Skylon

I was looking around the Space Fellowship and not finding any discussion of the Skylon project and I was wondering why?

Monroe

viewtopic.php?f=21&t=8944

http://spacefellowship.com/news/art7890 ... wship.html

Not many organisations I havent had a long chat to hahaha

This is a great fringe project I wonder why the folks don't comment on it much here? It's far more viable that a lot of these other topics I see here! lol

I'm not so sure it's truly viable but I think the cooling tech can be applied to modern jets to get more umph out of them. If I ever get the chance I'd like to experiment with an AMT Nike engine and a cooler like this for a first stage booster.

Monroe

From what I understand, the cooler etc is all very secret with them

A link to a vid with a bit more on Skylon and the possibility of a Scottish space port not much new more a reprise of some of the ideas released last year.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25679000

At some point today we might get the V.E.E.G Skylon, basically works by putting fairy dust into a rainbow mixed with pixie tears and coloured bubbles, NASA might delete this post if it works! You heard it here first! The V.E.E.G Skylon, very technical!

Rob

I believe I have figured out how they do the cooler. Using nano technology coatings to prevent the forming of ice on the cooler itself. I've seen some advancements from several groups here in the US using similar technology to prevent ice from forming on surfaces.
Most of the people I have talked to seem to think it's something super special but I tend to think not. There are already coatings available that can be tried and on a small scale (Like for a NMT Nike turbine) the cost to try it should not be that high.
Just being able to make the incoming air dense would improve the efficiency of these small turbines substantially. You could dump lox from the cooler and use it as well in the turbine. Giving it a higher altitude?

Monroe

I hope I didn't VEEG out! lol

I keep checking their website regularly for news, I have been a fan for years now.

Personal pipe dream is to get some money together by the time they finish development and buy a whole fleet of them for a spaceport in Australia.

I think we should be following these developments closely! The design has merits some not so obvious. Some relevant to other possible developments as well.

Monroe

Skylon is a low-probably concept for a number of reasons.

1. The initial estimate for building a Skylon is [b]$15 billion[b].
2. There are no plans to build smaller, cheaper prototypes or demonstrator vehicles.
3. Nothing like it has ever been built, so it is bleeding-edge engineering.
4. If they fail to get that $15B, then there will be nothing.
5. If they do get that $15B but there are any sort of cost overruns, there will be nothing.
6. If the technology proves more complicated than originally thought, there will be nothing.

It's basically looking at a schematic of the Taj Mahal, being thrown an arbitrary amount of money, and then being told to build it sight unseen. The likehood of getting that much money, staying on budget, and then building something that works to sepc is extraordinarily low. And they wouldn't even get that far except overy maybe a decade - a decade just to know they've failed. There's not much confidence in Skylon.

Not sure if this vid has been posted here before I only remember seeing it recently its from January its Alan Bond talking about the engine for Skylon and a possible Mars mission and that they now have £60 Million from the government to carry on research.

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

Which... is kind of how the Taj Mahal was built.



Which is a shame. I can think of many other less ambitious projects and activites that are funded at the same level and succeed that would be worthless than if Skylon were pursued and failed.

The open source community builds extrodinary things for frew.

They knew how to build grand temples - the only difference was the scale. Skylon, however, is an entirely different animal from anything else in existence - akin to going straight from mud-brick ziggurats to the Taj Mahal. It's a piece of truly baroque engineering with multiple components and subsystems requiring many stages of bleeding-edge development just to reach basic functionality. It's like the Apollo program, but without Apollo-level political commitment. Which is another way of saying it won't happen. Or if it does happen, at best the result will be something that flies rarely, expensively, and at very high-maintenance.

That's not very optimistic Brian.