Reply To: Investment risk

[annodomini2]

jamesr wrote:

Air with a turbine is only practical up to about Mach 2.5 at which point the air temperature entering the engine is so high that it literally melts the engine.

You can use a pre-cooler such as the SABRE design from Reaction Engines in the UK http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/

They are aiming to be able to have one engine that can seamlessly accelerate from 0 through mach 5, thetransition to using a small onboard oxygen tank to morph into a rocket for the last bit to orbit, then all the way back.

(incidentally they are based on the same site at Culham where the JET and MAST tokamaks are)

I know, but this would intend to use purely air, no cryogenic hydrogen available to cool the inlet, generating that kind of cooling would require huge amounts of energy. If you’re carrying hydrogen as reaction mass why bother with an f2f freactor.

Dumping the heat may be a problem.