This ‘space plane’ could get travellers from Sydney to London in four hours by 2030

This ‘space plane’ could get travellers from Sydney to London in four hours by 2030
By Alexandra Coulton


Fancy having your flight time cut by 80 per cent on your next jaunt to the UK? Thanks to the UK Space Agency (UKSA), your daydreams could soon become a reality.

Last week, UKSA told the UK Space Conference it would be working alongside the Australian Space Agency to create the world’s first “Space Bridge”, according to CNN.

Reaction Engines is building a Synergetic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine (SABRE), which makes it possible to propel a plane at Match 5.4, which is more than twice the speed of the Concorde.

“When we have brought the SABRE rocket engine to fruition, that may enable us to get to Australia in perhaps as little as four hours,” Graham Turnock, head of the UK Space Agency, said according to CNN.

“This is technology that could definitely deliver that. We’re talking the 2030s for operational service, and the work is already very advanced.”

The new aircraft would be the next step in supersonic flight since Concorde stopped flying in 2003.

Reaction Engines announced in April that the first engineering hurdle had been jumped, with successful tests of a precooler at Colorado Air and Space Port in the US. The high speed of the aircraft would cause air flowing through the engine to potentially reach incredibly high temperatures and cause damage.

The tests proved that the component can cool gasses from over 1,000 degrees Celcius to manageable temperatures in less than 1/20th of a second.

The engine would also allow the aircraft to turn into a rocket that could fly through space at Match 25.

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