Reaction Engines - July Update

The BNSC’s (British National Space Centre) Annual Report entitled ‘UK in Space 2009’ has been released during the past month. The document includes a page on REL’s SKYLON and its capability to be ‘a contender as a future European launch vehicle’.

Read the page here: BNSC Annual Report Page 51.

This month has been an exciting month for the Space sector as the opening of the new ESA centre at the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire took place. REL attended the events in London and Harwell to celebrate the breakthrough. Alan Bond was interviewed by BBC Online in London.

Skylon

To read the article and also hear the interview, go to www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/jonathanamos and select ‘The UK spaceplane aiming to go to a new level’.

General News

During the past month, REL has featured in New Scientist and The Spectator:

New Scientist Article

The Spectator Article

On 17th July, Airborne Engineering’s Richard Osbourne also appeared on The One Show on the BBC to commemorate the first Moon landing 40 years ago. He even launched an amateur rocket live on air!

Airborne Engineering also recently moved to new premises at the former Rocket Propulsion Establishment at Westcott. Airborne Engineering work closely with both the University of Bristol and REL on the STERN Project.

Company News

REL has now completed studies into a large rocket stage called Fluyt. The orbital transfer vehicle is named after a class of large cargo ships which contributed to Dutch success in building a large trading empire in the 16th Century. Fluyt is a reusable stage which would be based at a spaceport in LEO (Low Earth Orbit) and would carry large payloads of between 10 and 15 tonnes to GEO (Geostationary Earth Orbit), lunar orbit or even to planets. It has the capability to be staged together in order to further increase its payload.

The study was conducted to prove that the new SKYLON D1 configuration could support operations leading to lunar bases, manned Mars missions and very large systems in GEO.

Further information on Fluyt will soon be available on the REL website.