Richard Antony Varvill (born 23 September 1961) is a British engineer, and the Chief Designer (Technical Director) at Reaction Engines Limited.
Reaction Engines Limited (REL) is a British aerospace manufacturer based in Oxfordshire, England.
Richard Antony Varvill (born 23 September 1961) is a British engineer, and the Chief Designer (Technical Director) at Reaction Engines Limited.
Reaction Engines Limited (REL) is a British aerospace manufacturer based in Oxfordshire, England.
He was born in Hammersmith in west London. He is the son of Mark Varvill, a naval architect, and Elizabeth Agar, and has a younger sister. His great-great-great-great grandfather on his mother's side is Hucks Gibbs, 1st Baron Aldenham.
Hammersmith is a district of west London, England, located 4.3 miles (6.9 km) west-southwest of Charing Cross. It is the administrative centre of the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, and identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London.
Henry Hucks Gibbs, 1st Baron Aldenham MA BA FGS FSA was a British banker, businessman and Conservative Party politician.
He was educated at Belmont Preparatory School at Holmbury St Mary in the Surrey Hills AONB, then Bryanston School in Dorset. He read Mechanical Engineering at the University of Bristol, where he did an undergraduate apprenticeship at Rolls-Royce. [1] Reaction Engines offer an annual prize at the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Bristol. [2]
Belmont is an independent co-educational preparatory school in Surrey which takes pupils from the ages of 2 to 13. The school is a charitable trust, administered by an independent Board of Governors.
Holmbury St. Mary is a village in Surrey, England centred on shallow upper slopes of the Greensand Ridge. Its developed area is clustered 4.5 miles (7 km) southwest of Dorking and 8 miles (13 km) southeast of Guildford. Most of the village is in the borough of Guildford, within Shere civil parish. Much of the east side of the village street is in the district of Mole Valley, within Abinger civil parish.
Surrey Hills is a 422 km2 (163 sq mi) Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) in Surrey, England. The AONB was designated in 1958 and covers one quarter of the county of Surrey. Surrey Hills AONB adjoins the Kent Downs AONB to the east and the South Downs National Park in the south west.
He started his career with Rolls Royce Military Engine Division, in the Advanced Projects division. He worked on preliminary ideas for what could have become the RB545 air-breathing rocket engine for HOTOL.
HOTOL, for Horizontal Take-Off and Landing, was a 1980s British design for a single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) spaceplane that was to be powered by an airbreathing jet engine. Development was being conducted by a consortium led by Rolls-Royce and British Aerospace (BAe).
He co-founded Reaction Engines in 1989. [3]
At Reaction Engines, he is working on the successor to the RB545, SABRE (rocket engine). On 22 May 2014 he appeared in an edition of Horizon , called The £10 Million Challenge.
SABRE is a concept under development by Reaction Engines Limited for a hypersonic precooled hybrid air-breathing rocket engine. The engine is being designed to achieve single-stage-to-orbit capability, propelling the proposed Skylon spaceplane to low Earth orbit. SABRE is an evolution of Alan Bond's series of liquid air cycle engine (LACE) and LACE-like designs that started in the early/mid-1980s for the HOTOL project.
He first married Julie O'Brien in December 1998. They have a son (born March 1999). He later married Marianne Suhr, having two sons. [4] He lives in the Vale of White Horse in Oxfordshire.
The Vale of White Horse is a local government district of Oxfordshire in England. Located south of the River Thames, it is within the historic county boundaries of Berkshire.
The Bristol Aeroplane Company, originally the British and Colonial Aeroplane Company, was both one of the first and one of the most important British aviation companies, designing and manufacturing both airframes and aircraft engines. Notable aircraft produced by the company include the 'Boxkite', the Bristol Fighter, the Bulldog, the Blenheim, the Beaufighter, and the Britannia, and much of the preliminary work which led to the Concorde was carried out by the company. In 1956 its major operations were split into Bristol Aircraft and Bristol Aero Engines. In 1959, Bristol Aircraft merged with several major British aircraft companies to form the British Aircraft Corporation (BAC) and Bristol Aero Engines merged with Armstrong Siddeley to form Bristol Siddeley.
The Rolls-Royce RB211 is a British family of high-bypass turbofan engines made by Rolls-Royce plc. Mismanagement of the initial development and consequent cost issues led to the effective nationalisation of Rolls-Royce Limited, in order to save the workforce and the engine businesses important to the United Kingdom and many other aerospace and aircraft operating companies.
Rolls-Royce Holdings plc is a British multinational public limited company incorporated in February 2011 that owns Rolls-Royce, a business established in 1904 which today designs, manufactures and distributes power systems for aviation and other industries. Rolls-Royce is the world’s second-largest maker of aircraft engines and has major businesses in the marine propulsion and energy sectors. All of its shares are tradeable on the London Stock Exchange and other markets.
Bristol Aerospace is a Canadian aerospace firm located in Winnipeg, Manitoba and is an operating division of Magellan Aerospace. Today it is the only remaining and surviving subsidiary of Bristol Aeroplane Company.
Skylon is a series of designs for a single-stage-to-orbit spaceplane by the British company Reaction Engines Limited (REL), using SABRE, a combined-cycle, air-breathing rocket propulsion system. The vehicle design is for a hydrogen-fuelled aircraft that would take off from a purpose-built runway, and accelerate to Mach 5.4 at 26 kilometres altitude using the atmosphere's oxygen before switching the engines to use the internal liquid oxygen (LOX) supply to take it into orbit. It could carry 17 tonnes of cargo to an equatorial low Earth orbit (LEO); up to 11 tonnes to the International Space Station, almost 45% more than the capacity of the European Space Agency's Automated Transfer Vehicle; or 7.3 tonnes; 7,300 kilograms (16,000 lb) to Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO), over 24% more than SpaceX F9 RTLS The relatively light vehicle would then re-enter the atmosphere and land on a runway, being protected from the conditions of re-entry by a ceramic composite skin. When on the ground, it would undergo inspection and necessary maintenance, with a turnaround time of approximately two days, and be able to complete at least 200 orbital flights per vehicle.
SIA Engineering Company Limited is a Singaporean company, specialising in aircraft maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) services in the Asia-Pacific and is part of the Singapore Airlines Group. The Company has a client base of more than 80 international carriers and aerospace equipment manufacturers. It provides line maintenance services at Singapore Changi Airport for more than 50 international carriers, as well as airframe and component overhaul on some of the most advanced and widely used commercial aircraft in the world.
Bristol Siddeley Engines Ltd (BSEL) was a British aero engine manufacturer. The company was formed in 1959 by a merger of Bristol Aero-Engines Limited and Armstrong Siddeley Motors Limited. In 1961 the company was expanded by the purchase of the de Havilland Engine Company and the engine division of Blackburn Aircraft. Bristol Siddeley was purchased by Rolls-Royce Limited in 1966.
Alan Bond is an English mechanical and aerospace engineer, as well as Managing Director of Reaction Engines Ltd and associated with Project Daedalus, Blue Streak missile, HOTOL, Reaction Engines Skylon and the Reaction Engines A2 hypersonic passenger aircraft.
Sir Stanley George Hooker, FRS, DPhil, BSc, FRAeS, MIMechE, FAAAS, was a mathematician and jet engine engineer. He was employed first at Rolls-Royce where he worked on the earliest designs such as the Welland and Derwent, and later at Bristol Aero Engines where he helped bring the troubled Proteus turboprop and the Olympus turbojet to market. He then designed the famous Pegasus vectored thrust turbofan used in the Hawker Siddeley Harrier.
Magellan Aerospace Corporation is a Canadian manufacturer of aerospace systems and components. Magellan also repairs and overhauls, tests, and provides aftermarket support services for engines, and engine structural components. The company's business units are divided into the product areas of aeroengines, aerostructures, rockets and space, and specialty products. Its corporate offices in Mississauga, Ontario, Magellan operates in facilities throughout Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom.
Rolls-Royce was a British luxury car and later an aero engine manufacturing business established in 1904 by the partnership of Charles Rolls and Henry Royce. Building on Royce's reputation established with his cranes they quickly developed a reputation for superior engineering by manufacturing the "best car in the world". The First World War brought them into manufacturing aero engines. Joint development of jet engines began in 1940 and they entered production.
The aerospace industry of the United Kingdom is the fourth-largest national aerospace industry in the world and the third largest in Europe, with a global market share of 6.4% in 2016. In 2013, the industry employed 84,000 people. Domestic companies with a large presence in the British aerospace industry include BAE Systems, Britten-Norman, Cobham, GKN, Hybrid Air Vehicles, Meggitt, QinetiQ, Rolls Royce and Ultra Electronics. Foreign companies with a major presence include Boeing, Bombardier, Airbus, Leonardo, General Electric, Lockheed Martin, MBDA, Safran and Thales Group. Current manned aircraft in which the British aerospace industry has a major role include the AgustaWestland AW101, AgustaWestland AW159, Airbus A320 family, Airbus A330, Airbus A340, Airbus A380, Airbus A400M, BAE Hawk, Boeing 767, Boeing 777, Boeing 787, Bombardier CRJ700, Bombardier CSeries, Bombardier Learjet 85, Britten-Norman Defender, Britten-Norman Islander, Eurofighter Typhoon, Hawker 800, Lockheed Martin C-130J Super Hercules and Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II. Current unmanned aerial vehicles in which the British aerospace industry has a major role include BAE Taranis, HAV 304 Airlander 10, QinetiQ Zephyr and Watchkeeper WK450.
Turbo-Union Limited is a joint venture between three European aero-engine manufacturers, FiatAvio, MTU Aero Engines and Rolls-Royce.
The Rolls-Royce/MAN Turbo RB.193 is a vectored thrust turbofan engine designed and manufactured by Rolls-Royce and MAN Turbo in the mid-1960s. The engine test flew in its sole application, the VFW VAK 191B VTOL fighter aircraft but production did not follow after cancellation of the associated aircraft project.
Alfred Cyril Lovesey CBE, AFRAeS, was an English engineer who was a key figure in the development of the Rolls-Royce Merlin aero engine.
Adrian Albert "Lom" Lombard, CBE was an English aeronautical engineer. Despite having no formal training in aerodynamics, he became one of the world's foremost designers of jet engines. He was involved with the Rolls-Royce company in a variety of roles for almost 30 years.
Geoffrey Light Wilde was a British engineer and the designer of the Rolls-Royce RB211.
Sir William Richard Joseph Cook, was a British mathematician and civil servant.