Displaying items by tag: REL (company)

Reaction Engines Limited (REL) is a British aerospace company based in Oxfordshire, England.

The company conducts research into space propulsion systems, centred around the development of the Skylon re-usable SSTO spaceplane. The three founders worked together on the HOTOL project, funding for which was withdrawn in 1988, largely due to significant technical obstacles.

Skylon is a design for a spaceplane by the British company Reaction Engines Limited (REL).

It uses SABRE, a combined-cycle, air-breathing rocket engine, to reach orbit in a single stage. A fleet of vehicles is envisaged; the design is aiming for re-usability for more than 200 times.

As of 2012, only a small portion of the funding required to develop and build Skylon had been secured. The research and development work on the SABRE engine design is proceeding under a small European Space Agency (ESA) grant.