SABRE: A High Speed Air Breathing Rocket Engine

for the SSTO SKYLON Spaceplane

by Dora Musielak - AIAA HSABPTC Communications Chair January 2012

To achieve truly single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) capability, a propulsion system must be able to

provide high thrust from zero to hypersonic speed, to lift a vehicle from the ground to very high
altitude, and do it reliably and with excellent efficiency throughout. The hybrid SABRE engine
offers to deliver both high thrust-to-weight ratio and high performance over the Mach 0 to 25
flight range operating on a pre-cooled air-breathing/rocket combined cycle. This is a major
advantage in comparison to alternate air-breathing engine design concepts. A propulsion
technology being developed by Reaction Engines, Ltd. (REL) in the UK, SABRE is intended for
propelling the reusable SKYLON launch vehicle to deliver payloads to low Earth orbit (LEO).

Unlike the scramjet that powers

the X-51A Waverider, SABRE is an
air-breathing/rocket propulsion
system that combines the cycles of a
pre-cooled jet engine, a ramjet, and
a rocket engine. In air-breathing
mode, running from takeoff to about
Mach 5, the SABRE engine uses
atmospheric oxygen, which is
mixed and burned with liquid
hydrogen fuel in the combustion
chambers. This reduces the quantity
of oxidizer that the vehicle needs to
carry, thus enabling a single-stage
to orbit (SSTO) spaceplane.

The SABRE (Synergistic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine) concept originated from an idea
by Robert P. Carmichael1 who in 1955 proposed that hydrogen-fueled engines could
theoretically have much higher performance than hydrocarbon-fueled engines if a heat exchanger
were used to cool the incoming air. The low temperature would allow lighter materials to be
used, with a higher air mass-flow through the engine, and would permit combustors to inject
more fuel without overheating. SABRE is a derivative of a series of liquid air cycle engine
(LACE) and LACE-like designs that Alan Bond, now Managing Director at REL, started in the
early/mid-1980s for the HOTOL (Horizontal Take-Off and Landing) program.2

1
R. P. Carmichael, Cycle Performance of Some Selected Engine Configurations Using Liquid Hydrogen Fuel,
Technical Note 55-687. Power Plant Laboratory. Wright Air Development Center, Wright-Patterson AFB, 8 Nov.
1955
2
HOTOL was a British air-breathing space shuttle effort by Rolls Royce and British Aerospace terminated in 1988.
 2

SKYLON Spaceplane

SKYLON is an unpiloted, reusable spaceplane intended to provide less expensive and reliable
access to space. Currently in proof-of-concept phase, the vehicle will take approximately 10
years to develop and will be capable of transporting up to 12 tonnes3 of cargo into space.4
Unlike the Space Shuttles, which were launched vertically with the majority of thrust
provided by two solid rocket boosters that were jettisoned two minutes after liftoff, the
SKYLON will take off and land horizontally on a (heavily reinforced) conventional runway
propelled by its two SABRE engines initially operating on the precooled air-breathing mode.
Once the vehicle reaches Mach 5 at 93,500 ft altitude, the engine will switch to a closed
cycle rocket using stored liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen from the on-board fuel tanks to
propel itself more like a conventional space launcher. Under this pure rocket propulsion mode,
SKYLON will reach orbital velocity (~Mach 25). Since it does not have to jettison its hardware
or external propellant tanks, SKYLON will become a truly single-stage-to-orbit spaceplane. In
this way, the reusable 275-foot vehicle could launch payloads of more than 16 tonnes into space
with regularity and at a much lower per-kg cost than conventional rocket launchers can.5
The SKYLON vehicle consists of a slender fuselage containing propellant tankage and a
payload bay, with delta wings attached midway along the fuselage where the SABRE engines are
mounted in axisymmetric nacelles on the wingtips.
With a payload bay measuring 4.6 m (15 ft) in diameter and 12.3 m (40 ft) long, Skylon
is designed to transport up to 12 tonnes of cargo into Low Earth Orbit (LEO, 300 km /186 mile)
at a small fraction of the cost of rocket-based expendable launch vehicles. It could also carry 9
tonnes to the International Space Station (ISS).

Skylons fuselage and wing load-bearing structure will be made from carbon fiber reinforced
plastic, with the aluminum propellant tanks suspended within to be free to move under thermal
and pressurization displacements. The external shell is expected to be built from a 0.5 mm thin
fiber reinforced ceramic, corrugated for stiffness and free to move under thermal expansion.
During re-entry, heat will be radiated away from the hot aeroshell and prevented from entering
the vehicle by layers of reflective foil and low conductivity shell support posts.

3
Tonne, known as the metric ton in the US.
4
http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/skylon.html
5
Varvill, R. and Bond, A., The Skylon Spaceplane: Progress to Realization, JBIS, Vol. 61, pp. 412-418, 2008.
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Skylon Summary Mass Breakdown (Ref. Varvill and Bond, 2008)

Vehicle
Basic mass (incl. fluids) 41 tonnes
OMS+RCS propellants 2.3 to 4.1 tonnes (mission dependent)
Ascent propellants 217 tonnes
Max. take-off weight 275 tonnes
Payload
Equatorial 300 km 12 tonnes
ISS (408 km 51.6) 9 tonnes
Polar (250 km 98) 4.8 tonnes

SABRE Combined Cycle Engine

SABRE is a precooled, hybrid air-breathing/rocket engine that burns liquid hydrogen fuel
combined with an oxidant of either compressor-fed gaseous air from the atmosphere, or stored
liquid oxygen fed using a turbopump. At the front of the engine a simple translating
axisymmetric shock cone inlet slows down the airstream to subsonic speeds using just two shock
reflections.
SABRE operates on a single combined cycle
with two distinct modes. The air-breathing
mode combines a turbo-compressor with a
lightweight air precooler positioned just
behind the inlet cone. At high speeds this
precooler cools the hot, ram compressed air
leading to an unusually high pressure ratio
within the engine. The compressed air is
subsequently fed into the rocket combustion
chamber where it is ignited with stored liquid
hydrogen. The high pressure ratio allows the
engine to continue to provide high thrust at
very high speeds and altitudes. The low
temperature of the air permits the use of light alloy materials, which gives a very lightweight
engine essential for reaching orbit. Moreover, unlike the LACE concept that preceded it,
SABREs precooler does not liquefy the air, allowing the engine to run more efficiently.
Part of the incoming air passes through
the precooler into the central core, with the
remainder passing directly through a ring of
bypass ramjets. The central core of SABRE
behind the precooler uses a turbo-compressor
run off the same gaseous helium loop Brayton
cycle, which compresses the air and feeds it
into four high pressure combined cycle rocket
engine combustion chambers.
 4

The hybrid air-breathing/rocket engine presents some serious challenges. The critical
piece of propulsion enabling technology is the pre-cooler and heat exchanger.6 Those parts are
being tested now. SABRE must manage hot, 1000C, high-speed air flowing through its intake,
then cool it prior to compressing and burning it with hydrogen fuel. This has led to the design of
a novel heat exchanger that can cool the air gas to 130C in just 1/100th of a second! Engineers
at REL had to devise a unique anti-frost solution that allows the heat exchanger to run
continuously without freezing up.

Reaction Engines SABRE

Designed by: Reaction Engines Limited (United Kingdom)
Application: Single-stage-to-orbit
Associated L/V: Skylon
Predecessor: RB545
Status: Development

Liquid-fueled hybrid engine

Propellant: Air/LO2 / Liquid hydrogen
Cycle: combined cycle precooled jet engine + closed cycle rocket engine

Performance
Thrust (Vac.): ~ 1,800 kN
Thrust (SL): ~ 1,350 kN
Thrust-to-weight ratio: up to 14 (atmospheric)
Isp (Vac.): 460 s
Isp (SL): 3600 s

The predicted performance for SABRE is excellent. According to REL, The design
thrust/weight ratio is up to 14compared to about 5 for conventional jet engines. This high
performance results from the combination of the cooled air being denser and hence requiring less
compression, but most importantly, due to the low air temperatures, which will allow to use
lighter alloy materials.

The Future of SKYLON and SABRE

The SKYLON spaceplane and its associated SABRE engine is a completely different concept
with regards to current expendable launch vehicles. If successfully developed, its proposed
flexibility and high reusability has the potential to support the current launch market as well as
leading to the development of new markets. For this reason, the UK Space Agency (UKSA)
requested an impartial review of the technology readiness. The European Space Agency (ESA)
was asked to provide an independent assessment of the feasibility of the proposed design, and to
assess any areas of concern and provide recommendations for the future.
According to ESAs technical assessment7 as reported in June 2011, based on RELs heat
exchanger technology and their successful demonstration of the frost control mechanism at
laboratory scale (a major milestone that has so far eluded other international developments), ESA

6
Webber, H., Feast, S. and Bond, A., Heat Exchanger Design in Combined Cycle Engines, IAC-08-C4.5.1, 2008.
7
SKYLON Assessment Report, European Space Agency (ESA), TEC-MPC/2011/946/MF (2011)
http://www.bis.gov.uk/assets/bispartners/ukspaceagency/docs/skylon-assessment-report-pub.pdf
 5

is confident that a ground test of a sub-scale engine can be successfully performed to

demonstrate the engine cycle covering the entire flight regime. This will be both a critical
milestone in the development of this program and a major breakthrough in propulsion
worldwide.
Reaction Engines, Ltd. is planning to demonstrate its heat exchanger technology before
moving onto Phase III of the program. The total cost of the program is about US$10 billion, but
it is projected that SKYLON will be able to repay its development costs, meet its servicing and
operating costs and turn a profit for its operators whilst being an order of magnitude cheaper to
customers than current space transportation systems.

NOTE: All images used in this article were copied from Reaction Engines, Ltd. website:
http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/skylon.html