Advantages
Unlike traditional rocket engines, and like other types of air breathing jet engine, a hybrid jet engine can utilise air to create combustion saving on propellant weight and therefore increasing payload fraction.
Ramjets and Scramjets must spend a significant amount of time within the lower atmosphere to build speed to reach orbital velocity creating issues with extremely high drag leading to intense heating and the subsequent weight and complexity of required thermal protection. A hybrid jet like SABRE needs only reach low hypersonic speeds inside the lower atmosphere before engaging its closed cycle mode, whilst climbing, to build speed.
Unlike ramjet or scramjet engines the design is able to provide high thrust from zero speed up to Mach 5.5, with excellent thrust over the entire flight, from the ground to very high altitude, with high efficiency throughout.
In addition this static thrust capability means the engine can be easily tested on the ground, which drastically cuts testing costs.
Read more about this topic: SABRE (rocket Engine)
Famous quotes containing the word advantages:
“Men hear gladly of the power of blood or race. Every body likes to know that his advantages cannot be attributed to air, soil, sea, or to local wealth, as mines and quarries, nor to laws and traditions, nor to fortune, but to superior brain, as it makes the praise more personal to him.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)
“To say that a man is your Friend, means commonly no more than this, that he is not your enemy. Most contemplate only what would be the accidental and trifling advantages of Friendship, as that the Friend can assist in time of need by his substance, or his influence, or his counsel.... Even the utmost goodwill and harmony and practical kindness are not sufficient for Friendship, for Friends do not live in harmony merely, as some say, but in melody.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“There is no one thoroughly despicable. We cannot descend much lower than an idiot; and an idiot has some advantages over a wise man.”
—William Hazlitt (17781830)