Rolls-Royce and Boeing invest in UK space engine | Hacker News Reader

Rolls-Royce and Boeing invest in UK space engine

bbc.co.uk

152 pointssjcsjc64 comments

>Key technologies include a compact pre-cooler heat-exchanger that can take an incoming airstream of over 1,000C and cool it to -150C in less than 1/100th of a second.

That seems incredible. I'd love to see in greater detail how the system works.

it's a super efficient fridge basically, with helium as a coolant. see https://www.reactionengines.co.uk/sabre/technology/heat-exch...

Countercurrent exchange to the extreme.

It even uses countercurrent exchange of methanol as a deicer; it sprays in pure methanol at the coldest parts of the heat exchanger, captures it somehow, and sprays the increasingly waterlogged mixture farther and farther upstream where it's warmer and doesn't need to be as concentrated to prevent freezing.

The total amount of this round is 26 Million, so Boing has maybe invested 10 Million or maybe even less.

That's 10% of the money the engine company raised in the previous years.

If a company as big as Boing really believed into the technology, wouldn't they have invested more?

My feeling is that this is more of a marketing/ stock value symbiosis than an actual commitment.

Maybe it's just a foot in the door until they are sure it's viable and the project doesn't die from lack of any funding.

Making a new engine technology takes a long time. The jet engine took decades before its reliably seen for consumer use. It's likely there are still a couple more funding rounds down the road.

Why put in a large amount when you could wait for it and still hedge yourself in the meantime.

> The jet engine took decades before its reliably seen for consumer use.

Wasn't the jet engine developed under very different circumstances? Like, with much lower computing power for CFD analysis, no CAD software and stuff?

Also, you're talking about consumer use but RE hasn't even built a full prototype and doesn't plan to test one (on the ground) before 2025.

Edit. 2020 instead of 2025, my bad. I may have read 2025 in a different article, possibly about the first test flight.

Article says 2020

There's a lot of art in the production of truly high tech engines. See for example China's difficulty creating a single crystal turbine blades for a turbo fan to use in it's J20 stealth fighter. They can of course use a lesser engine, but the capability of the fighter will be much less than its contemporaries.

Boeing is most likely buying access to the this art.

If a company as big as Boing really believed into the technology, wouldn't they have invested more?

How? I suspect (but cannot prove) that the company doesn't need any more money right now. They've got 160 employees and their research programme is (I understand, but cannot prove) fully funded.

stock value symbiosis

Which stock value is that?

If a company as big as Boing really believed into the technology, wouldn't they have invested more?

There are examples of companies that raised too much money, thought they could do everything they could imagine, and then lost focus and things went very badly.

Mark Suster wrote a decent blog post about it - https://bothsidesofthetable.com/why-raising-too-much-money-c...

They're working as fast as they can - test site coming up, full demonstrator coming next. A pile of cash isn't needed at this time. There's not a lot of parallel stuff to do or kit to build.

They give enough for research to continue and keep the project alive.

They might have have contract where they commit more investments after some R&D goals are met.

My (perhaps overly optimistic) hope is that the private space race begins to look more like the autonomous car race. Rather than seeing a straightforward battle of old vs new, we're seeing companies at different stages take entirely different approaches by leveraging their own strengths. GM might be the best comparison, as they've purchased Cruise while keeping several distinct R&D groups within GM, all focused on different levels of autonomy. They have a lot of resources and they're willing to spread their bets.

I'm hopeful that a similar thing is going on within Boeing, where they have their own R&D groups (including their ULA teams), and then are making bets on external projects as well. If they continue to invest in bold bets like this, we could see more and more aerospace companies investing in new projects with the intent of actually productizing their tech (just to keep up). That would be a lot of fun to watch.

There seems to be far less competition and much more state-heavy financing in the aerospace industry than autonomous cars. Not to mention higher capital requirements than a mobile app + customer service + sales team.

It's really not surprising it hasn't taken on the same form of multiple high growth startups + big company acquisitions all over the place.

But that said, it seems far more entrepreneurial, iterative, founders with big dreams, etc than the space industry ever has in the past. They could certainly use more of it.

Although, even the golden children like Planetary Resources failed to get a financing round and delayed their "asteroid mining" project indefinitely. So it isn't easy to aim high.

https://www.geekwire.com/2018/planetary-resources-asteroid-v...

between SABRE and pure rocket there is air-augmented rocket. The latter has significantly increased specific impulse, ~2-3x, over pure rocket while is significantly simpler and cheaper, no unobtanium required, construction compare to SABRE. Basically it is just wrapping your first stage engine block with an air-duct. 60 years ago USSR designed a very compact air-augmented ICBM and actually fielded a smaller missile - an air-augmented tactical ballistic missile.

http://www.astronautix.com/g/gnom.html:

"The concept was evidently been proved on a subscale tactical missile, the PR-90, now on display at MAI's museum at Orevo, north of Moscow. The PR-90, with a launch mass of only 1500 kg, of which 550 kg was payload, could reach an altitude of 40 km and a range of 100 km. The booster unit used 200 kg of RAM-10 ballistite with a specific impulse of 180 seconds to get the missile up to ram-air ignition speed. Then the air-augmented unit, with a specific impulse of 550 seconds, cut in and used 300 kg of propellant to boost the vehicle to its 1 km/s cut-off speed. An equivalent liquid propellant missile (such as the American Lance) weighed over twice as much. A solid propellant equivalent (such as the French Pluton) would weigh three times more. "

USSR Lunar rocket (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N1_(rocket)) was supposed to partially use that effect too - the gap between the 2nd and the wider 1st stages would serve as an air inlet ramming the incoming air down into the channel formed by the circle arranged engines of the 1st stage (the project failed for other reasons though).

Really excited about this. Maybe good old Europe can have a SpaceX moment in the future.

If we don't up the game, European Space agency will be utterly incapable of competing with SpaceX. Perhaps this is what people are starting to grasp which is why Sabre is getting more funding now.

Really excited about this.

As a kid in the 80’s I had a HOTOL poster on my wall. Hope I get to see one fly one day!

I the same! Was it a pull-out from a magazine, or something, do you recall? I had it alongside a fold-out cross-section of 'the Chunnel' on my bedroom wall :.)

Exciting times. I'm particulary happy that they appear to be not just focusing on the space angle, rather global travel too, which seems a much more likely use, at least in the short term.

I vaguely remember BAe giving out loads of stuff like that at my school. All the kids had stickers of Skyflash and other missiles on lunchboxes!

Ah yes, the almost, but not quite, dead Skylon. It would be a remarkable engine if they could build it, but to date they have run into engineering problems for which they really don't have any solutions for (like a material that can be 1000C at one end and -150C at the other and not lose all of its desirable properties.

Conceptually as soon as they figure out how to make materials that can exist and retain their properties in the extraordinary conditions this engine would create, its only a matter of building a few of them to make a completely reusable space plane.

Similarly if we figure out what causes gravity and then build a mechanism to nullify it, we'll easily be able to move into space.

But it is kind of a big step.

Interestingly (to me), they seem to be doing at least some of their design in Solidworks:

  https://www.reactionengines.co.uk/manufacturing-solutions-division/
  "Our drawing data is produced to British standard BS 8888 using
  industry leading SolidWorks 3D CAD package, which integrates directly
  with our CNC machines and inspection department."

Was kind of expecting they'd be using something more specialist or exotic. But, I guess as long as it gets the job done, why not? ;)

Are there any better packages than Solidworks?

From what I can tell, both Siemens NX and Catia/3DExperience seem to be widely used for "high end" stuff. With Solidworks regarded as a lesser/mundane package due to its limited functionality in comparison.

That could just be an incorrect impression on my part though. :)

Usability-wise on the other hand, Solidworks seems far ahead of Catia/3DExperience and pretty much on-par with NX. Again, just my impressions (to this point).

The same page on the Reaction Engines website mentions they use RADAN, which seems to be a sheet metal specific thing.

Not seeing mentions anywhere obvious on their website of FEM (etc) analysis packages, so guessing it'll either be something that's a Solidworks add-on/plugin, or perhaps something custom written.

I used to work with Catia for a while and I had the impression that their strength was more the ability to sell to enterprises and not the actual product. But I never did a direct comparison to other products so that impression may be wrong.

Well... both Catia and NX (among others) have the ability to natively create and use organic shapes. With Solidworks, it's not (or at least wasn't) a native capability.

There is a company (nPower Software) making plugins for Solidworks giving organic shape capabilities:

http://www.npowersoftware.com

Addons vs native integration... I'd doubt the add-on approach is as in-depth and practical to use. I could be wrong though. :)

Catia also has things like "Natural Sketch", used for ideation and general concept development:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXYCaabNHCo

NX may have similar, but I'm not sure.

Reputation wise... Dassault has a bad reputation for not listening to customers / forcing customers to adopt stuff they don't want/need. Siemens has a much better reputation. Autodesk's is mixed. That's all just my outsiders perspective. ;)

Just came across this. SpaceX seems to use Siemens NX pretty extensively:

https://www.plm.automation.siemens.com/en/about_us/success/c...

Awesome, but will there be a market now fully re-useable rockets are becoming a thing?

Also the bits supporting the engine (ie the fucking spaceship) is not mentioned anywhere, if they are going to fly this thing in 2020 (!!) making an airframe for this which has to fly 5-10 times as fast as concorde and stores hydrogen/oxygen is not going to be a walk in the park in terms of engineering.

Does anyone know if they will be carying out test launches in UK, or will they need to ship the rockets elsewhere to test them?

This is an engine, not a rocket.

First line of the article: “REL, based at Culham in Oxfordshire, is working on a propulsion system that is part jet engine, part rocket engine.”

I assume that robin_reala means that this is a motor, not a vehicle. So you don't need to do launches to a useful orbit as part of development. Or production - you can sell the motor to someone who wants to build a spaceplane.

That said, my understanding is that Reaction Engines plans to build the spaceplane too, although if someone else with more expertise came along and wanted to do that, i imagine they would be open to it.

That wasn't my interpretation but I'm open to yours, thanks!

UK is at a bad latitude for launching into orbit. Maybe Gibraltar?

Not much better. I believe a bunch (all?) of ESA launches go from French Guiana, so my guess is that might be the easiest place to go for orbital launches for a British company.

It used to be easier before Brexit. Nowadays the might bad well launch from Kazakhstan

ESA isn't an EU agency, it's independent.

You could say the same about Euratom, but we're leaving that, because membership requires accepting the authority of the European Court of Justice in some areas. I wouldn't be surprised if there were minor entanglements that made continuing to play a major part in ESA difficult.

Euratom is in a very special situation there in that the treaties related to Euratom makes it subject to ECJ jurisdiction, which is one of the "red lines" of the UK government.

ESA is not in the same situation and e.g. Norway is a member of ESA and Canada sits on the ESA council under a Cooperation Agreement.

Yep, completely impossible to have any diplomatic relations with any nations at all post-brexit. No possible way they'd like to get the tourism and investment that comes from space launches.

Lets not be silly, as much as brexit was foolish, the UK will still work in the ESA closely and will still be on very good terms with the vast majority of nations on the planet.

Acension Island, maybe St Helena, if the goal is to keep the launch pad in "British territory"

St Helena's existing airport is problematic due to wind shear and tailwinds - the existing route flying in there takes fewer passengers than the planes they use can normally take to compensate for the difficult conditions, and the geography of the island makes a larger runway problematic.

Ascension would be more likely, given that it has a runway intended as an emergency runway for the Shuttle, and it has a bunch of communications facilities (GCHQ, NASA, ESA, BBC Atlantic relay) as well as US and UK military facilities.

Not so bad for polar orbit. They are planning orbital launches from northern Norway and Sweden too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaceport_Sweden for more information.

> UK is at a bad latitude for launching into orbit.

Why? What would happen if one tried?

The closer you are to the equator, the less lateral boosting you need to do because Earths spin helps you out. Less boost = less fuel.

That's why the US launches from Florida and the Soviets used to launch from Kazakhstan

It depends what type of orbit you want to enter. If you launch from a high latitude, and thrust directly East, then you end up with an orbit that has a declination that brings you back to that same latitude. You can increase the orbital declination by thrusting in a different direction than pure East, but it isn't possible to decrease the declination without effectively turning a corner over the equator. Turning a corner in orbit takes a huge amount of delta-v, making the rocket much bigger and more expensive. Therefore, the UK is not a sensible place to launch from if you want an equatorial orbit, but it's fine for a polar orbit.

The launch trajectory would take the rocket over France. I don't know if the UK government would consider that a plus or a minus. </humor>

Historically we used to launch from Woomera, before we shut everything down as part of the deal giving us access to US nuclear missile tech, something our politicians were happy to do as they thought that missiles was all rockets were really for anyway.

Which I think ranks as one of the stupidest decisions the UK has ever made.

No, never. The runway's too short, the turning circle into the bay too right, the proximity and politics with their spanish neighbour too tricky.

Yeah but if you built this engine into a flying boat ...

Now you're thinking with portholes!

The UK is at a bad latitude for launching into equatorial orbits, but a good latitude for launching into polar orbits.

Polar orbits, and their relatives, such as sun-synchronous orbits, are useful for various kinds of missions. For example, earth observation missions, because they overfly every point on Earth, and missions where you need a continuous view of the sun, for solar power or observation.

The (still paper) Skylon proposal is a huge beastie vehicle that will need a very long, strong special runway.

One nice thing about the vehicle is how it can make a huge range of orbits by just steering the plane before its fast ascent phase. That means it could be in the UK, as some of the challenges with orbital launches are avoided.

Should have kept twinwoods then :-) also there is that last dich emergency abort strip for the shuttle up in Scotland.

Prestwick. Concorde used to land there sometimes. I know someone who was in the process of landing a microlight at Prestwick when concorde had to fly in because of bad weather at Heathrow.

A microlight? That could probably land going crossways across that runway!

The UK government has plans to develop a spaceport and has been considering a list of locations including in Scotland, Wales and Cornwall.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/industry-backs-government...

SABRE has been a pipe dream for at least 6 years, Reaction engines are a con just like bloodhoundSSC.

UK engineering projects like this are trash money sinks.

I’m not sure how Bloodhound is a con? It’s a record attempt with little practical application apart from attempting to enthuse new engineers, but it’s never been marketed as more than that.

More than that, it is run by Richard Noble, who has already taken one project from plan to world land-speed record.

Totally agree.

Richard Noble originally set a new land speed record with Thrust2 in 1983.

Thrust2 held that record till 1997 when ThrustSSC, another car he developed, broke it again.

ThrustSSC still holds the world landspeed record.

If anyone is going to break that record my money is on them doing it in Richard Noble’s new car, BloodhoundSSC.

6 years is not a meaningful amount of time for a "pipe dream".

I think OP is thinking of HOTOL, which could justifiably be described as a pipe dream. RE is the result of taking the most practically implementable parts of HOTOL, ie the engines, and develop them properly. It's still ground-breaking stuff and I'm sure it will take a while yet, but the potential is definite, unlike HOTOL.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com