LANCASHIRE’S defence giant is launching a project to combine jet and rocket engines to hurtle crafts at speeds of up to 25 times the speed of sound.

BAE Systems, which employs more than 10,000 people at sites in Warton and Samlesbury, announced on the Stock Exchange that it is investing £20.6 million in Reaction Engines Limited to acquire 20 per cent of the Oxfordshire company.

MORE TOP STORIES:

The new aerospace engine class would combine both jet and rocket technologies with the potential to revolutionise hypersonic flight, make space travel commercially viable and even reduce flight times to Australia to four hours.

Reaction Engines is developing the technologies needed for SABRE, the Synergetic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine.

This new class of liquid hydrogen engine would enable aircraft to operate from standstill on the runway to speeds of more than Mach 5, five times the speed of sound.

SABRE can then switch to rocket mode, allowing space flight at speeds up to orbital velocity, equivalent to Mach 25.

Through its ability to ‘breathe’ air from the atmosphere, SABRE would create its own liquid oxygen so the craft wouldn’t have to carry its own source into space.

Another key element is a system that cools airstreams from more than 1,000C to -150C in less than 1/100th of a second – while also preventing the formation of ice.

Mark Thomas, managing director of Reaction Engines Limited, said: “This announcement represents an important landmark in the transition of Reaction Engines from a company that has been focused on the research and testing of enabling technologies for the SABRE engine to one that is now focused on the development and testing of the world’s first SABRE engine.

“The application for this engine is that it provides very low-cost space access – because of its reusability it dramatically reduces the cost of launching a satellite to about one10th of the current $100million.”

He said that the plan was to produce a demonstration model by the end of the decade but the production of SABRE engines for passenger aircraft is at least two decades away.