[Meta] [RFC] Fenspace 2022, take 2

[Ace Dreamer]

I think I posted a link to SKYLON a year ago... if they are willing to use Handwavium on the engine itself, they will quickly get something that can compete with the typical Fen engine.

If they want to keep the engine hardtech it will take longer, because they have to figure out what parts they can keep hardtech and what parts they have to wave. Maybe 2014-2016, as a part of the supply chain to Nouveau Paris?

If they wanted to go with a waved airframe and a couple of waved-up test engines, I think they could have a demonstrator flying sometime in 2009, if not earlier.  British space fandom would queue-up to help them.
I could see the British government unofficially asking Brains to help them, late Summer 2008.  If they were happy with him waving-up an airframe from plywood and mylar, with glued-on ceramic heat tiles, I doubt it would take him more than a month.  Meanwhile, they could be ordering the real hard-tech airframe from aircraft manufacturers, and handwaving-up the missing tech in their helium-pre-cooler.  Then reverse-engineering that.  Fuel, load, start proof-of-concept flights.  I think you could pry-loose money from the UK government and the EU by taking a few official parties into orbit...
(I think the design says up to thirty astronauts.)
Pretty sure you could sell them on 4.6hr flights from Brussels to Sidney, Australia, too:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_Engines_A2
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind