Reaction Engines hoped one day its tech would power a reusable space plane [Reaction Engines]
“It was going great until it fell apart.” Richard Varvill recalls the emotional shock that hits home when a high-tech venture goes off the rails.
The former chief technology officer speaks ruefully about his long career trying to bring a revolutionary aerospace engine to fruition at UK firm Reaction Engines.
The origins of Reaction Engines go back to the Hotol project in the 1980s. This was a futuristic space plane that caught the public imagination with the prospect of a British aircraft flying beyond the atmosphere.
The secret sauce of Hotol was heat exchanger technology, an attempt to cool the super-heated 1,000C air that enters an engine at hypersonic speeds.
Without cooling this…