Posted Feb 07, 2008 at 06:40AM by Jay P. Listed in: Engineering Tags: MPH, Australia, London, Hydrogen, Mach 5
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Son of Concorde: New hypersonic airliner traveling at Mach 5 - Image 1Ever wished plane rides could be cut shorter to avoid air sickness or something?

Well, it's likely to happen in reality with the upcoming A2. This hypersonic airliner can travel with a top speed of 3,400 mph.

The ground-breaking form of transportation is currently the work of British Engineers at Reaction Engines Limited in Oxfordshire.

Alan Bond, a senior engineer in the project, noted that this 5.4 million GBP (US$ 10.5 million) scheme aims to study the types of propulsion systems required "to reduce long-distance flights, such as from Brussels to Sydney, to less than two to four hours."

Branded as the "Son of Concorde", it's at 433 feet long that can cruise an altitude of 100,00 feet. This commercial plane is designed to carry 300 passengers and can reach top speeds of Mach 5, five times the speed of sound.

Also, this hypersonic plane will only be fueled by liquid hydrogen. It will only produce water vapor and nitrous oxide as exhaust and the carbon emissions will be negligible.

Even if this plane has the potential to revolutionize air travel, it's has one certain drawback. It doesn't have windows. That shouldn't matter since the travel time's not going to be that long anyway.


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6 Comments


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   by Woden501 - 2008-02-07
 » Wow...

Takes the travel time from New York to Tokyo from 13 and a half hours to two hours and 25 minutes.

Not sure I would want to be able to see just how fast I was going anyway...

   by Lazyboy256 - 2008-02-07
 » Very cool but

will we being seeing this in the next 15 years or so? I hope so.
@ the article writer, "altitude of 100,00 feet"
You mean 10,000 =p


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   Re: whitelightnig - 2008-02-07
 » 10,000?

just 10,000? really?

I think he meant 100,000 dude. considering the Concorde flew up to 60,000...

   Re: Koolaidsred1 - 2008-02-08
 » srdg

yea 10,000 is really low it is definitely 100,000
   by kingtoid - 2008-02-08
 » a little ugly...

The Concorde was a beautiful plane and was thusly aerodynamic. This plane looks a little wrong if the one in the picture is the real model (yes I relize it is a rendering). Something just looks wrong about it. For instance the succesful supersonic planes so far have been beutiful aerodynamic like the SR-71 Blackbird. It is beutiful simple and fast. There is a term for the theory of how things that look beutiful perform the same, but I cannot remember it. There is also a word for it in mathematics.

Any way since I am ranting, the space shuttle has windows and it has MUCH more speed and heat than this would.

Just opinions.

But the wings look very short and I understand that up at 100,000 feet and 3,400 MPH you don't need much wing area but I am concerned about takeoff. It would have to accelerate very fast to get significant lift before the end of the runway.

   by ICED®AGON °±° - 2008-02-16
 » wow

that's next gen :P



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