British aerospace firm Reaction Engines, known for its hypersonic propulsion and cooling technologies, has ceased operations after failing to secure a financial lifeline.

The collapse has significant implications for the UK’s Hypersonic Air Vehicle Experimental (HVX) program, where Reaction Engines played a central role in developing reusable, high-speed vehicles.

The company was integral to the £1 billion Hypersonic Technologies & Capability Development Framework (HTCDF), aimed at delivering the UK’s first hypersonic missile. Their work on the Synergetic Air Breathing Rocket Engine (SABRE) and advanced cooling technologies was critical to this objective.

UK accelerates hypersonic missile development with £1bn plan

Following protracted negotiations for financial support, including an unsuccessful bid for £20 million from the UAE’s Strategic Development Fund, Reaction Engines entered administration, with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) now handling proceedings. Analysts are concerned that Reaction Engines’ exit could hinder the UK’s hypersonic ambitions, given the niche expertise required in this field.

Only in August, Reaction Engines had reported a significant milestone: it integrated its proprietary precooler technology with existing jet-engine components during ground-based testing.

British firm hits key milestone in hypersonic engine test

This setup achieved sustained Mach 3.5 conditions, simulating the performance required for hypersonic air vehicles and matching the top airspeed of the legendary SR-71 aircraft. The trial, which incorporated a modified Rolls-Royce jet engine, successfully reached speeds exceeding Concorde’s limits and underscored the company’s progress towards reusable, high-speed flight.

Reaction Engines was also developing intake technologies and preparing for further ground-based tests at high-Mach conditions, coupled with wind-tunnel experiments to gauge intake performance in various supersonic scenarios. “This milestone is a testament to our efforts to create innovative, reusable propulsion systems for hypersonic air vehicles,” said CEO Mark Thomas at the time, noting the broader applications of their heat-exchanger technology across different mission profiles.

George Allison
George has a degree in Cyber Security from Glasgow Caledonian University and has a keen interest in naval and cyber security matters and has appeared on national radio and television to discuss current events. George is on Twitter at @geoallison

53 COMMENTS

  1. Ouch…really ouch…

    The fact that tech this good is un-investable in the UK says something very painful about the way the UK is looked at as an investment space.

    • Ironic that Bond himself in a speech in 2016 stated just that, risk was no longer of interest to the City or UK investors. Hermann Hauser who helped create arm said pretty much the same thing just a few years back when his former company was seemingly headed from Japanese to US ownership.

      • UK fund managers including Ballie Gifford pumped millions into this. It just doesn’t work.

        No amount of Union jacks on the front will make it work.

        They have been trying to get it to works since the 80’s with limited success after spending a lot of money.

    • If the tech was that good do you not think the range of UK and foreign companies and governments who already invested would not have put in more?

      The tech doesn’t work, move on, no point in throwing good money after bad. RE got lots of money from multiple sources more in the UK than they could have gotten in any other country other than the USA and they also have a US subsidiary funded by the DoD that’s also going bust.

      • They literally made a 1950s Goblin engine, a frankly puny bit of kit, function and run in the same conditions as if it was at Mach 3.5 by precooling the air.
        That’s like running the SR71 off a Nene.
        They had a programme and a timeline to hypersonic flight, they just needed support and they didn’t get it.

      • it certainly does work, but a single stage to orbit craft will cost billions (mach5 materials) but the only revenue stream is satalites? which is saturated with hundreds of satalite launchers. or just bang it all on starship? if there was a hotel in orbit we’d have a chance!

      • I thin there’ll be spin off benfits in defence for sure and maybe civil applications too. So yes SABRE didn’t work the way RE hoped BUT the experiment did increase our knowledge. I am interested in beam, laser or SMART-1 type versions of the same experiment and think REs collapse is not the end of this story.

      • they already have, but its a future tech were not sure what it’s for, we just know it’s a Stanley Kubrick 2001 type craft for the near future. the only problem and massive cost was designing a craft to withstand mach 5 to 25k mph heat and plasma.

  2. Oh dear this is shocking and depressing. No doubt yet more to add to the long line of our technology that will now no doubt end up in foreign hands. Interestingly only saw an American video yesterday stating how despite various efforts only Sabre had of hybrid engine concepts had so far been able to demonstrate a surface to space single stage capability. Oh well let the vultures circle.

    • Space X projected price for starship is an order of magnitude cheaper than anything RE were ever looking at with SKYLON.

      Single stage to orbit is not a big deal if you have starship.

      Reusing the first stage that is involved in hypersonic atmospheric flight is already standard practice on falcon 9.

      • Skylon has nothing to do with it that was purely, a theoretical proposal to engage the imaginations of aerospace companies and the next generation of engineers.

        As for Space X this is a pet subject of mine so let’s say while I marvel at the impressive visuals I have learned not to drink Musk’s blindsiding Koolaid. After all unlike those who actually run the company and are indeed rocket scientists and who generally keep away from exorbitant claims he spews rediculous deadlines and potential achievements that are still a very long way from being realistic let alone achieved. For example the present Starship is nowhere near capable of putting 100 tons to orbit as proposed, because due to its problematic development and use of SS is currently far too heavy to do so, thus the now planned substantial increase in size proposed to remedy it. Presently to get to the moon for which it is a terrible solution it may have to be refuelled up to a dozen times (some claim more, Musk claims 6). Equally as things stand it can’t actually send anything worthwhile beyond Earth orbit indeed beyond LEO which even the much derided Vulcan Centaur and SLS can and have comfortably done. I could say a lot more but this isn’t the time and place but.

        So back to Reaction Engines it is I agree concerning that the likes of RR, Airbus, Bae and Boeing all previous backers have not sought to invest more which certainly raise questions around its progress and viability. But a simplistic B&W ‘it does not work’ really tells us nothing without reference to what sources such knowledge comes from and what is meant even by the coverall term ‘technology’ as there are various technologies that RE have been pursuing. I’m sure we will learn more but I will be very surprised if some of their technologies and developments don’t find their way into future projects. In matters like this ‘time’ isn’t again a B&W answer to a technology’s eventual worth. Arm took 20 years to perfect its technology and nearly went out of business on more than one occasion, RISC technology finally the future it was first described as in the 80s. Hi tech and military technologies can take forever to come to fruition, fusion (70 years so far), autonomous drones (at least since the 90s) rail guns (discontinued/re continued endlessly over 20 years so far), Hypersonic glide vehicles first proposed in British studies in the 60s, Aerospike, ring detonation rocket engines, even the jet engine was first propose in 1918, yes the list goes on endlessly about failed attempts and long durations in perfecting technology, indeed it usually takes numerous attempts before it happens. Sabre was one of now several designs for hybrid engines that are proposed for a range of uses, missile, airliners, point to point rocket ships, not just ‘single stage to orbit’ though I note companies are still proposing this as one possible use for such technology and in the end I suspect it will happen though past my life expectations I fear.

      • Sadly true I suspect, it’s not after all unusual for companies to gain more from letting a company they cooperate with to fail so that they can pick up whatever technology and Intellectual they desire. Interestingly RR even in wartime thanks to Rover’s incompetence took advantage and deliberately sabotaged PowerJets to take control of the jet engine technology they knew was the future.

        Problem is that even if REs technologies are sound or have potential with US State sponsored competitors entering the fray an independent RE was always perhaps going to be a problem to finance certainly as a uk entity as arm was, arguably still is struggling with despite its dominant position in mobile. chip design. As with that company huge amounts of money will be required and inevitably the big boys like to have as much control as possible. Let’s see what comes out of this and where it heads.

    • Alas more likely it will be chopped up and sold for parts, they will want the precooler tech not the small UK manufacturing facility or employees.

      outstandingly shit positon by the govt, the money could come from anywhere, MoD, UKSA, finance loans, etc etc.This new ‘national wealth fund’ etc.

    • According to an article by Aviation week, “negotiations failed after Reaction’s strategic shareholders BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce backed out of providing sufficient bridging capital.”

      • Indeed. That doesn’t mean they’d allow their competitors to acquire the IP however. In fact, this may very well be a ploy to acquire the IP on the cheap

        • You know what… That also entered my mind as well when I saw that sentence. However, you would think they would swoop in before the appointed admin company approached the UAE company. The pre-cooler was also meant to be used in the Cranfield hydrogen engine, so something interesting as a pre-cooler would acquired by the DFTL.

  3. This is a major disaster, if government had any sense, they would rescue this company rather than spaffing money on the NHS.

  4. The fact that this has been allowed to happen truly sickens me and that the UAE was allowed to look at buying it! An old saying is the only appropriate one truly: THE INMATES ARE RUNNING THE ASYLUM.

    • Do be sick, everyone in Britain from BAE to RR had already given them money, multiple UK fund managers, the British and American governments had already given them money.

      They were hoping someone in the Middle East would be daft enough to give them money.

      Their tech just domestic work well enough to produce a viable product.

      • Aah I see you have sensibly added the very pertinent ‘well enough’ this time. Fact is it is always a question of whether the risk, financials, timescale, reliability, business sense et al makes it worthwhile in investor’s minds rather than whether the technology simply has legs or not. That’s proved by fact for this technology originally came out of RR, they backed it, dropped it and then in the last decade backed it again before it seems now, dropping it again. But the potential of the technologies involved may still have a future and it will be interested to see who might take aspects of it up again and exploit the situation to their own ends rather than backing the company itself. As I say RR have history here.

  5. Before we all blame the government, it should be noted that Skylon’s role was made obsolete by Musk’s Starship. Skylon still needed alot of infrastructure to work, and could never carry the vast payload Musk’s spacecraft could. There’s also some technical issues regarding their use of hydrogen over methane as a propellant.

    So they started looking for pre-cooler applications in other sectors, but the demand does not seem to have been there. Reaction Engines made lots of interesting strides in development, but ultimately there was not enough “stuff” to sell.

    Hopefully RR get all the tech, but I’m not holding my breath. Wait 10 or so years, and some American firm will independently develop this stuff and use it to aid with hospital refrigeration and other applications.

    • Skylin is not the story – hasn’t been the story for years.

      Hypersonic missiles with serious ranges, that real aircraft can lift to launch, are the story

      Massively increasing the efficiency of jet engines and cooling radars is also part of the story.

      • Agreed.
        People are getting bogged down in RE’s pipe dream Skylon without considering the real benefits of SABRE and the really incredible heat exchanger tech they’ve developed and are now realising has all sorts of side uses.

      • I’m not going to add to what I have already said about Starship but it has serious hurdles to get through despite Musks delusional bravado. It’s no where near a reusable platform as yet and would be the most expensive way to get stuff into orbit as single use oh anf that’s LEO by the way it can’t as things stand go higher.

        Watch out for other companies like a Rocket Lab (and worryingly the Chinese) who are developing reusable systems, the former could be a serious rival for Space-X’s bread and butter income with Falcon using its new 3D printed carbon composite reusable rockets. Even Vulcan Centaur has a third stage that can be used as a space tug and has plans to recover its boosters main engines. And let’s see where Blue Origin end up the engines are now performing well so despite derision they may yet have a platform with great potential.

    • Very sensible take, this reflects the viability of the business model of RE rather than a B and W assessment of the technologies, at least till we know better. If the technologies have potential they will be absorbed. However you must stop going on about Skylon that was never more than a pr move to gain traction in the media and inspire ideas from others it was never the fundamental aim of RE itself though many have presumed it was. I think in the end with hybrid competes forming and backed by Govts it was always going to be high risk as an independent company sadly. It may or may not despite Jim’s claimed rock solid knowledge be that it doesn’t work. I suspect Sabre does work but what market is there for that complete engine design to make money. Missile engines is probably the best bet but as I stated in previous articles on it, getting hypersonic performance is probably much cheaper for air launched missiles and only ground launched would benefit from such a complex propulsion system so it might well as a complete engine be a working technology without a big enough market. Certainly a rotatating combustion engine, if it can be got to work would be a better rocket element of a Sabre like hybrid engine and that was never going to come from RE so the cooling technology is the most promising aspect of the design and you don’t need RE specifically for that I suspect. Let the vultures collect.

  6. According to Aviation Week, BAE System and Rolls Royce backed out, and “Cranfield Aerospace Solutions, planned to use a version of the same micro-tube heat exchanger design in a modified hydrogen fuel-cell powered Britten-Norman BN-2 Islander zero emissions demonstrator program.”

  7. Only in the UK!

    This is just the latest example of a country that has failed to invest in UK-developed technological innovation since the 1950’s.
    Every industry where the UK once lead is now waning (or deceased).

  8. Well that’s no surprise They have been at it so long It’s Awfull slow progress Some company will snap it up for peanuts

      • That is because RR were said to have taken over Reaction Engines, one way or another the reaction engines MUST be part of Tempest or it will not have the promised performance.

        • Interesting, so hypersonic speed is part of 6th generation?

          An interesting contrast to 5th generation Stealth that seems to prefer quiet stealthy progress to loud supersonic runs (doppler RADAR detection)..

          The NASA quiet supersonic boom project pretends to be about civilian overflight acceptability but I can’t help noticing the military relevance, too..

  9. I remember hearing about this company early on and my initial thoughts were, this company will fail and the government will let it. A bit like the HOTAL project. RR’s mini reactors, MG Rover, Blue Flame etc. Rather than being forward thinking our Labour and Tories governments refuse to back these firms, and they usually end up in foreign hands. But this one has national security implications, a British tech firm must be the only buyer for this to be allowed to go to. The government must step in for once and rescue this tech project!

  10. The most efficient way of sending materials & people up into space. Now it is just left to that awful Elon Musk. Shame on the UK Government for not investing in this innovative Company.

  11. The heat exchanger technology is worth investment on it own, let alone HOTEL / Sabre…
    Unless the Americans have nicked it already…. Lolololol

  12. Sad but inevitable really – many things can’t be falsified at a theoretical level but we can’t valdate them in real world conditions – usually for reasons of cost or other resource issues. Sabre was an experiment seeking to optimise efficiency of exhaust velocity and propellant mass. I think it can still be done but the theory needs work. Still: $1 billion invested and at least the staffers, early shareholders and contractors all did well out of this – though i expect current shareholders and suppliers will get burned.

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