Alan Bond (born 1944) is a British

mechanical Mechanical may refer to: Machine * Machine (mechanical), a system of mechanisms that shape the actuator input to achieve a specific application of output forces and movement * Mechanical calculator, a device used to perform the basic operations of ...

and

aerospace engineer Aerospace engineering is the primary field of engineering concerned with the development of aircraft and spacecraft. It has two major and overlapping branches: aeronautical engineering and astronautical engineering. Avionics engineering is si ...

, who served as Managing Director of Reaction Engines LtdReaction Engines Ltd. 2006
/ref> and associated with

Project Daedalus Project Daedalus (named after Daedalus, the Greek mythological designer who crafted wings for human flight) was a study conducted between 1973 and 1978 by the British Interplanetary Society to design a plausible uncrewed interstellar probe.Pro ...

Blue Streak missile The de Havilland Propellers Blue Streak was a British Intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM), and later the first stage of the Europa satellite launch vehicle. Blue Streak was cancelled without entering full production. The project was ...

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 ...

Reaction Engines Skylon Skylon is a series of concept designs for a reusable single-stage-to-orbit spaceplane by the British company Reaction Engines Limited (Reaction), using SABRE (rocket engine), SABRE, a combined-cycle, Air breathing engines, air-breathing rocket ...

and the

Reaction Engines A2 The Reaction Engines Limited LAPCAT Configuration A2 (called the LAPCAT A2) is a design study for a hypersonic speed jet airliner intended to provide, long range, high capacity commercial transportation. The aircraft was designed, ...

hypersonic passenger aircraft.

Career

Alan Bond is an engineer, with a degree in Mechanical Engineering. He worked on liquid rocket engines, principally the RZ.2 (liquid oxygen / kerosene) and the RZ.20 (liquid oxygen / liquid hydrogen) at Rolls Royce under the tutelage of Val Cleaver, and he was also involved with flight trials of the Blue Streak at Woomera. He then worked for about 20 years at UK Atomic Energy Authority's Culham Laboratory on nuclear fusion, on the JET and RFX nuclear research projects. He was engaged in studies for the application of fusion to interplanetary space travel. He is the leading author of the report on the

interstellar, fusion powered starship concept, published by the

British Interplanetary Society The British Interplanetary Society (BIS), founded in Liverpool in 1933 by Philip E. Cleator, is the oldest existing space advocacy organisation in the world. Its aim is exclusively to support and promote astronautics and space exploration. Str ...

. In the 1980s, he was one of the creators of the

space plane project, along with Dr. Bob Parkinson of British Aerospace. Alan Bond brought a

precooled jet engine The precooled jet engine is a concept that enables jet engines with turbomachinery, as opposed to ramjets, to be used at high speeds. Precooling restores some or all of the performance degradation of the engine compressor (by preventing rotating ...

design he had invented to the

project, and this became the Rolls Royce

RB545 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 B ...

rocket engine. In 1989, he formed

Reaction Engines Limited Reaction Engines Limited is a British aerospace manufacturer based in Oxfordshire, England. History and personnel In , Reaction Engines was founded by Alan Bond (lead engineer on the British Interplanetary Society's Project Daedalus) and ...

(REL) with fellow rocket engineers, Richard Varvill and John Scott-Scott. REL is developing a single-stage orbital space plane Skylon, and other advanced vehicles including the

Reaction Engines LAPCAT A2 The Reaction Engines Limited LAPCAT Configuration A2 (called the LAPCAT A2) is a Aerospace engineering, design study for a Supersonic_transport#Hypersonic_transport, hypersonic speed jet airliner intended to provide, long range, high s ...

hypersonic airliner concept as part of the European LAPCAT programme. The projects have involved the practical development of hydrogen fuelled, pre-cooled air breathing rocket engines, most notably, an engine called

SABRE A sabre ( French: �sabʁ or saber in American English) is a type of backsword with a curved blade associated with the light cavalry of the early modern and Napoleonic periods. Originally associated with Central European cavalry such as th ...

(Synergetic Air Breathing Rocket Engine) as well as the

Scimitar A scimitar ( or ) is a single-edged sword with a convex curved blade associated with Middle Eastern, South Asian, or North African cultures. A European term, ''scimitar'' does not refer to one specific sword type, but an assortment of different ...

and STERN engines. Bond retired from Reaction Engines in late 2017.

Köfels impact event

In a self-published bookBond, A. and M. Hempsell, 2008, ''A Sumerian Observation of the Köfels' Impact Event'', WritersPrintshop, London, United Kingdom. 128 pp. co-authored with

Mark Hempsell Mark Hempsell is a British aerospace engineer and CEO of Hempsell Astronautics Ltd. which is currently designing the Universal Space Interface Standard (USIS), a system which aims to standardise berthing, docking and attachment of satellites and ...

, Bond claimed to have deciphered an Assyrian clay tablet dated to 700 BC that they argued might describe an asteroid strike causing a landslide at Köfels in

Tyrol Tyrol (; historically the Tyrole; de-AT, Tirol ; it, Tirolo) is a historical region in the Alps - in Northern Italy and western Austria. The area was historically the core of the County of Tyrol, part of the Holy Roman Empire, Austrian Emp ...

in 3123 BC. They relate this to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.Fleming, N., 2008
''Clay tablet holds clue to asteroid mystery''
Daily Telegraph The landslide is normally dated to about 9800 years ago, long before the tablet was recorded and over 4500 years before the Bristol researchers' date.Kubik, P. W., S. Ivy-Ochs, J. Masarik, M. Frank, and C. Schluchter, 1998, ''10Be and 26Al production rates deduced from an instantaneous event within the dendro-calibration curve, the landslide of Köfels, Otz Valley, Austria''. Earth and Planetary Science Letters. vol. 161, no. 1-4, pp. 231–241 Bond and Hempsell have suggested that there was contamination, a claim that has been denied by other research.Ivy-Ochs, S., H. Heuberger, P. W. Kubik, H. Kerschner, G. Bonani, M. Frank, and C. Schluchter, 1998, ''The age of the Kofels event. Relative, 14C and cosmogenic isotope dating of an early Holocene landslide in the central Alps (Tyrol, Austria)''. Zeitschrift für Gletscherkunde und Glazialgeologie. vol. 34, pp. 57–70. The impact theory had already been proposed in 1936 by the Austrian scientist

Franz Eduard Suess Eduard Suess (; 20 August 1831 - 26 April 1914) was an Austrian geologist and an expert on the geography of the Alps. He is responsible for hypothesising two major former geographical features, the supercontinent Gondwana (proposed in 1861) and t ...

and later on by

Alexander Tollmann Dr. Alexander Tollmann (27 June 1928 – 8 August 2007) was an Austrian professor of geology. He was born in Vienna. He had been professor at the Geologischen Institut of the University of Vienna since 1969. He was a political activist working to ...

, who hypothesized impacts in around 7640 BC and 3150 BC, respectively. The question of whether an impact caused the landslide has been researched by others and no evidence was found for an asteroid, meteorite or comet, and geologists consider it to have been caused by other factors such as 'deep creep'.Deutsch, A., C. Koeberl, J.D. Blum, B.M. French, B.P. Glass, R. Grieve, P. Horn, E.K. Jessberger, G. Kurat, W.U. Reimold, J. Smit, D. stoffler, and S.R. Taylor, 1994, ''The impact-flood connection: Does it exist?'' Terra Nova. vol. 6, pp. 644–650.

Television documentary

The work of Bond and his colleagues Richard Varvill and John Scott-Scott on the development of the

and SKYLON space planes was chronicled in a 50-minute TV documentary, ''The Three Rocketeers'', first broadcast on BBC Four on 12 Sept 2012.BBC Four: The Three Rocketeers
retrieved 14 September 2012

Publications

* Project Daedalus Study Group: A. Bond et al., ''Project Daedalus – The Final Report on the BIS Starship Study'',

Journal of the British Interplanetary Society The ''Journal of the British Interplanetary Society'' (''JBIS'') is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal that was established in 1934. The journal covers research on astronautics and space science and technology, including spacecraft design, ...

(JBIS) Interstellar Studies, Supplement 1978 * J.R. Last, A. Bond, E. Salpietro: ''Mechanical tests on insulation systems for the JET poloidal coils'' in: Proceedings of the Tenth Symposium on Fusion Technology, Padua, Italy, 4–9 September 1978. * A. Bond, A.R. Martin: ''A conservative estimate of the number of habitable planets in the Galaxy'' in:

, Conference on Interstellar Travel and Communication, London, England, 4, 5 April 1977.

, vol. 31, November 1978. * A. Bond: ''On the improbability of intelligent extraterrestrials'';

(Interstellar Studies), vol. 35, May 1982, pp. 195–207. * A.R. Martin, A. Bond: ''Is mankind unique?'' in:

, Meeting on Space, Brighton, England, 12–14 November 1982;

(Interstellar Studies) (ISSN 0007-084X), vol. 36, May 1983, pp. 223–225. * A. Bond: ''A fully reusable launch vehicle for Europe?'' in: Proceedings of the Conference on Space – Technology and opportunity; Geneva, Switzerland, 28–30 May 1985 (A86-44526 21–12). Pinner, England, Online Publications, 1985, pp. 221–229. * Alan Bond, Anthony R. Martin, Robert A. Bond: ''Concept studies for a laser powered Orbital Transfer Vehicle'', in: ''38th IAF, International Astronautical Congress'', Brighton, England, 10–17 October 1987. * A. Bond, R. Varvill, J. Scott-Scott, T. Martin: ''SKYLON – a realistic single stage spaceplane'',

Spaceflight Spaceflight (or space flight) is an application of astronautics to fly spacecraft into or through outer space, either with or without humans on board. Most spaceflight is uncrewed and conducted mainly with spacecraft such as satellites in o ...

vol. 45, 158 (2003) * R. Varvill, A. Bond
''A Comparison of Propulsion Concepts for SSTO Reusable Launchers''
JBIS vol. 56, pp108–117 (2003) * R. Varvill, A. Bond
''The SKYLON Spaceplane''
JBIS vol. 57, 22 (2004) * H. Webber, A. Bond, M. Hempsell
''The sensitivity of precooled air-breathing engine performance to heat exchanger design parameters''

, vol. 60, 2007, pp. 188–196. * A. Bond, M. Hempsell: ''A Sumerian Observation of the Köfels' Impact Event'', Writersprintshop, 2008, * H. Webber, S. Feast, A. Bond
''Heat Exchanger Design in Combined Cycle Engines''

, vol. 62, No. 4, April 2009, pp. 122–130. * M. Hempsell, A. Bon
''"Technical and Operations Design of the SKYLON Upper Stage"''

, vol. 63, 136–144 (2010) * S. Feast, A. Bon
''"A Design for an Orbital Assembly Facility for Complex Missions"''

, vol. 63, 151–156 (2010)

References

External links