2009: Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec |
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| Company News
Since winning the ESA contract, REL has been inundated with requests for employment at the company. Our programme is fully committed at present and consequently we do not have any positions available; this will remain the case for the foreseeable future. During April, the Technical Demonstration programme has continued to progress well. The design of the machinery for the pre-cooler for the Viper demonstrator is developing as expected and the prototype production area is also nearing completion. During the week of 30th March – 3rd April, the first progress meeting for LAPCAT II took place in Stuttgart, Germany. This project will last for four years and has been awarded €7.4 million by ESA. In April, Malcolm Paul has joined the REL team as an additional Engineer and Stuart Webb has also begun working for us on drawings detailing equipment. |
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We have finally finished reading “Sunstorm” a novel by Arthur C Clarke and Stephen Baxter (Gollancz 2005) and are delighted to see a reference to Hotol and SKYLON as the “paper birds” leading to the Boudicca spaceplane; which from the description is very similar to SKYLON. The book gives an interesting and quite realistic description of what a SKYLON flight might be like, although we suggest you should not raise your hopes regarding the all round screens showing the outside view as these are more likely to be airline style video screens in the back of the seat in front of you. The novel’s “afterword” cites Alan Bond and Richard Varvill’s paper “The SKYLON Spaceplane” published in the January 2004 edition of Journal of the British Interplanetary Society. You can find this paper on the pdf downloads page on this website. Interestingly, this is not the first time that SKYLON has appeared in a novel. The 1997 novel “SABRE” by James Follett was named after our synergistic engine, which the novel assumed was used in a hypersonic passenger aircraft, not unlike the LAPCAT A2. This novel even has Alan Bond in it as a very small, walk on and say nothing, character. |
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| In the past, Gemini Prototyping has conducted some graphic work on the SABRE engine for REL, but there is nothing quite like the real thing! This VW Touran actually has a SABRE engine inside it!
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