How It Works-Amazing Vehicles

Travelling faster than the speed of sound,

Concorde made it from London to New York in

around three hours. However, that’s sloth-like

compared to the space plane aiming to travel

from Europe to Australia in half that time.

That craft is SpaceLiner, being developed

the German Aerospace Center. This 83.5-metre

(274-foot) long craft could carr y up to 100

passengers up to 80 kilometres (50 miles)

into the air, gliding in sub-orbit at over 20

times the speed of sound. It would be

delivered into the higher layers of our

atmosphere by LOX/LH 2 (liquid oxygen and

liquid hydrogen) rockets before disengaging

at nearly four kilometres (2.5 miles) per

second. This would allow it to reach Australia

from Europe in as little as 90 minutes from

takeoff to landing.

A lso on the horizon are the Virgin Galactic

and Sk ylon space planes, which are looking to

go directly up from – rather than around – the

Earth. Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo will be

launched from a jet-powered plane. It will take

passengers into space for a few minutes before

returning to Earth. Sk ylon, on the other hand, is

an unmanned, reusable space plane designed

to carr y 15 tonnes of cargo into outer space and

return. This would make it much easier and

cheaper for private companies to send cargo into

space for use on satellites and space stations.

They used to say the sk y’s the limit, but the

next generation of passenger and cargo planes

have shown that it’s only the beginning.

These out-of-this-world

vehicles are boldly going

where no commuter has

gone before

SPACE

PLANES

What is powering this new, reusable rocket Skylon?

Inside the SABRE engine

The air is cooled

by the helium

until it is almost

liquid form itself.

Combustion

chambers

The pressurised air is pumped

into the combustion

chambers. If it hadn’t been

precooled it could melt all

known materials.

This mode uses

on-board liquid

oxygen as a

propellant to make

the rest of the

journey into orbit.

Compression

The air is compressed

until it reaches 140

atmospheres.

Burning

The oxygen is burned in

the usual way to create

thrust, ejected from the

nozzles at the rear.

Saving weight

This system saves an

incredible 250 tons of

ox ygen per journey and

removes the need for

jettisoned parts.

£360m

Estimated cost

of SABRE

development

programme

The Virgin Galactic team standing in

front of SpaceShipTwo

SKYLON

VIRGIN GALACTIC

Design: Reaction Engines Ltd

Design: Scaled

Composites

Richard Branson announced to the world in

2004 that he would be sending tourists into

space, making Virgin Galactic the fi rst

commercial space plane. However, despite

original plans to launch a fl ight in 2007, Virgin

Galactic is yet to take its fi rst batch of space

tourists into the Solar System.

The ship will be carried to a height of 15,240

metres (50,000 feet) by the support craft

WhiteKnightTwo. The crafts will detach and the

passenger ship will fi re its rockets to take its

passengers out of the Earth’s atmosphere and

into space.

After four to fi ve minutes it will re-enter the

Earth’s atmosphere, coming back to land on the

runway at its New Mexico base.

The technical and logistical hitches that have

set the programme back are being resolved,

with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)

clearance a major hurdle overcome in May 2014.

Hopefully, the journey to outside our

atmosphere is just around the corner.

AIR