Skylon space sabre engine.

Sabre is a unique "hybrid engine" that can 'breathe' air when in the atmosphere its like a conventional jet which then switch's to rocket power upward into space. In air-breathing mode, air is cooled and compressed before being fed into the rocket engine along with hydrogen fuel which in part captured as vapour in atmosphere. When in rocket mode, the hydrogen is burned with liquid oxygen. This technology of compressing vapour to be burnt and injected in turbo mode. This is a unique concept design of wise labs since 1995. Wise labs gives you an insight of the new future of a very efficient propulsion system. This design could be coupled with a feather for re entry leave space a very safe stepping stone away. It also leaves lower orbit flying a new future concept for passenger travel, rather having windows camera's screens could be used. In flight is quick, low cost, for long haul aviation it should have always been so.

Alan Bond, managing director of Oxford-based Reaction Engines Ltd (REL) which is leading the multi-million pound hybrid engine project, said: 'Traditional throwaway rockets costing more than £70million per launch are a drag on the growth of this market. It Be the economics of getting into space is to use a truly reusable space plane capable of taking off from an airport and climbing directly into space, delivering its satellite payload and automatically returning safely to Earth.
Years of planning and research by REL on the Skylon vehicle and its unique Sabre air-breathing engine mean that we have an inside track on realising this goal. Skylon could reduce the cost of getting into space by a factor of ten.'
THE SABRE CYCLE
In air-breathing mode the SABRE engine operates similarly to a Brayton cycle whereby heat is extracted from the inlet air flow via a pre cooler, producing work to drive the compressor and rejecting heat to the hydrogen stream. A closed helium power loop is interposed between the hot air-stream and cold hydrogen stream such that better thermal capacity matching is achieved in the heat exchangers.
This also avoids hydrogen embroilment in the pre cooler tubes and provides a barrier between the hydrogen and air, amongst other factors. Sabre collects water vapor
turning it into hydrogen mixing compressed air to increase acceleration to meet mac five. Jet engines have been around since the late fifties but with this technology it brings this sabre engine into the new millennium.

Reaction Engines, the company behind the project, believes its reusable launcher could fly within 10 years. Alan Bond, the Oxfordshire firms managing director, said: "Traditional throw-away rockets costing more than a $100m per launch are a drag on the growth of this market.It is part jet engine, part rocket engine. It burns hydrogen and oxygen to provide thrust - but in the lower atmosphere this oxygen is taken from the atmosphere. At high speeds, this requires Sabre be able to cope with 1,000-degree gasses entering its intake. These need to be cooled prior to being compressed and burnt with the hydrogen. Reaction Engines' breakthrough is a remarkable heat exchanger pre-cooler. Arrays of extremely fine piping plunge the hot intake gases to minus 130C in just 1/100th of a second.