[3327]

The Brits are good engineers, and, compared to American juggernaut companies, specially in the defense and aerospace area, they manage to make innovation with very little.

The US military spent millions all through the 1960's upto the late 1980's for a successful VTOL aircraft. Along came the brits with fractions of the budget with a great product the Harrier GR-1.

There are some great arguments here, specially the savings in weight from Oxygen by pja.

But I want to ask something different. Even if there is a slight chance for this idea to succeed shouldn't we/they invest in it anyway? Making breakthroughs in jet engine design takes years and extraordinary amount of effort and money. If the government doesn't take the risk, long term innovation would be very difficult. Plus even if it doesn't reach its intended goals many side technologies are generated even from a failed undertaking...

[moogleii]

It's hard to say how much of US defense/aerospace costs are due to..."overcharging" though. Also, it looks like the US had a hand in engine development for the initial experimental versions (P.1127). Costs were shared with West Germany as well (from harrier.org.uk). From the wiki:

By the end of 1958, barely eighteen months after the start of the project, all the main features of the P.1127 were developed with one exception, the reaction control system - this was resolved by April 1959.[6] As the P.1127 had been developed at a time of deep UK defense cuts; Hawker had to seek commercial funding, significant engine development funding came from the U.S.[4][7] Wind tunnel tests conducted by NASA Langley Research Center using a sub-scale model showed acceptable flight characteristics.[4][8]

I'm not sure how nimble and less wasteful NASA is, or even if it would be considered "cheap", but their X43A project costs were about 27 million 1958 British pounds ($230M US in 1997).

[arethuza]

Also the TSR-2 - which was a fantastic aircraft design:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAC_TSR-2

"All modern aircraft have four dimensions: span, length, height and politics. TSR-2 simply got the first three right."

[3327]

wow what a beauty !

[JonnieCache]

>If the government doesn't take the risk, long term innovation would be very difficult.

What I'm wondering is, if the taxpayers have to take all the risk and spend all the R&D money out of our own pockets, why don't we get to keep all the profits as well? I thought innovation was the role of heroic figures who eat risk for breakfast? I thought the massive, economy-distorting pay packages were justified by all that risk?

EDIT: obviously a lot more money is needed for marketing, manufacturing etc. But as I understand it the IP from these projects is basically given as a gift to favoured arms manufacturers when it's ready to become a product? Please correct me.

[arethuza]

The article says:

"the government's investment represents about 25% of the total"

Personally I am quite delighted to see my UK tax money going to back this project. Compared to the amounts we spend on much sillier projects it is a rounding error.

[e.g. My home city of Edinburgh is spending £1 billion on a rather short length of trams and the UK is spending ~£7 billion on two aircraft carriers when we can only afford to run one!]

[JonnieCache]

In this case that seems pretty fair. Although if it's only 25% and it's such a great project I wonder could our bounteous financial sector not cover it?

Are the trams really still not finished? Blimey. My commiserations.

[arethuza]

"Are the trams really still not finished?"

About a year from them actually running properly for passengers :-|

[3327]

You are absolutely right. I am no expert in IP or government affairs but I would imagine that stakes in the project become an issue and even though a fully working "final" product say version 1.0 for production might be ready, the investment necessary for production of such parts are massive.

Second to that is the know how and expertise in precision manufacturing for such products that require a high degree of reliability.

In addition to this continues R&D and investing must be done for problems and improvements.

In summary I guess the people "get" their "profits" in the form of an army/navy/space marines equipped with the latest air breathing rocket engine.