Thursday, February 07, 2008

Arrive before you've set off

A hypersonic passenger plane that could fly to Australia from northern Europe in less than five hours has been designed in Britain. With funding from the European Space Agency, a team of engineers and scientists has come up with the A2, a plane they believe could carry 300 passengers at a top speed of more than 3,000mph.

The A2 is designed to leave Brussels international airport, fly quietly and subsonically out into the north Atlantic at mach 0.9 before reaching mach 5 across the North Pole and heading over the Pacific to Australia. The flight time from Brussels to Australia, allowing for air traffic control, would be four hours 40 minutes. Do you know, I could almost put up with sitting in the same seat without a puff on my pipe for that long.

There are, however, a few hitches. For one thing, the A2 might not be great for anyone who suffers from claustrophobia, as it does not have portholes.  One solution Reaction Engines has proposed is to install flat screen panels where the window would be, showing images of the scene outside.

I can think of others e.g. a crash at hypersonic speeds would be just something else. I doubt if you'd have time to adopt the brace position at those speeds and if you did, your head would could well be propelled up to where your neck once belonged.

If this scheme gets off the ground (no pun intended); within 25 years 10% of air travel could be hypersonic. Of course you'd still have to be at the airport two hours before and wait up to an hour to reclaim your luggage. The flight time could work out to be the shortest part of the journey.

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