Against this backdrop, executives are scrambling to raise cash and grow the company’s income. But in order to do so, they will have to confront the question of what Reaction’s technology is now for, says aerospace analyst Nick Cunningham, of Agency Partners.
“It’s super clever technology, incredibly ambitious – brilliant, even,” says Cunningham. “But what’s it for?”
Reaction was founded in 1989 by engineers Alan Bond, Richard Varvill and John Scott-Scott, the latter two who had worked on a Rolls-Royce-led project in the 1980s to develop a single-stage-to-orbit aircraft known as Hotol (Horizontal Take-Off and Landing).
That same year, Hotol had been dropped by the British government following persistent concerns about its purpose and astronomical development costs.
From these ashes, Reaction developed Sabre, or the Synergetic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine, which would power a conceptual space plane known as “Skylon”.
Sabre’s truly revolutionary feature is its heat management system, which can chill incoming air from 1,800F (1,000C) to zero using tiny tubes of supercooled helium.
This allows the air-breathing engine to take off like a normal jet engine before switching to rockets and accelerating to even faster speeds – while not overheating.
Originally, alongside suggestions of passenger services, the commercial argument for Sabre was that it would give customers a reusable, low-cost way to put heavy payloads such as satellites into orbit, providing an alternative to costly single-use rocket boosters.
But that vision has since been eclipsed by events.