Reaction Engines Limited’s New Engine Could Fly Anywhere on Earth in 4 Hours

Short of calling Superman or Iron Man to come and help you, air travel is slow. Sure, it’s faster than swimming or a boat, but you try spending 20-30 hours in the air – ugh. Well, British aerospace firm, Reaction Engines Limited, could solve that with a new engine system it is currently developing.

The new engine system could one day be capable of taking 300 passengers anywhere in the world, in under 4 hours. The engine doubles as a space engine too, as it could fly a plane into outer orbit. The engine itself is called SABRE, which relies on a device called a precooler, a technology that “cools down the air entering the engineer system by more than 1,000 degrees Celsius in .01 seconds. That corresponds to an unheard-of cooling rate of 400 megawatts, and will allow the plane to “breathe” oxygen” reports Science Alert.

What this allows is the SABRE engine to run at a much higher power than currently used in planes. Reaction Engines has said that its SABRE engine will be installed into two upcoming plane models – the LAPCAT A2, which is a commercial plane that will take passengers from Brussels to Sydney in just “two to four hours” while the SKYLON will be an unpiloted and reusable spaceplane that will provide cheaper access to the dark beyond.

LAPCAT A2 will be a beast of a jet, something that will be capable of speeds of Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound. The firm is currently testing the SABRE engine system, with the first test flights to start in 2019.

Source: Science Alert.