A REVOLUTIONARY space craft which can take off from a runway could be less than 10 years away, it was claimed today.
Engineers at the University of Bristol are part of the European team working on the Skylon space plane.
The reusable craft will be able to deliver a payload of more than 12 tonnes into orbit, returning to land on the same runway it took off from.
Its success depends on the Sabre air-breathing rocket engine partly being developed in Bristol.
Sabre is a unique hybrid engine that can “breathe” air when in the atmosphere like a conventional jet and switch to rocket power in space.
In air-breathing mode, air is cooled and compressed before being fed into the rocket engine along with hydrogen fuel.
When in rocket mode, the hydrogen is burned with liquid oxygen.
Alan Bond, managing director of Oxford-based Reaction Engines Ltd (REL) which is leading the multi-million pound hybrid engine project, said: “Traditional throwaway rockets costing more than a 100million euros (£70million) per launch are a drag on the growth of this market.
“The Holy Grail to transform the economics of getting into space is to use a truly reusable space plane capable of taking off from an airport and climbing directly into space, delivering its satellite payload and automatically returning safely to Earth.
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A Skylon launch could be less than a decade away, said the engineers.
The programme is being supported by a new million euro (£90,000) grant from the European Space Agency.
Reaction Engines Limited, a firm in Oxford, United Kingdom, has recently been awarded €1 million by the European Space Agency. This money is to be used for development work for the firm's SABRE engines.

The SABRE engines are for a reusable spaceplane that it is intended to be able to travel into space and return completely intact. 

Reaction Engines Limited says the Skylon plane could be in service within 10 years. When in service it would be intended to be regularly carrying up to 60 passengers into orbit much more cheaply than today.
Diagram of the Reaction Engines Skylon
The cash will be used to test a precooled jet engine that would cool the very hot air entering the engines and should permit the aircraft to fly more economically, like a jet plane. The plane will fly through the air to 26 km (85,000 feet) altitude and five times the speed of sound before using rockets to push the aircraft the rest of the way to orbit.

The BBC says that other aspects of the Skylon design will be investigated by EADS Astrium, the German space agency (DLR) and the University of Bristol.