Perhaps the act of not having a government backed space programme has meant that our commercial sector is in a better position to exploit space as an industry? Last week the worlds first commrical spaceport opened, yes it’s located in New Mexico but it’s a British company that’s driving this forward. Richard Branson is my hero.
I’m sure many of you are aware of this programme as it has made national news but the Skylon project is perhaps turning out to be the most exciting UK space project in the last decade. The aim is to create an unpiloted and reusable space plan that is capable of delivering large loads into orbit. Nothing new there I hear you say but here’s the kicker, their design proposes to reduce the current cost per kilogramme of delivering this load from £15,000 down to £650 per/KG, about 5% of the current cost! It plans to do this through it’s Sabre engine which is an air and liquid oxygen hybrid enabling it to take off from a runway to achieve the first 50,000 feet see the video below which does a decent job of explaining this (you can probably watch it in fast-forward however and still get the picture);
