Re: With Britain Away, the ESA will play
I dont think Skylon will every fly.
The UK is often able to 'punch above its weight' - in design and prototyping for advanced designs and innovative tech.
The UK too small to properly capitalise it as a whole project. Like the design of the Jet engine in commercial flight - ultimately, Boeing won over the comet - a plane years ahead of its time, using new all metal skin technologies- which was flawed because we didnt know of metal fatigue. It was only later with Nimrod (basically the same plane that was used for 60 years) that the UK (and the world) fully got the tech understood.
Rolls Royce is a design success story in Jet engine design. They successfully build one part of a project.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
