have confirmed that the full engine
can now be demonstrated. The
SABRE engine has the potential to
revolutionise our lives in the 21st
century in the way the jet engine
did in the 20th Century. This is the
proudest moment of my life.”
In July 2013 the UK Coalition
government
announced
its
intention to invest £60 million ($90
million) into the full development of
the SABRE engine, creating 21,000
jobs in the UK aerospace and
space sectors. This will maximise the
UK’s access into the high growth
£13.8 billion ($20.7 billion) launcher
market over the next 30 years with all
the associated economic benefits
rippling out from this investment. The
initial £60 million will prime the pump
for the remainder of the investment
($360 million) to £360 million ($540
million), and will now include the
construction of a full-scale working
version o f SABRE.
The potential game-changing
characteristics of Bond’s SABRE
engine
have
finally
been
recognised. REL estimates it would
cost around £8 billion ($12 billion)
to develop Skylon itself. That is
comparable to the development
costs of the Airbus A380 or the
Ariane 5 manufactured by Astrium.
Initial Skylon launches would cost
about £23 million ($35 million) but
that could fall by as much as £7
million ($10 million) as more Skylons
are brought onto market.
It seems that confidence in the
capacity for British engineering has
grown again. Since the cancellation
An artist’s rendering of the Skylon spacecraft in flight.
capital needed to fully develop the
SABRE engine and will be divested
over 2013-16 to REL.
The
SABRE
development
programme itself is expected to last
from 3-5 years. A prototype SABRE
engine is expected in 2017 with
flight tests around 2020.
In August 2013 ESA funded a
£0.9 million ($1.35 million) study,
by a consortium of companies to
establish a business case for Skylon’s
operation in the satellite launcher
market from 2020 onwards. In
November 2013 Bond himself
announced that the upcoming
development phase of Skylon will
be expanded from £240 million
54
54
Image: Reaction Engines
of HOTOL in the late 1980’s, the
same technology has been refined
and re-accepted by the current UK
government.
Simultaneously, while the demand
for satellite launches has increased,
the high cost and unreliability of
conventional rocket launches has
not improved by the same pace.
The world is ready for something
new and timing is everything.
Inheriting the crown
As for Alan Bond, this decades
long odyssey to develop an
enabling
technology
and
a
viable spacecraft for economic
and reliable access to space has
become a very personal journey.
He has spent many years working
in the wilderness due to lack of
governmental foresight and support
but, like all great engineering
visionaries has stayed dedicated
to his idea and doing whatever it
takes to realise that idea.
With a wider overview away from
Skylon, Bond believes in a greater
journey for humanity with longer
strides beyond the Moon with more
advanced propulsion. Skylon is a
way to take those first steps.
“What is absolutely clear to me
is that the human race and its
petty squabbles are confined to
one piece of debris near a fairly
ordinary star.
“Without easy access to the
abundant resources of space, the
human race can never sustain
Western standards of living and a
growing global population. Getting
into space is not just what longhaired scientists do as a bit of fun.
It’s something that’s absolutely
crucial to the continuing progress
of the human race.”
Bond’s
history
with
the
development of SABRE and Skylon
echoes that of Sir Frank Whittle,
inventor of the turbojet engine.
Whittle himself demonstrated an
early aptitude for engineering and
also without the UK Air Ministry’s
support in his time, formed a
company with limited funds to
develop the first prototype jet
engine. The Jet Age began shortly
after and made the world the
much more interconnected place
we live in today.
Considered in a BBC poll as one
of the 100 Greatest Britons, Whittle’s
legacy remains intact today.
Bond is on the way to echoing
Whittle’s success and creating
his own legacy with the advent
of a new age in spaceflight.
His is a story of overcoming
adversity, skepticism, winning over
governmental intransigence and
defeating the Official Secrets Act,
to realise his ambitions. It appears
today that he is on the threshold of
his personal dream, to reach Earth
orbit in a single giant leap.
www.RocketSTEM.org