[russss]

They are starting with engines. The rest of their ideas are simply concepts at this stage. It's a small company.

The problem is that plenty of people have tried and failed to produce a successful air-breathing rocket engine. Nobody wants to invest any money in Reaction Engines until they can prove that the core concept that the company is built on works. And proving this costs a certain amount of cash. Some of this is being financed by the ESA, in very much the same way that NASA is financing new commercial spaceflight efforts.

In the next year or two we're either going to see them succeed and garner lots of investment, or fail and fade into obscurity.