Reaction Engines Ltd, an Oxfordshire company that is helping to develop the Synergetic Air-breathing Rocket Engine (Sabre), is to create 100 jobs. The engine will power the Skylon space plane, which is designed to travel at five-times the speed of sound and fly astronauts to the stratosphere in 15min.

Reaction Engines developed a key component of the engine — the ultra-lightweight heat exchangers. As part of the next stage of the firm’s expansion, it will leave its current base at the Culham Innovation Centre (in November) and move across the road to the Culham Science Centre, to join a number of other high-tech organisations.

Managing director Alan Bond said he expects that a test model of the Sabre engine will be made by 2018 or 2019. “The project is now moving into the next stage and there is an enormous amount of work to do. We are going to need people in different jobs, from engineering to administration, as we push towards getting a real Sabre engine tested.”

The firm first moved to the Culham Innovation Centre in 2001, employing just three people. Now it has 45 staff in Culham, with 15 others based in Wantage (Oxfordshire) and Newbury (Berkshire).