Skylon spaceplane gathers momentum

In the quiet suburbs of Oxfordshire, a small team of engineers may be on the way to achieving what NASA scientists couldn’t - the development of a spaceplane that could reach far into the solar system.

Abingdon-based Reaction Engines has designed the Skylon plane to take payloads - or even passengers - into space from a conventional airport and return them back down to the same runway. The design can carry a 12-tonne payload and could, according to the company, fundamentally change the way we view space travel.

But a spaceplane that can break away from the Earth’s gravitational clutches and return in one piece remains, for many, a near-impossible dream. The European Space Agency (ESA), the Russian Federal Space Agency (RKA) and NASA have poured billions of pounds into single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) projects and so far none have been successful.

The problem is that the technology to build an SSTO vehicle is extremely challenging, given the huge fuel and power requirements. Rocket-powered vehicles need to achieve a high enough mass ratio to enter orbit and currently the best way to do this is to use the thrust of throwaway rockets, such as the Shuttle’s solid-fuel boosters. However, at around $150m (£96m) per flight in a Shuttle compared with $100,000 in a jumbo jet, the cost of sending even modest numbers of people to space is huge.