(Sen) - A revolutionary engine that can turn an aircraft into an orbiting spaceplane has won fresh backing from the British Government.
The UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, singled out the SABRE project that will power Skylon into space in his 2013 spending review delivered to Parliament.
The hybrid engine - its name stands for Synergistic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine - is currently being developed by Reaction Engines, based at Abingdon, near Oxford.
Last year, the engineers developing it, led by Alan Bond, mastered a key factor in its design that was described as the biggest breakthrough in flight technology since the invention of the jet engine.
Praising UK inventiveness and historic successes, Mr Osborne said: “Britain was once the place where the future was invented. From the railway to the jet engine to the World Wide Web.* We can be that country again . . . a huge amount of innovation and discovery still goes on.”
The Chancellor’s report pledged to commit to funding high-priority projects, including SABRE, though further details of the investments were not given.
Until now, spacecraft heading for orbit have had to be launched by conventional rockets because of the amount of fuel needed to be get them into space.
