[bite_my_shiny_m]

It's the Telegraph, this is just a "jolly good show chaps, we Englishmen can really achieve marvellous things can't we, it's not all about those chaps across The Pond, tallyho tallyho" puff piece. Skylon PR bits come out all the time.

Not to belittle their accomplishments, but the press releases after they successfully put some serious flows through the pre-chiller made it seem like there was a guaranteed outcome of a working powerplant within a decade, and a vehicle within 15 years. Despite the exotic fuels, powerplant, and mission profiles.

The F-22 was conceived in the middle of the 80s, had an effectively bottomless pit of funding from DoD after winning the contract in the early 90s, and look when those first came online (2005). And that was just burning JP-8.