>>11019665>It's been going for 30 years making the same promisesYou talk as if it has been the same design all along, but it has not. The current design builds on previous designs but differs in critical areas that contribute directly to its viability in powering a theoretical SSTO, and it has been picked over in detail, successively, by various appropriately credentialed professionals in different organisations, and verified as genuinely innovative and viable. And several of these organisations have put their money where their mouth is and backed it with development funding. Perhaps it was a meme once and at some time in the future it may well turn out again to be one but as things currently stand, you are being premature in calling it such. Sklyon is more of a meme than the engine I would say, and that's the real problem - even if the engine does exactly what it's supposed to the development costs for Skylon would be in the billions, and likely unjustifiable in the face of successful Starship/Super Heavy. That said there may well be US military requirements for which a Skylon type system would be more suitable than Starship/Super Heavy.
