It might be a workable idea but the project is too underfunded to succeed.
What does Veeky Forums think about Skylon or any other space planes in development?
It has to go into hydrolox mode at half the speed of F9 separation and depends on many exotic technologies while retaining all disadvantages of hydrogen and provides little upside vs reusable rockets that are now a proven tech.Once rockets scale up to heave reusable second stage 5-10 years the Skylon will still be a pipedream of a spaceplane
And all the advantages of Liquid Methane instead of LH2 would also apply to this meme engine
Strange that they picked the wrong fuel.
90s meme SSTO spaceplane fad.
Skylon is the last surviving meme of that generation and does not even use slush hydrogen to help with the 70kg/m^3 cancer or composite construction and on top of that they add a helium precooler
SSTOs are the future of LEO transport
Two-stage "reusable" rockets are ancient technology by comparison.
The point of space planes was the ability for quick takeoff, landing and reuse.
So the whole concept is pretty much redundant atm since Elon showed you can do this with normal boosters just fine.
>since Elon
>Elon
Did he? I thought that it was SpaceX that did that.
you don't have to integrate stages and fairings together with an SSTO
SSTO is a meme, the ability to shed dead weight will always be more economical
Not if that dead weight costs you millions of dollars.