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Space rocket engines - We are halfway there!
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Hazen Koraka
HK Enterprises
#1 - 2012-11-28 13:18:51 UTC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20510112

Congratulations to the cambridge team at reaction engines!

Now, if I can only retrofit this to my Imperial Navy Slicer!

Exploration is Random. Random is Random... or is it?! http://docs.python.org/2/library/random.html
Suzu Fujibayashi
Happy Dudes
#2 - 2012-11-29 13:45:08 UTC
It also seems interesting for intercontinental (passenger) flight.
Kirjava
Lothian Enterprises
#3 - 2012-11-29 17:08:33 UTC
Methinks that BAE could muse over a takeover bid given their determination ton enter the civil aviation market. The possibility of incorporating transonic long range fighters into the RAF would be of immense benefit, hydrogen powered too...

Could get interesting in the next decade or two, no need for aircraft carriers with these things if you are looking to weaponize them.

Looking forward to it all though, cheap access to space, methinks the oil/mining companies will start looking at the asteroid belt before too long... Wonder what the legalities of that would be.

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Evil Incarn8
Evil's League of Evil
#4 - 2012-11-29 17:17:18 UTC  |  Edited by: Evil Incarn8
Kirjava wrote:
, methinks the oil/mining companies will start looking at the asteroid belt before too long... Wonder what the legalities of that would be.


Oil on asteroids? I'm being a massive pedant but think about that one for a bit :)

Now my real point, I have been following this project since discovering it for my Aerospace program it is really exciting a true modern day British project. Best of all they are refusing government control of it because this precursor project HOTOL was shelved by government intervention in the 80s.

Hopefully this will kickstart the regular cheap access to space we were all promised back in the 1960s :)

They have some great ideas about airliners, missions to Mars, orbital hotels etc using this technology on their website

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZ_a21fPkYM BBC documentary about the Skylon project
Bane Necran
Appono Astos
#5 - 2012-11-29 17:25:07 UTC
Quote:
The vehicle would burn a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen but in the low atmosphere the oxygen would be taken from the air, in the same way that a jet engine breathes air.

Only once it had achieved very high speeds would Skylon switch to full rocket mode, burning onboard fuel supplies.

Taking its oxygen from the air in the initial flight phase would mean Skylon could fly lighter from the outset with a higher thrust-to-weight ratio, enabling it to make a single leap to orbit, rather than using and dumping propellant stages on the ascent - as is the case with current expendable rockets.


But it still needs a small supply of hydrogen while in our atmosphere? Or did we really just invent a jet engine that requires no on board fuel supply to operate in our atmosphere? Even if it still does need hydrogen, that could be extracted from water vapor.

If it's the latter, that's arguably more amazing than just using this technology to get to space. But i wouldn't be surprised at all if we never see it applied to anything but a space program, for fear of cutting into oil industry profits.

"In the void is virtue, and no evil. Wisdom has existence, principle has existence, the Way has existence, spirit is nothingness." ~Miyamoto Musashi
Kirjava
Lothian Enterprises
#6 - 2012-11-29 19:10:53 UTC
Evil Incarn8 wrote:
Kirjava wrote:
, methinks the oil/mining companies will start looking at the asteroid belt before too long... Wonder what the legalities of that would be.


Oil on asteroids? I'm being a massive pedant but think about that one for a bit :)


Break down what an Oil company does, it opeates a large scale extraction and logistics process in remote corners of the world, many times on platforms independent of dry land such as oil rigs.

If we start mining asteroids, I see the oil companies as having covered a substantial part of groundwork in regards to nessacary procedures. Its not like we go there, pull ore out the ground and take it back. There's likely to be legal work involved, the logistics chain developed and the shear money that they can bring to the table, if they can duplicate their existing management chains from a declining oil industry into an orbital mining one...

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Akita T
Caldari Navy Volunteer Task Force
#7 - 2012-11-29 19:19:49 UTC  |  Edited by: Akita T
Bane Necran wrote:
But it still needs a small supply of hydrogen while in our atmosphere?

2* H2 (hydrogen gas) + O2 (oxygen gas) = 2* H2O (water)
Or simplified, two parts hydrogen for 1 part oxygen (by volume at a certain temperature/pressure combination).
Hydrogen atomic mass ~= 1, while oxygen atomic mass ~= 16.
So, for every 1 kilo of hydrogen, you need 8 kilos of oxygen. Which you no longer need for the entire flight duration. So, now, instead of 9 kilos of fuel, you just need 1 kilo, for a certain length of time.
Well, actually, you need even less than that, since you weigh less to begin with, and most rockets are mostly fuel rather than useful payload.
Now, the closer to the ground you are, the more fuel you need to burn to gain altitude, and the more fuel weighs, the more you need to burn. Eliminating the need to carry a lot of fuel weight early even more drastically reduces total launch mass than anything else.

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Bane Necran
Appono Astos
#8 - 2012-11-29 19:22:12 UTC  |  Edited by: Bane Necran
Kirjava wrote:
Break down what an Oil company does, it opeates a large scale extraction and logistics process in remote corners of the world, many times on platforms independent of dry land such as oil rigs.

If we start mining asteroids, I see the oil companies as having covered a substantial part of groundwork in regards to nessacary procedures.


The crude oil paradigm is a dinosaur that should have already passed long ago.

The inventor of the diesel engine intended for any oil to be used in it, and planned on it empowering farmers by making their crops more valuable. Then he mysteriously fell overboard in the middle of the ocean. But you can still use vegetable oil in a diesel engine, and don't listen to anyone who tells you it needs modifications or will harm your engine. It was built with that fuel source in mind, and not crude oil.

There's a group of people who would love to see us still using these old fashioned combustion engines well into the year 3000 so they can continue making vast sums of money, but i think it would be very sad if that actually happened. We just need a little crude oil for manufacturing plastics and other things, and that's it.

Akita T wrote:
Bane Necran wrote:
But it still needs a small supply of hydrogen while in our atmosphere?

2* H2 (hydrogen gas) + O2 (oxygen gas) = 2* H2O (water)
Or simplified, one part hydrogen for 2 parts oxygen.
Hydrogen atomic mass ~= 1, while oxygen atomic mass ~= 16.
So, for every 1 kilo of hydrogen, you need 8 kilos of oxygen. Which you no longer need for the entire flight duration. So, now, instead of 9 kilos of fuel, you just need 1 kilo, for a certain length of time.
Well, actually, you need even less than that, since you weigh less to begin with, and most rockets are mostly fuel rather than useful payload.
Now, the closer to the ground you are, the more fuel you need to burn to gain altitude, and the more fuel weighs, the more you need to burn. Eliminating the need to carry a lot of fuel weight early even more drastically reduces total launch mass than anything else.


Yeah, i get all that. Which is why i said they could possibly get hydrogen from water vapor.

They keep saying no on board fuel supply will be used at all before high altitudes, so i'm trying to figure out how that works, or if it's just written poorly.

"In the void is virtue, and no evil. Wisdom has existence, principle has existence, the Way has existence, spirit is nothingness." ~Miyamoto Musashi
Kirjava
Lothian Enterprises
#9 - 2012-11-29 19:39:58 UTC
Bane Necran wrote:
Kirjava wrote:
Break down what an Oil company does, it opeates a large scale extraction and logistics process in remote corners of the world, many times on platforms independent of dry land such as oil rigs.

If we start mining asteroids, I see the oil companies as having covered a substantial part of groundwork in regards to nessacary procedures.


The crude oil paradigm is a dinosaur that should have already passed long ago.

I agree, but its a scenario where a company moves from one field into another, such as Toyota, a textiles company when it started. It had the understanding of mechanical engineering to make the transference when the new market developed. Crude Oil will be used for some time, we have the legacy hardware right now to extract, refine and the machines that need it. 2 things could change this, large scale governmental policy or market forces making the competition more feasible. We are a time off of the latter, and I'll leave it up to you to make your judgement son the probability of the former being imposed outside the EU.

Bane Necran wrote:

Yeah, i get all that. Which is why i said they could possibly get hydrogen from water vapor.

They keep saying no on board fuel supply will be used at all before high altitudes, so i'm trying to figure out how that works, or if it's just written poorly.


Might be written poorly, to extract the Hydrogen from water vapour requires a supply of electricity for electrolysis. The only power plant currently in the craft is the Hydrogen powered SABER engines. We lose energy when breaking down molecules in this manner, so the hydrogen more a stored version of Terrestrial electicity than a power source for the craft.

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Akita T
Caldari Navy Volunteer Task Force
#10 - 2012-11-29 19:45:37 UTC  |  Edited by: Akita T
Bane Necran wrote:
Yeah, i get all that. Which is why i said they could possibly get hydrogen from water vapor.
They keep saying no on board fuel supply will be used at all before high altitudes, so i'm trying to figure out how that works, or if it's just written poorly.

That doesn't really make much sense, since you need to consume more energy (electricity) to break apart water than you can get back in another form (thrust) by burning the resultant oxygen and hydrogen (due to various inefficiencies), and it would make far more sense to just use the electricity to drive a propeller instead, but even that doesn't make any sense since electricity storage is very mass-intensive (that's why we burn stuff for rockets, it's more mass-efficient).

It says right there "burn a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen but in the low atmosphere the oxygen would be taken from the air", which is pretty clear enough as far as I'm concerned.
The next phrase is a bit misleading though, I'll give you that, they should have said "oxygen" instead of "fuel" for maximum accuracy. Then again, the oxygen is the bulkier part of the needed fuel, so that literary shortcut can be almost excused.
To clarify their statements, you always carry all the hydrogen you need, and you always burn onboard hydrogen, at all altitudes.

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baltec1
Bat Country
Pandemic Horde
#11 - 2012-11-29 19:56:43 UTC
Trasonic jets, cloaking tanks, stealth drones, fusion power plants...

This is why they call Britain greatCool
Unsuccessful At Everything
The Troll Bridge
#12 - 2012-11-29 20:15:24 UTC
Evil Incarn8 wrote:
Kirjava wrote:
, methinks the oil/mining companies will start looking at the asteroid belt before too long... Wonder what the legalities of that would be.


Oil on asteroids? I'm being a massive pedant but think about that one for a bit :)



Wait...are we confirming the past existence of space dinosaurs that lived on asteroids?

Since the cessation of their usefulness is imminent, may I appropriate your belongings?
Bane Necran
Appono Astos
#13 - 2012-11-29 20:46:10 UTC
Unsuccessful At Everything wrote:
Evil Incarn8 wrote:
Kirjava wrote:
, methinks the oil/mining companies will start looking at the asteroid belt before too long... Wonder what the legalities of that would be.


Oil on asteroids? I'm being a massive pedant but think about that one for a bit :)



Wait...are we confirming the past existence of space dinosaurs that lived on asteroids?


All that stuff is ridiculous garbage with no scientific backing promoted by those who want you to think there is a finite amount of oil in the world so they can charge a lot and frighten people with talk of 'peak oil'.

What crude oil is, is complex hydrocarbons, which we already know are abundant throughout space. We've even found planets with oceans of the stuff.

"In the void is virtue, and no evil. Wisdom has existence, principle has existence, the Way has existence, spirit is nothingness." ~Miyamoto Musashi
Kirjava
Lothian Enterprises
#14 - 2012-11-29 20:55:56 UTC
Bane Necran wrote:

What crude oil is, is complex hydrocarbons, which we already know are abundant throughout space. We've even found planets with oceans of the stuff.

Aye, more biomatter on Titan than the inner planets combined.

Also, yes brothers, we must unite and arm a great space fleet to defeat the Velociraptornaught onslaught!

[center]Haruhiists - Overloading Out of Pod discussions since 2007. /人◕‿‿◕人\ Unban Saede![/center]
Hazen Koraka
HK Enterprises
#15 - 2012-11-30 08:08:19 UTC
Bane Necran wrote:
Quote:
The vehicle would burn a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen but in the low atmosphere the oxygen would be taken from the air, in the same way that a jet engine breathes air.

Only once it had achieved very high speeds would Skylon switch to full rocket mode, burning onboard fuel supplies.

Taking its oxygen from the air in the initial flight phase would mean Skylon could fly lighter from the outset with a higher thrust-to-weight ratio, enabling it to make a single leap to orbit, rather than using and dumping propellant stages on the ascent - as is the case with current expendable rockets.


But it still needs a small supply of hydrogen while in our atmosphere? Or did we really just invent a jet engine that requires no on board fuel supply to operate in our atmosphere? Even if it still does need hydrogen, that could be extracted from water vapor.

If it's the latter, that's arguably more amazing than just using this technology to get to space. But i wouldn't be surprised at all if we never see it applied to anything but a space program, for fear of cutting into oil industry profits.


Yes, the hydrogen (and helium) are carried fuels on board. This isn't a conventional fuel-scooped ramjet. The helium is used as a cryogenic fluid to cool the air before it's fed into the conventional jet engine in the middle for sub-supersonic speeds. Approaching higher mach numbers, the nose cone bypasses the incoming air partially around the jet engine, and it enters into a scram-jet type configration. The clever thing they did was have a mixed cycle, which meant they don't need to carry liquid O2 was well as the H2/helium.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SABRE_%28rocket_engine%29

Exploration is Random. Random is Random... or is it?! http://docs.python.org/2/library/random.html
baltec1
Bat Country
Pandemic Horde
#16 - 2012-11-30 10:48:33 UTC
Bane Necran wrote:
Unsuccessful At Everything wrote:
Evil Incarn8 wrote:
Kirjava wrote:
, methinks the oil/mining companies will start looking at the asteroid belt before too long... Wonder what the legalities of that would be.


Oil on asteroids? I'm being a massive pedant but think about that one for a bit :)



Wait...are we confirming the past existence of space dinosaurs that lived on asteroids?


All that stuff is ridiculous garbage with no scientific backing promoted by those who want you to think there is a finite amount of oil in the world so they can charge a lot and frighten people with talk of 'peak oil'.

What crude oil is, is complex hydrocarbons, which we already know are abundant throughout space. We've even found planets with oceans of the stuff.

Wat...
Something Random
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#17 - 2012-12-01 20:16:56 UTC
baltec1 wrote:
Bane Necran wrote:
Unsuccessful At Everything wrote:
Evil Incarn8 wrote:
Kirjava wrote:
, methinks the oil/mining companies will start looking at the asteroid belt before too long... Wonder what the legalities of that would be.


Oil on asteroids? I'm being a massive pedant but think about that one for a bit :)



Wait...are we confirming the past existence of space dinosaurs that lived on asteroids?


All that stuff is ridiculous garbage with no scientific backing promoted by those who want you to think there is a finite amount of oil in the world so they can charge a lot and frighten people with talk of 'peak oil'.

What crude oil is, is complex hydrocarbons, which we already know are abundant throughout space. We've even found planets with oceans of the stuff.

Wat...


indeed - FOSSIL fuel.....

Anyway....

I remember many moons ago - actually around 1984 or 85 a car, this car ran on water.... yeh water....
It disappeared.

Mysteriously.

Do you think this will ? Well actually no, because all of a sudden its #trending.

"caught on fire a little bit, just a little."

"Delinquents, check, weirdos, check, hippies, check, pillheads, check, freaks, check, potheads, check .....gangs all here!"

I love Science, it gives me a Hadron.
Bane Necran
Appono Astos
#18 - 2012-12-01 21:09:27 UTC  |  Edited by: Bane Necran
baltec1 wrote:
Wat...


Something Random wrote:
indeed - FOSSIL fuel.....


I sincerely hope you guys are trolling. There's never been a shred of evidence to support the theory of crude oil resulting from dead dinosaurs. It's just what we were told in elementary school. But if you do insist on that origin, then you have to accept that life is indeed abundant throughout the universe, because complex hydrocarbons are.

Kirjava wrote:
Aye, more biomatter on Titan than the inner planets combined.

Also, yes brothers, we must unite and arm a great space fleet to defeat the Velociraptornaught onslaught!


I think the abundance is evidence that natural processes produce it, probably deep within planets. So no worries about running out here. But that wouldn't be very good for profits, now would it? P

"In the void is virtue, and no evil. Wisdom has existence, principle has existence, the Way has existence, spirit is nothingness." ~Miyamoto Musashi
Cnaeus Lentulus
Viziam
Amarr Empire
#19 - 2012-12-01 21:32:52 UTC
Something Random
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#20 - 2012-12-01 22:58:10 UTC  |  Edited by: Something Random
This is ramjet to rocket stage technology..... the americans are working hard on this right now arnt they ? Seem to remember reading of a few test flights that disappeared - presumed boomed - recently. Dont think anyones quite sure other than the lack of a - object - after the test. mach 7 booms tend to spread out apparently.

Either way - need more astronauts. Might be a new way to get you up there.

Oh - and nowhere does it mention a fuel-less stage, just a new way to manage the air going to the fuel stage, and i dont think hydrogen came into it.

[edit] Dinosaurs ? wasnt it forests ?

"caught on fire a little bit, just a little."

"Delinquents, check, weirdos, check, hippies, check, pillheads, check, freaks, check, potheads, check .....gangs all here!"

I love Science, it gives me a Hadron.
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