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.
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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.
Created by Boom Sonic, the XB-1 prototype model – which is expecting to help prepare the company’s Overture commercial jet line – hopes to make long-haul flights a thing of the past.
It’s already been a long time in the making, with the design first being unveiled in 2016 and numerous tests having been conducted from 2017.
And just this month, it was revealed that the plane had entered the final stages of testing and was set to take to the skies by the end of this year.
The plane will allow people to travel from the UK to the US within hours. (Boom Sonic)
The tests on the plane happened in Mojave Desert, California which saw the craft reach altitudes of 10,400ft and a top speed of 232 knots (that’s 277 mph to you and me) and flew for approximately 15 minutes, according to a press release.
And Geppetto explained in an exclusive interview with The Sun that it was a thrilling experience to pilot the XB-1 jet.
He said: “The first time I went to land on an aircraft carrier, I had a hard time sleeping that night, and I also got nervous for some of the important flights for my qualifications.
“Interestingly though, I wasn’t really that nervous for the flights in the XB-1. I knew the team I was working with, I knew the air.
“I know this aeroplane better than any aeroplane I’ve ever flown.”
He added that he was a ‘ little bit nervous’ before taking flight in the jet, adding: “This aeroplane’s only ever flown for 12 minutes so far, this is a brand new aeroplane’.
Tristan ‘Geppetto’ Brandenburg was the XB-1’s test pilot (Boom Sonic)
“All of those things were frantically going through my head and then he [chase pilot] calls for my brake release.
“I relieve the brakes and the throttle is going into full afterburner, I can feel the acceleration and then it’s like ‘Oh okay, I know how to do this!
“This is what I’ve been training for, this is what I’ve been waiting for.”
Geppetto also added that not only will it be better for passengers, but also for pilots as he says the short flight times will allow them to spend more times with their families.
He also claims that it will also be good value for money – despite the airline only including business class seats, which Geppetto compared to the business class experience on a Boeing 777.
“If you have the option of choosing business class on a wide body jet that takes 6 hours to get somewhere or a comparable fare where you spend half as much time in the air, I would choose the one that got me there faster.” he said.
Boom Sonic hope to create a line of supersonic planes (John Keeble/Getty Images)
But he isn’t the only one happy with the progress as Boom Sonic CEO and founder, Blake Scholl, said in a press release following their second flight on 26 August: “XB-1 had a fantastic second flight this morning.
“Initial results indicate we’ve successfully resolved the findings from Flight One and are excited to continue flight testing on the path to supersonic flight.
“I’m proud of the team. Today’s flight is another step toward the return of supersonic passenger travel.”
The XB-1 plane is currently being used for test flights before Boom reveals the actual plane that’ll be used for the 3.5 journeys, The Sun reports – and Geppetto will be manning the controls for the remainder of its trial run.
The outlet further says that a round trip from London to NYC on the Overture is expected to cost $5,000 (£3,823) in comparison to the Concorde, which would have its passengers pay $20,000 (£15,293) today in light of inflation.
The journey from London to Houston, Texas in the US, had just about made it across the world’s second largest ocean and to the North American continent when it turned back over Canada and returned to the UK.
Having taken off at 9:27am on Monday morning from Heathrow, the plane spent nine hours and 27 minutes in the air before touching down at the same airport at 6:45am the following day (11 June).
Passengers had essentially lost an entire day and ended up right back where they started, and British Airways said the flight had to turn back because of a ‘minor technical issue’.
A flight from London to London in nine hours. (Massimo Insabato/Archivio Massimo Insabato/Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images)
The exact nature of this issue is unspecified, but it was enough to make the Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner turn back and re-cross the Atlantic Ocean.
According to The Independent, the amount of time the plane was in the air was only around 30 to 40 minutes shy of the time it’d have taken to get to Houston.
All passengers were re-booked onto other flights so they could make their journey to Houston, and had alternative arrangements made for those who’d missed their connecting flights.
British Airways also provided hotel accommodation for those who needed a place to stay before their journey could resume.
They said in a statement: “The flight returned to London Heathrow as a precaution due to a minor technical issue. It landed safely and customers disembarked as normal.
“We’ve apologised to our customers for the disruption to their journey.”
The plane developed a minor fault which made it turn back just as it reached Canada. (Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
It’s probably better to be safe than sorry in situations like this, as if there’s anywhere you don’t want a technical issue impacting your journey it’s thousands of feet up in the sky in a metal bee that’s powered by the refined essence of primordial ooze.
You don’t want to be one of those flights which ends up on the news because something has gone catastrophically wrong and everything is on fire.
Much better to have a bit of a chuckle about a plane which takes off from one airport, crosses an ocean and several hours later ends up right where it started.
Evidently the issues with the plane were not serious enough to necessitate an immediate landing, considering the British Airways flight turned back over the Atlantic Ocean and returned to London.
LADbible has contacted British Airways for further comment.
I mean, I don’t want to lose a whole day of annual leave just getting to the destination – that time is precious.
But there’s now set to be a plane that could get us Brits over to the States in just 3.5 hours.
That’s practically how long it can take sometimes to drive home from a busy event in another city.
Boom are planning to unveil a supersonic flight that travels at twice the usual speed.
So, a flight to New York from London could soon take less than four hours – if you timed that properly, you could basically get a whole day over there after travelling.
There’s been the odd delay and postponement so far but Boom reportedly plans to unveil the first Overture in 2025, hoping to attain type certification in 2029.
Boom Supersonic
The ‘Superfactory’ construction began in North Carolina at the beginning of this year and next year is said to see the start of production of the Overture airliner.
Ok, so saving time on travel is great and all, but will the cost of that be worth it?
Well, unsurprisingly, it’s unlikely going to be cheap to fly over to New York that quickly.
While it was quite before a lot of our time, the Concorde was of course the previous famed supersonic airliner for us ‘normal’ people.
But as aircrafts were retired back in 2003, it’s difficult to use that as a mark for how much the Boom flights might cost. Let’s face it, everything is a whole lot more expensive now.
And statements from Boom suggest that the company hopes to make supersonic travel more accessible and affordable than it was with the Concorde – as per History-computer.
Boom Supersonic
Boom previously stated that the cost of a ticket on Overture would be about the same as the current business class.
History-computer works that based on inflation, a New York to London round trip would be about $20,000 (£15,850) on the Concorde today.
CEO of Boom Supersonic, Blake Scholl, previously announced that operating economics in place would allow the flights to cost only £5,000 (£3,960) on the same route.
According to the New York Post, NASA and Lockheed Martin unveiled the X-59 on 12 January, and the plane has been dubbed the ‘son of Concorde’.
The plane is a one-of-a-kind made as part of NASA’s attempt to develop ‘quiet’ supersonic aircraft.
With a giant nose that takes up a third of the aircraft’s length blocking the pilot’s view those in control of the aircraft rely on a screen to see what’s in front of them.
This has all been done to make the supersonic plane faster and help test how to get around the noisy part of breaking the sound barrier.
ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images
It’s part of efforts to get around a US ban on civilian supersonic aircraft flying in their airspace from 1973, and that massive nose is meant to help hugely.
If ‘quiet’ supersonic travel could be cracked then it’s possible that a plethora of new opportunities could be opened up by the development in technology, but there’s a lot of ‘ifs’ in place right now.
Anyone hoping to fly the X-59 as a passenger is also going to be sorely disappointed as well, because while some call it the ‘son of Concorde’ it’s nowhere near as capable as the passenger jet designed and built by British and French experts decades ago was.
The X-59 is expected to reach speeds of 925mph, while Concorde was able to travel at 1,350mph and it could carry passengers too, while the ‘son of Concorde’ is only meant to test the sound.
The X-59 is set to undertake its first flight later this year, and will then fly over a number of US cities to gauge public opinion on the sound it makes flying over.
Matt Cardy/Getty Images
If supersonic travel can be made quiet then it could lead to the development of new supersonic passenger planes again, ones that are allowed to fly across the US instead of just up to the coast.
Then again, being able to fly between London and New York in three-and-a-half hours isn’t quite getting close to what Concorde could manage back in the day.
The legendary aircraft still holds the record for the fastest commercial transatlantic flight on 7 February, 1996 as one of the supersonic planes completed the journey across the Atlantic Ocean in two hours, 52 minutes and 59 seconds.
Almost 30 years on and no civilian aircraft has made the trip between JFK and Heathrow faster than Concorde managed to.
By way of comparison, the fastest ever journey between the two by a subsonic civilian aircraft was four hours and 56 minutes long.
A British Airways 747 arriving 80 minutes ahead of schedule in 2020 set the record after it was buoyed along by a jet stream caused by Storm Ciara.
All these years later, that magnificent achievement that was Concorde still reigns supreme.
