Hrm. No comments.
Spite because the government only gave them about £100m instead of £100bn?
It wasn't yanked. They never had firm footing
) as propulsion for the booster on a TSTO but they'd have none of that and far to often rejecting anything that simply wasn't the full up Skylon.
Agree on the above. Too much focus on HX and Engine - doesn't really matter if these are individually viable but can't be viably integrated into a vehicle concept.
Ironic that Richard Varvill was working on Harrier and P1216 engines before leaving Rolls Royce - balance and vibration were fundamental to getting an airframe wrapped around these to work.
But the goal was to make a spaceplane, rather than a means of cost-effective space launch at reasonable risk. Dan Sharp's recent HOTOL book is pretty clear on the single mindedness to get a spaceplane using that sort of propulsion system, regardless of all the evidence along the way that there were better options.
IMHO worth a try - that layout worked (somewhat) for the D-21.
As luck/serendipity/coincidence/synchronicity would have it, I just started leafing through my shiny new HOTOL book copy, and the top drawing on page 103 shows *exactly* such an axisymmetric inlet arrangement for HOTOL, albeit with the nosecone and inlet slightly canted downward.
General shape validated at least up to Mach 3.5, as all the members of the SR-71 extended family (even if REAL max speed was a touch lower).
The key is solving multiple issues at once though e.g. nose intake and engine in the middle gives very long duct and exhaust which are lossy and heavy. And where do you put the payload bay? But minimising mass is really the key for SSTO.
See also pp. 231-2 for discussion of alternatives.
That's the first I have seen with two vertical stabilizers...I thought it only had one on the nose--any other tailfins on airframe noses?
