HOTOL, for Horizontal Take-Off and Landing, was an unrealised British space shuttle proposal. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK or Britain,is a Sovereign state located
Designed as a single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) reusable winged launch vehicle, it was to be fitted with a unique air-breathing engine, the RB545, to be developed by Rolls Royce. A single-stage-to-orbit (or SSTO) vehicle reaches Orbit from the surface of a body without jettisoning hardware expending only propellants and fluids The RB545 was an air-breathing rocket engine that was proposed to propel a British space shuttle (see HOTOL) to orbit using a single stage Rolls-Royce plc ( is a British Aircraft engine maker and the second-largest in the world behind GE Aviation. The engine was technically a liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen design, but by air-breathing as the spacecraft climbed through the lower atmosphere, the amount of LOX (liquid oxygen) needed to be carried onboard, for use in the upper atmosphere and space, was dramatically reduced. Since LOX typically represents the majority of the takeoff weight of a rocket, HOTOL was considerably smaller than normal all-LOX designs, roughly the size of a medium-haul airliner such as the McDonnell Douglas DC-9/MD-80. WikipediaWikiProject Aircraft. Please see WikipediaWikiProject Aircraft/page content for recommended layout
HOTOL would have been 63 metres long, 7 metres in diameter and with a wingspan of 28 metres. The unmanned craft was intended to put a payload of around seven tonnes in orbit. This article is about the tonne or metric ton For other tons see Ton. It was intended to take off from a runway, mounted on the back of a large rocket-boosted trolley that would help get the craft up to "working speed". The engine was intended to switch from jet propulsion to pure rocket propulsion at 26-32 km high, by which time the craft would be travelling at Mach 5 to 7. Mach number (\mathrm{Ma} or M (generally ˈmɑːk sometimes /ˈmɑːx/ or /ˈmæk/ is the speed of an object moving through air or any Fluid After reaching orbit, HOTOL was intended to re-enter the atmosphere and glide down to land on a conventional runway. The internal landing gear were too small to carry the weight of the fully-fueled rocket, so emergency landings required the fuel to be dumped.
Development began with government funding in 1986. The design team was a joint effort between Rolls-Royce and British Aerospace led by John Scott and Dr Bob Parkinson. British Aerospace (BAe was a UK aircraft and defence-systems manufacturer that is now part of BAE Systems. John Scott may refer to Politicians John Scott (Australian politician, Member of the Australian House of Representatives John Scott It was announced around the same time that the X-30 scramjet program was announced in America. The X-30 National Aero-Space Plane (NASP was an attempt by the United States to create a viable Single stage to orbit (SSTO Spacecraft.
During development, it was found that the comparatively heavy rear-mounted engine moved the center of mass of the vehicle rearwards. This meant that the vehicle had to be designed to push the center of drag as far rearward as possible to ensure stability over the entire flight regime. Redesign of the vehicle to do this cost a significant proportion of the payload, and made the economics unclear. In particular, some of the analysis seemed to indicate that similar technology applied to a pure rocket approach would give at least as good performance at lower cost.
In 1988 the government withdrew further funding, the project was approaching the end of its design phase but the plans were still speculative and dogged with aerodynamic problems and operational disadvantages.
A cheaper redesign, Interim HOTOL or HOTOL 2, to be launched from the back of a modified Antonov An-225 transport aircraft, was offered by BAE in 1991 but that too was rejected. WikipediaWikiProject Aircraft. Please see WikipediaWikiProject Aircraft/page content for recommended layout British Aerospace (BAe was a UK aircraft and defence-systems manufacturer that is now part of BAE Systems. Interim HOTOL was to have dispensed with an air-breathing engine cycle and was designed to use more conventional LOX and liquid hydrogen.
Alan Bond has formed Reaction Engines Limited where they have since been working on the Skylon vehicle which seems to solve most of the problems of HOTOL. Alan Bond (born 1944 is Managing Director of Reaction Engines Ltd and associated with Project Daedalus, Blue Streak missile, HOTOL, Skylon Reaction Engines Limited is a British company based in Oxfordshire
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