what happened to the HOTOL project?

Despite the failure of HOTOL itself, the basic idea still lives on even today in the form of a new vehicle called Skylon. Shortly after the cancellation of HOTOL in 1988, members of the Rolls Royce engine design team decided to form a new company, Reaction Engines Ltd., to continue developing the HOTOL concept. Led by Alan Bond, Reaction Engines developed a new improved version of the RB545 engine called the SABRE (Synergic Air Breathing Engine).

Antonov also investigated developing a more capable derivative of the An-225 called the An-325 with two additional engines that could carry a greater payload and possibly launch a larger version of HOTOL or a Russian vehicle. Unfortunately, Interim HOTOL fared little better than its predecessor and was cancelled in 1992 due to a lack of interest from either the European Space Agency (ESA) or the UK government.

I was wondering that myself.

I saw something in a newspaper recently that said an aircraft was being dreamed up that would do 4000MPH and reach Australia in 4 or 5 hours. The Hotol Rocket would supposedly do it in 25 minutes!

These ideas seem to come and go - just look at Howard Hughes' Sprucegoose.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/feb/05/the...

It changed it's name x