Virgin Orbit launched a rocket from a plane orlandoecho.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from orlandoecho.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Space launches that take off from a runway are cheaper, but are they the future of spaceflight?
20 January 2021 • 6:00am
About 35,000 feet above the Pacific Ocean, 100 miles out from Los Angeles, the rocket s break-up was easily visible on weather radar: a bright fan of debris, spreading out like scattered salt.
It was not an auspicious debut for Virgin Orbit s LauncherOne rocket system, first imagined in 2007 and a centrepiece of Richard Branson s space flight dreams. But it was far better than the tragedies felt by its sister company, Virgin Galactic, whose space programme suffered three deaths in an accidental explosion at a contractor s facility in 2007, and one more when its SpaceshipTwo vehicle disintegrated above the Mojave Desert in 2014.
SABRE-powered launch system beyond 2030
The Synergetic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine, SABRE, is being developed by Reaction Engines in the UK and has previously been supported by ESA. This engine could be used to power a horizontally launched vehicle using either a one- or two-stage-to-orbit concept. In both cases, the SABRE-powered first stage would be fully reusable.
During flight, SABRE is designed to reach hypersonic speed through Earth’s atmosphere before switching to rocket mode on the climb to orbit.
Flight trajectory
In air-breathing mode, the engine utilises ambient air to burn on-board fuel allowing it to reach speeds up to Mach 5.
SABRE-powered launch vehicle (Credit: Reaction Engines)
ABINGDON, UK (Reaction Engines PR) Reaction Engines is delighted to announce the conclusion of a concept study, conducted alongside the European Space Agency (ESA) Directorate of Space Transportation, into SABRE-Powered Launch for the anticipated 2030+ launch market.
The ‘New Space Economy’ is a term used to describe the rapid growth of the space industry through an increasing number of commercial entrants offering new space-based products and services. It offers a vision of the future where these products and services become more integrated into global infrastructure and provide greater benefits to daily life-on-Earth as well as enhancing our ability to explore and learn from the space environment. However, this vision depends on access-to-space becoming more affordable, more frequent and more reliable than classical launch systems.
John Scott-Scott | Model Engineer model-engineer.co.uk - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from model-engineer.co.uk Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.