AN OXFORDSHIRE firm’s decades-old dream of building a plane that can take off into space has taken a giant leap towards becoming reality after receiving the backing of Europe’s top scientists.

The European Space Agency (Esa) has said it can find no reasons to scupper Culham-based Reaction Engines’ Skylon project, which aims to launch an unpiloted spaceplane into outer space by 2017.

Alan Bond, Richard Varvill and John Scott-Scott have been pursuing their dream for 39 years, and spent more than a decade moonlighting and holding down second jobs while they worked on their revolutionary plans in their living rooms. Mr Bond, the company’s managing director, said: “We now feel we are on our way to make this happen, and just for a change the Brits are out in front, and in a very commercial world.

“Over the years we have been working on this.

“This is by far the biggest step forwards, managing to convince other expert people in the field that this is a viable project.

“They said it is technologically feasible and commercially feasible, and there is no reason it should not progress.”

The company believes it has overcome huge technological hurdles to design a plane able take off from airport runways before blasting into space at a fraction of the cost of a rocket launch.

The next stage of testing the spaceplane’s engine technology will take place later this year, before further development work until 2014.

If funding can be found, the first Skylons should blast into space in 2016 or 2017, capable of carrying a 15-tonne cargo of equipment.

In the future, passenger pods could carry tourists and scientists into space.

The project, which could employ 70,000 people, will cost £7.5bn, equivalent to the construction of the Channel Tunnel, but Mr Bond said all the money could be found from private backers.

It comes as Kidlington-based Sir Richard Branson is preparing to launch his new Virgin Galactic service, which could take passengers into orbit.

Mr Bond, 67, said: “It is a bit terrifying when I look at some of the original documents and see the date on them, but it does not seem to have taken that long to get here.

“We have had moments of despair, but I think we are beyond those now.”

The UK Space Agency commissioned Esa’s propulsion experts to examine the project’s feasibility, with 100 aerospace experts in Europe, Russia, the US, South Korea and Japan probing the project’s feasibility at a conference in Harwell last September.