years later by the ITAR issues that
have stymied the US Commercial
Space Sector.
Britain had closed the door on
any active role in developing space
vehicles and with it, independent
access to space. Despite these
setbacks, Bond retreated to reform
his concepts with a new team.
The Three Rocketeers
Saving the best lessons learned
from the HOTOL Project, in 1989
Bond formed Reaction Engines
Limited with John Scott-Scott and
Richard Varvill also from Rolls Royce.
As a small research company on
a shoestring budget, computer
simulations and models were the
only way they could test their
theories for a very long time.
During the next twenty years
the trio further refined the HOTOL
concept and airframe, shifting the
centre of mass to create a more
stable flight design. All this was done
bypassing the UK Government’s
Official Secrets Act and Bond’s
own patents with more nuanced
offshoot aerospace discoveriesand also without a penny of
government funding.
Bond also pioneered the new
use of compact, lightweight heat
exchangers within the rocket engine
cycles which greatly increased their
efficiency by allowing the engines
to use atmospheric air to burn in
the combustion chambers like
conventional jet aircraft, rather than
using heavy liquid oxygen stored in
on-board tanks, during the portion
of launch within the atmosphere.
Given the high Mach speeds
that the final vehicle would need
to reach gravitational escape
velocities, the patented heat
exchanger technology enabled
heat extraction from the engines
at super-hot temperatures that
would otherwise melt the metal
alloys in the engine. This enabled
the high (Mach) speed air coming
into the engines to be cooled from
1000 degrees Celsius to minus 150
degrees Celsius in a microsecond.
It also successfully bypassed the
ice build-up problem that derailed
HOTOL (via a new patented frost
control system) in the process.
400 megawatts of heat could be
transferred from the air before
intake into the engines.
This approach also enabled
SABRE-powered vehi