound settings...
Those engines kicking in can send a bit of a tingle down to your neighbore's spine...

Anonymous said...

The skylon doesn't need a booster aircraft, it is powered by a combined cycle engine that extracts oxygen from the atmosphere as it climbs and then switches over to onboard liquid oxygen as the atmosphere thins.

In my opinion, the bit that makes it quintessentially british is that Alan Bond, the man behind the engine, worked out the design using his Sinclair ZX Spectrum, and technology has slowly been catching up with the design

jayessell said...

No sir... I don't buy it.

Single Stage to Orbit strains credulity.

The engines are turbojets... then they're scramjets... then they're rockets?

If I had magic fuel tanks (tanks of holding?) where the contents were weightless...sure.

Now... if the Oxygen for the liftoff to 10 miles altitude was weightless... is that enough magic?

I question the maths (which is British for math).

((Air breathing for the first 2000mph, LOX for the last 16,000 mph?))
(((1/8th of the trip on external air?)))

PS: After a bad experience with aircraft windows, I see the designers are reluctant to use any at all.

Anonymous said...

Actually, the engines are rockets all the way from the ground to orbit. It's just that where possible, they use oxygen condensed from the atmosphere. This, combined with the fact that it uses wings for lift, rather than relying on brute force to gain altitude, mean that the conventional "rocket equation" doesn't apply to this design.

jayessell said...

Oh... these are those air-breathing rockets.




[Sarcasm sarcasm sarcasm]