Reaction Engines LTD: What will they deliver?

Skyon: Will it fly? Or is it a dream?

Amazing private space companies

Looking at various private space companies, only a handful of the new-ish ones have delivered anything impressive. Some are already doing great things: SpaceX, Orbital Sciences, Scaled Composites.

Intriguing companies

Others are intriguing, but haven’t done much…yet. Think: Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, Bigelow Aerospace.

Add to the intriguing list: Reaction Engines LTD.

Proposed orbital base station

This British company is designing a drone spaceplane, called Skylon. The company has a design and some funding. (The British government and the European Space Agency are offering support.)

Reaction Engines suggests that Skylon could be less than a decade away. The spaceplane would be able to carry 12 tons of payload into orbit. The craft would be re-usable and could return to the same landing strip that it takes off from. Like a plane.

The company also suggest that Skylon could be adapted to economically carry passengers into space.

A full plate of projects

Other project by Reaction Engines include:

• An orbital base station: a large orbiting module that could be used as a re-fueling station for vehicles in space. Or as a compact crewed space station.
• Lapcat. A successor to the Concord, Lapcat would be a supersonic passenger craft capable of taking passengers from Brussels to Sidney in 2 – 4 hours.

Good luck Reaction Engines! We like the way you dream—BIG! We’ll be watching and hoping that at least some of your dreams come true.