Rocket hybrid engines are 25 times faster than sound

He is developing a SABER engine that will fly from London to Sydney in 4 hours and can reach speeds of Mach 25, equivalent to 30,780km / h.

The British Space Agency announced that it is cooperating with the Australian Space Agency in the project " The world's first space bridge" at the Conference Space Conference 2019, held on September 24. At the heart of the project is a Synergetic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine (SABER), a hybrid jet propulsion engine developed by Reaction Engines in Oxfordshire.

Supersonic aircraft design using SABER missiles.(Photo: CNN).

"When put into application, the SABRE rocket engine can shorten travel time from England to Australia (15,196 km) to 4 hours," said Graham Turnock, director of the British Space Agency.

Engineers looking for a new way to overcome the sound barrier since the Concorde aircraft ceased operations in 2003. In April 2019, Reaction Engines announced the successful testing of a pre-cooling unit at Mach simulation speed. 3.3 or 4.075 km / h, 50% faster than Concorde's journey speed to fly between New York and Paris in 3.5 hours. This speed is on par with the speed record of the world's fastest reconnaissance aircraft, the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird.

Reaction Engines successfully tested the base chiller earlier this year.(Photo: CNN).

Preliminary cooling tests took place at the TF2 facility of Reaction Engines at Colorado Aerospace Port, USA. At such high speeds, air through the engine can reach extremely high temperatures, which can cause malfunction. The base cooler helps reduce the air temperature before coming in contact with the main engine.

Recent tests have shown that the device can cool air from more than 1,000 degrees Celsius to room temperature in less than 0.05 seconds."This is an extremely important milestone marking the base refrigeration technology of Reaction Engines that has achieved thermal conversion efficiency without any other device , " said Mark Thomas, CEO of Reaction Engines.

Thomas emphasized the technology could also be used on electric hybrid aircraft. The SABER engine is designed to reach a speed above Mach 5.5 (6,800km / h) in Earth's atmosphere before turning into a rocket into space at Mach 25 (30,870km / h). This engine will send oxygen in the air to the rocket combustion chamber to operate, helping to save fuel and reduce weight.

1. Technology to turn rocket hybrid jet engines into reality