After nearly 30 years of service, the Space Shuttle fleet is due to enter retirement with the last ever mission scheduled for takeoff on July 8, 2011. In its lifetime, the world's first Reusable ...

It’s difficult not to be impressed by the towering rockets used around the world to launch spacecraft into orbit. From the colossal Saturn V rockets developed in the 1960s to the SpaceX Falcon 9, one ...

Aerospace engineers have dreamed of a spaceship that can launch like a plane, get to orbit, and land on a runway since the 1960s. A British company, Reaction Engines Limited, wants to make that dream ...

As NASA settles for a tried and trusted solution, Britain’s plans for a next-gen Space Shuttle inch forward with the Skylon: A black, future-tech spaceplane that absolutely looks the part. The Skylon ...

Skylon is a British space plane under development by the U.K.-based Reaction Engines, Ltd. The space plane concept vehicle consists of a slender fuselage containing propellant tankage and payload bay, ...

[Photo: Reaction Engines] This is the Skylon spaceplane. It’s a revolutionary new concept that can take off like a plane before rocketing off into space. The European Space Agency just passed a ...

"As young as 12 I was building my own rockets," says Alan Bond, inventor of the Skylon spaceplane and Sabre, the revolutionary engine that could herald a new era of space travel. "[But] only really ...

Roger Longstaff, engineer at Reaction Engines Ltd (REL), said that the company intends to test its amazing “pre-cooler” technology in June, 2011. An REL spokesperson announced that they had secured ...

UPDATE : There is an update on the Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket which should have a 24 hour turnaround with no refurbishment resue and will be reusable about a dozen times. Ashley used a reference document ...

Spindly, sexy, from outer space... Not Bowie, but The Skylon — the 300ft-tall spacecraft, which landed on the South Bank two decades before anyone knew who Ziggy Stardust was. It was, of course, a ...

Reaction Engines Ltd. announced on Wednesday the completion of a critical round of testing of its SABRE engine’s precooler system. The SABRE is a radical type of hybrid jet/rocket engine capable of ...