Yorkshire Philosophical Society

Event Information

Reaction Engines

Richard Varvill

This talk will give a brief history of Reaction Engines – its creation, objectives, technology, achievements and sudden demise. The Company was created to improve the cost, frequency and safety of access to Space. This was to be accomplished by improvements in propulsion technology by integrating a Mach 5 capable airbreathing engine with a rocket engine. This would enable vertical takeoff expendable rockets to be replaced by horizontally launched fully reusable spaceplanes. The Company’s unique SABRE engine featured a novel precooler which could cool the incoming airflow from 1000degC to -150degC in 30 milliseconds. This heat exchanger technology later found spinoff applications in aviation and Formula One. Despite being close to profitability, the Company entered administration in late 2024 following a failed fund raise with the loss of 200 jobs. The story of Reaction Engines was typically British – technical inventiveness followed by commercial failure. A Company that took decades of investment and ingenuity to create has now been lost … just when the UK is trying to re-industrialise and increase its Defence capability.

7pm in the Tempest Anderson Lecture Theatre in the Yorkshire Museum on TUESDAY 8 December 2026.

YPS Members and students free, non members £5. (No advance booking; come along on the evening and pay on the door.)