A new hypersonic plane looks to take up the mantle from the retired Concorde
The world’s first hypersonic jet, which can travel from London to New York City in just one hour, is set to go into testing.
Air travel has revolutionised the way humans are able to travel around the world.
Before we had planes the only way to make it overseas was by boat, which meant that travellers could expect to spend an average of seven to 10 days at sea in order to go from London to New York.
Travelling over land wasn’t much easier either as it takes around four to six days to from the east to the west coast of the USA.
Which has certainly made our ability to visit distant lands much more accessible.
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London to New York in one hour? Sign me up (Venus Aerospace)
However our travel times could end up getting slashed even further, as one company is hoping to bring hypersonic travel into the our day-to-day lives.
What is hypersonic travel?
Unlike your regular run of the mill passenger plane, a hypersonic jet would travel at around 3,000 miles per hour or Mach 5 (which is five times the speed of sound). To put that into context, the distance between London and NYC is about 3,461 miles.
In other words, a hypersonic jet is fast.
Of course, super speed air travel itself isn’t anything new, with the now-retired Concorde holding the record for the fastest flight between London and New York, at 2 hours, 52 minutes and 59 seconds.
Which means a hypersonic jet could theoretically do that trip in a third of the time.
The company looking to pull off this feat of engineering is Venus Aerospace, which is currently working on Venus Detonation Ramjet 2000 lb Thrust Engine.
If successful, this engine would travel at a maximum of Mach 6 (around 3,600 mph). This would make travel from our capital city to the Big Apple around an hour from take off to touch down, factoring in the time needed to get up to altitude and full speed.
How a hypersonic jet could look (Venus Aerospace)
Venus Aerospace is also hoping to run their first test flights next year, with the end goal being to make hypersonic travel available for both commercial and defence aircraft.
“This engine makes the hypersonic economy a reality. We are excited to partner with Velontra to achieve this revolution in high speed flight, given their expertise in high-speed air combustion,” Venus Aerospace co-founder Andrew Duggleby said at Up.Summit, where the engine was unveiled.
As to whether or not hypersonic flight would stick around for longer than Concorde is something we’ll just have to wait and see.
Featured Image Credit: (Venus Aerospace)
