SABRE on course to chill SKYLON into orbit

I think like a lot of people who read about this stuff FOR YEARS, it's been readily apparent that the big problem with air breathing multimach supersonic jets is heat. heat destroys everything. you could say its vibration or whatever else, but the designers have figured out ways of dealing with just about everything except the heat problem, because you cannot slow down air in the combustion chamber without creating excess heat at these speeds, it's difficult enough to make a skin or coating that can resist the heat for even short periods of time. read about the famous fastest production plane ever , the blackbird, and it was the heat --or rather the highly costly process of cooling the plane---that was its undoing ( that and the rise of cheaper sattelites for the same basic purpose of spying ) .
i'm not very convinced this thing above will work, i know very little about it, but having read about all the other strategies out there that scram jets contend with when dealing with the heat of friction coming from directing air into the engine ( using coolant to cool the combustion chamber, or using precooled fuel , i find this a fascinating intriguing approach----cooling the air before it enters the combustion chamber.
for the first time reading about scram jets---i'm finally going to say , it might work this time. and if it does, the military is going to be billions over it--particularly in light of the recent failed tests ( in my opinion they were p.r. failures at the very least ) of its unmanned hypersonic wedge looking scram jet.

The SABRE engine is a rocket it is just that they figured out how to liquify oxygen in aerodynamic flight to feed it.

Looks like about 70% of the volume of the plane is liquid H2 storage. I really wonder what use this plane is. Small payload area. Cargo? Passengers?

@zevulon: iirc, the 'plane' uses liquid hydrogen as fuel. It pumps the liquid h2 through and around the engine in order to keep it cool (and liquify the air).

No. Nitrogen has to be cooled to -196C to become liquid and oxygen has to be cooled to -182.96C to become liquid. The incoming air is only cooled to -150C. There is stored LOX for use in space however.

If this technology works out it will revolutionise getting into space. I have been following this company for several years, it sounds almost too good to be true, but it has the stamp of approval of the ESA and others, so I remain hopeful. I would love to know how they avoid the pre coolers icing up, they have been keeping tight lipped about this.

@zevulon... 1. Cool name! I sometimes use "Spankulon" when gaming against my mates lol 2. I've got to be careful because I seriously want this to work but I am more hopeful - I see these as simply a series of technical problems that can, in principle at least, eventually be solved. I believe that the SCRAM jets being prototyped by the US and Australia use the actual fuel as coolant - running it through galleries in the hottest parts of the engine/nozzle etc allowing it to heat up before being burnt in the combustion section.

If you read the full press release on their website, you'll see that this technology ALREADY enables jet engines the technology to double their speed.....

Single-stage-to-orbit here we come!

Can anyone tell me why its banana-shaped? is it to keep the plane within orbit as it goes soooo fast around the globe?