Reaction Engines today revealed the start of a new testing campaign to expand the performance envelope of their high-Mach enabling technology through the Foreign Comparative Testing (FCT) Program at the Department of Defense and supported by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). The FCT Program is administered by the Directorate of Defense Research and Engineering …
In 2018, Reaction Engines has been building two test facilities which they will use to validate the performance of key parts of the SABRE™ spaceplane hypersonic engine. In the US test facility (TF2) will enable the precooler test article (HTX) to be exposed to high-temperature airflow conditions in excess of 1,000°C (~1800°F) that are expected …
PD Aerospace is a Japanese startup that is trying to build reusable spaceplanes. They want to reduce the cost of access to space by 100 times. They want to create sub-orbital space tourism. They want their first space plane flying tourists to suborbital altitude by 2023. They have raised about $5 million (520 million yen) …
The U.S. Air Force this week awarded Lockheed Martin Corp. a $928 million contract to develop a prototype hypersonic cruise missile, or the Hypersonic Conventional Strike Weapon. The project is one of two hypersonic weapon prototyping efforts the service is pursuing. US officials have said they fear the US may be lagging behind Russia and …
China has designs for a mass production hypersonic engine for low-cost planes or spacecraft capable of traveling five times faster than the speed of sound. The plant that would be built in Hefei, in China’s eastern Anhui province, could give the country an edge over the United States and Russia in the race to achieve …
Reaction Engines Limited (‘Reaction Engines’) today announced that it has raised a further £26.5 million in a strategic fundraising by securing backing from some of the most influential names in aerospace and finance which will support its development of SABRETM – a revolutionary new class of aerospace engine combining jet and rocket technologies. New strategic …
The US Air Force is already accelerating the development of a sixth-generation fighter as China ramps up its military. The Air Force is investing $10 billion in the next generation fighter platform over the next five years. This is $2.7 billion more than previously planned, for the Next Generation Air Dominance system, which will likely …
An object that looks like it could be a hypersonic vehicle prototype has appeared in satellite photos. It could also just be an unusual drone. Some commenters think it might only be a racing boat. Based on the other parked cars it looks like the object could be about 25-30 feet long and 15- feet …
Jack O’Banion, Vice President of Strategy and Customer Requirements, Advanced Development Programs for Lockheed Martin, at a presentation said that the SR72 could not have been made without digital transformation. This seems to indicate that a hypersonic vehicle has been built. The SR72 is a mach 6+ hypersonic precision bomber that can also act as …
Reaction Engines has begun construction of a new high-temperature airflow test facility where it plans to validate the performance of its precooler heat exchanger technology, an enabler of its revolutionary SABRETM engine. Located at the Front Range Airport near Watkins, Colorado, the test facility will be capable of exposing the precooler test article (HTX) to …
China is building the world’s fastest wind tunnel to simulate hypersonic flight at speeds of up to 12 kilometers per second (mach 40, 43200 kph, 26843 mph). A hypersonic vehicle flying at this speed from China could reach the west coast of the United States in less than 14 minutes. Zhao Wei, a senior scientist …
