UK government invests in Sabre air-breathing rocket engine

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...

For those that don't know, airbreathing engines are MUCH MORE efficient than conventional rocket engines.

Not only in terms of weight saved from not having to lug around too much O2, but also because of the way it works inherently.

I decided to make a space game once, with real world stuff on it, and settled for the Triton engine for my game spaceship, I did lots of research about rocket engines, and I was very sad when I compared them to airplane engines and it was clear how better they were, and yet useless in space.

But I never had this idea of mixing both... It sounds so awesome that I cannot describe it.

Also it allow some sci-fi stuff that is frequent but so far very broken (that is small fighter spaceship planes hybrids that can enter and leave atmosphere at will, that for now were usually handwaved by the author to explain that it has some weird super efficient rocket engine... with this tech that sort of stuff is less improbable)