Featured Image Credit: Destinus
Topics: Technology, Travel
Kit Roberts
A European company is looking to manufacture a hypersonic passenger aircraft which, they claim, will be able to fly from New York to London in just 90 minutes.
It's been just over 20 years since Air France retired Concorde from service due to safety concerns and operating costs.
Concorde could make the journey from London to New York in as little as three hours.
However, there were numerous high costs associated with the aircraft, including a huge fuel usage per passenger, as well as concerns around the plane causing a sonic boom above residential neighbourhoods.
Advert
But now, a European company is looking to top the service provided by Concorde, with a so-called 'hypersonic' passenger aircraft now in development.
Startup Destinus now has plans for a hypersonic passenger plane. Current designs are made up of a 'business jet' - meaning a small private plane - that can carry around 25 people, called the Destinus S.
It would cruise at an extremely high altitude of around around 108,000 ft - for context, the workhorse airliner the Boeing 737 can cruise at an altitude of around 41,000ft, so the hyper-sonic plane is some 60,000ft higher.
It would also put the airliner at a speed of Mach five, meaning it would be capable of travelling around five times the speed of sound.
In theory, this would mean that the aircraft could travel from Paris to New York in 90 minutes.
Another model of jet, called the Destinus L, will be designed to carry around 300-400 people.
The aircraft are currently still in development, and Destinus is expecting the first deliveries to be available around 2032 to 2035 for the Destinus L. Meanwhile the Destinus L will be available around the 2040s.
They will use liquid hydrogen fuel and ramjet engines for their power, and a turbot will be paired with an afterburner to get the craft from subsonic to supersonic speeds. The ramjet will then kick in to take the vehicle into hyper-sonic speed.
The hydrogen fuel is also key to the design as hydrogen is also an effective cooling agent. This will be essential to make sure that aircrafts doesn't overheat during its flights.
At the Paris Air show, senior business development manager Martina Löfqvist said: "It's somewhere of a mix between a rocket and an airplane.
"We've been speaking with a lot of airlines and airports who also support the notion that hydrogen will be the future of aviation."
The project is not proving cheap, with Destinus currently funding its hypersonic programme by providing services to the energy sector.