"The hub will support the creation of jobs and provide career opportunities for local graduates and professionals."
The origins of Reaction Engines go back to the Hotol project in the 1980s. This was a futuristic space plane that caught the public imagination with the prospect of a British aircraft flying beyond the atmosphere.The secret sauce of Hotol was heat exchanger technology, an attempt to cool the super-heated 1,000C air that enters an engine at hypersonic speeds.
Without cooling this will melt aluminium, and is, Mr Varvill says, "literally too hot to handle".Fast forward three decades to October 2024 and Reaction Engines was bringing the heat exchanger to life at sites in the UK and US.UK Ministry of Defence funding took the company into hypersonic research with Rolls-Royce for an unmanned aircraft. But that was not enough to keep the business afloat.
Rolls-Royce declines to go into details about Reaction's collapse, but Mr Varvill is more specific."Rolls-Royce said it had other priorities and the UK military has very little money."
Aviation is a business with a very long gestation time for a product. It can take 20 years to develop an aircraft. This unforgiving journey is known as crossing the Valley of Death.
Mr Varvill knew the business had to raise more funds towards the end of 2024 but big investors were reluctant to jump on board.the platform should penalise those who don't provide the correct information.
"Since Natasha's Law has come into effect I feel that, in general, allergy labelling has improved, but it's frightening that a huge platform like TikTok does not have adequate measures to ensure that labelling is in place," she said."The thought of someone with a food allergy, or an allergy parent, buying items that they assume are safe, when in fact they may not be, is really scary."
Mr Williams from Anaphylaxis UK says the ultimate responsibility lies with the seller but does think TikTok could do more."At the moment it's being used as a platform to sell things that may not be safe. They [TikTok] do need to do more," he said, "There's a lot of people making a lot of money, great side hustle, but they're putting people at risk."