The European Space Agency is throwing its weight behind a design effort for a hypersonic spaceplane, with hopes of getting the final idea airborne (and spaceborne) by 2031. The ESA is putting up funding for the Invictus research program, which wants to achieve one of the space industry’s most coveted breakthroughs: The ability for a spacecraft to launch horizontally off a runway, like a normal plane, and then land back there all in one piece. There have been several attempts over the decades to build a so-called Single Stage to Orbit (SSTO) vehicle, but thus far, none have succeeded.
Invictus (Latin for “invincible”) is hoping to solve the engineering puzzle, which would make spaceflight radically cheaper and simpler than it is today. The program is headed by Frazer-Nash Consultancy, with support from Spirit AeroSystems, Cranfield University, and a few smaller companies. Critically, the project has hired a bunch of staff from Reaction Engines Ltd, a British company that had been working on spaceplane engines for decades before going bankrupt last year. Reaction’s core innovation was pre-cooling technology, which it always said was the key to unlocking hypersonic and orbital travel. While the company itself didn’t live long enough to find out, with the ESA’s money, Invictus is going to try to find out for sure.
Pre-cooling air before it hits the engine
Going to space is expensive. You need a big rocket that launches vertically, which requires a launch pad and launch tower. Rockets are usually multi-stage, and most (if not all) of those stages are discarded during the flight. SpaceX is developing ways to make those stages fly home for later reuse, but it’s still a massively complex endeavor.
Spaceplanes are a much simpler and theoretically cheaper idea — just take off and land like a plane! — but the trick is building cost-effective engines that can power both air and space flight. Ordinary jet engines need oxygen to burn, which they pull out of the air. But to reach the speeds needed to break orbit, hypersonic speeds of Mach 5+, the sheer heat of air friction hitting the engine would actually melt it. Pretty bad!
Reaction’s purpose in life was more or less to figure out a way to get the air temperature down before it hit the engine, a process called pre-cooling. With that system installed, even traditional jet engines should, theoretically, be able to reach speeds over 15,000 mph, enough to get anywhere in the world in just a few hours. Then, if the craft goes up past the atmosphere and into space, the engines would switch over to onboard oxygen tanks. If it all works, it should be able to ferry cargo to space for radically less than current systems and to other places on Earth at much faster speed.
The spaceplane race
The ESA, it should be clear, is only putting €7 million of its money into Invictus, which won’t exactly build a working plane. This investment is to see if the Invictus team can come up with a workable design within 12 months. If not, well, game over again. If they can, however, then humanity has an exciting future ahead of it.
Meanwhile, there are a number of other projects around the world trying to get their own spaceplanes off the ground. Startup company Sierra Space has been working on its Dream Chaser design since 2015, which is getting close to being able to fly to the ISS. China has flown the Shenlong a few times since 2023. The U.S. Space Force has been flying the remotely operated X-37B since 2010, a program that just got a $1 billion from the Big Beautiful Bill. All of these are experimental and not in any kind of active use just yet. If any of them get ready for showtime, then the days of the massive rocket on a launchpad may be numbered.
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