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Science & Technology

Hypersonic passenger jet to fly at 16,000mph

By T.K. Randall
January 31, 2016 · Comment icon 38 comments

The scramjet would be capable of travelling at 16,000mph. Image Credit: Imaginactive.org
The Antipode luxury business airplane will be able to travel from London to New York in 11 minutes.
The plane, which is the brainchild of Canadian industrial designer Charles Bombardier, will travel at 24 times the speed of sound - that's only slightly slower than the Space Shuttle's re-entry speed.

Its unusual design, which features a short body and angled wings, is quite unlike any other airplane out there and it even incorporates reusable rocket boosters and a built-in scramjet engine.
"I wanted to create an aircraft concept capable of reaching its antipode - or diametrical opposite - as fast as possible," said Bombardier during an interview with Forbes.

At 16,000 miles per hour the ridiculously fast plane would be capable of travelling from New York to Sydney in just 30 minutes, however not even NASA has been able to develop a stable enough engine for such a vehicle and the g-forces involved would be crippling.

It remains to be seen whether the ambitious design will ever make it off the drawing board.



Source: New York Daily News | Comments (38)




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Recent comments on this story
Comment icon #29 Posted by BeastieRunner 8 years ago
Appropriately named gent.
Comment icon #30 Posted by regeneratia 8 years ago
I wont fly on this lol Me neither. Only a fool would. I think you'll find the technology would work in such a way that the craft could travel to other locations too. Now THAT would be very nice. Paris for dinner.
Comment icon #31 Posted by Hawkin 8 years ago
I think the military already have aircraft capable of such speeds but the design and materials are kept classified. Totally agree. If the SR71 was flying at Mach 3 in the early 1960's, Then there's surely something much faster that we don't know about.
Comment icon #32 Posted by Noteverythingisaconspiracy 8 years ago
If the Concorde was too expensive to run flying at mach 2, I fail to see how this would be able to make any financial sense. With only 10 passenger it would be even less economical than Concorde. Don't get me wrong the Concorde was a beautiful plane and an impressive technological feat, but it was never an affordable passenger transport.
Comment icon #33 Posted by Derek Willis 8 years ago
If the Concorde was too expensive to run flying at mach 2, I fail to see how this would be able to make any financial sense. With only 10 passenger it would be even less economical than Concorde. Don't get me wrong the Concorde was a beautiful plane and an impressive technological feat, but it was never an affordable passenger transport. Perhaps the target market for the super-fast plane is billionaires. People like Bill Gates have incomes of millions of dollars each day. Perhaps they would happily pay to get from continent to continent twenty times faster than everyone else.
Comment icon #34 Posted by ChaosRose 8 years ago
I wonder what size creator would this jet make, if crashed at the speed of 13,000 mph They could probably do away with that ridiculous...in the event of a "water landing" speech.
Comment icon #35 Posted by Derek Willis 8 years ago
Totally agree. If the SR71 was flying at Mach 3 in the early 1960's, Then there's surely something much faster that we don't know about. NASA and Lockheed Martin spent over a $1.3 billion developing the X-33, an unmanned sub-orbital "space plane". A prototype was almost finished before the program was cancelled in 2001. Much of the technology needed for the Skreemr will be hidden in a hangar somewhere.
Comment icon #36 Posted by Derek Willis 8 years ago
The heat and pressure are caused by atmospheric drag and space crafts do not reach Mach10 in the lower atmosphere. The Space Shuttles, for example, reduced their engine thrust level down to 67% after around 50 seconds into the flight and short b4 passing the sound barrier to reduce the dynamic pressure to the space crafts structure. After passing the barrier of sound and being in the higher atmosphere, so less drag, the engine thrust level was increased to 100% again. I remember reading somewhere that the throttling down at max-q was more to do with the loads transferring to the structures hol... [More]
Comment icon #37 Posted by toast 8 years ago
I remember reading somewhere that the throttling down at max-q was more to do with the loads transferring to the structures holding the external tank to the shuttle, rather than the loads on the shuttle itself. Of course the q-max factor was also related to the piggyback structures of the ET but it was also relevant to the orbiters structures as the q-max factor is relevant for all kind of rockets/shuttles rockets heading orbit. I would imagine the Skreemr would be pretty high before itreached Mach 10, in the same way Concorde had to be at 60,000 feet to reduce drag and heating at Mach 2. Yeah... [More]
Comment icon #38 Posted by Derek Willis 8 years ago
Of course the q-max factor was also related to the piggyback structures of the ET but it was also relevant to the orbiters structures as the q-max factor is relevant for all kind of rockets/shuttles rockets heading orbit. Yeah but I dont think that scramjet technology will be used in the near future for commercial applications for various reasons so the Mach20 dream for private individuals will remain a dream. To date, the use of this still not fully developed technology is limited to military devices like Cruise Missiles and AAMs which just reach speeds around Mach4 to 5 or so. Military R&... [More]


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