Boeing's planned hypersonic airliner could fly from New York to London in two hours



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Boeing unveiled its plans for what could be the world's first hypersonic airliner, a futuristic and sleek looking aircraft that would be able to fly five times at this speed – Mach 5 in the language of aviation – it would be possible to travel from New York to London in about two hours instead of the eight hours that takes the trip. A conventional airliner

This means that someone could travel abroad for a meeting and return home in one day.

"Humanity has always wanted to go faster," said Kevin Bowcutt, a hypersonic scientific leader at Boeing. "People can not save time, so there is an inherent value in time."

The still unnamed aircraft would be much faster not only by conventional aircraft that sail about 550 miles to the hour, but also by the Concorde supersonic aircraft that flew over the North Atlantic Ocean from 1976 to 2003. Concorde, produced by a Franco-British consortium, could reach Mach 2.04, which means that the trip New York-London took a little less than four hours

. in broad strokes at an industry conference in Atlanta this week, could be used for military applications as well as commercial aviation. But it may take 20 to 30 years to get off the ground, says Bowcutt.

Supersonic and hypersonic (five times the speed of sound or faster) were considered the next era of commercial aviation less the 1950s. But with the exception of the Concorde, which was permanently immobilized three years after a fatal accident in France, the construction of such aircraft has proved to be an elusive goal.

"This is a moment a dream," says Stuart Craig, an assistant professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering at the University of Arizona, who is not affiliated with Boeing . "We have struggled for this hypersonic technology for nearly half a century, but in recent years, advances in computational technology and materials technology have done much more."

A Key Question for Boeing and Others Aircraft builders will wonder if airline passengers would be willing to pay higher ticket prices than would require hypersonic air travel.

High prices and limited travel played a role in the disappearance of the Concorde, said Mike Sinnett, vice president of Boeing. president of the future development of the plane. "We can do all kinds of cool things, but those cool things have to lead to something that creates value, or in the end, it's not going to be so successful," he said. "In general, people stole the [the Concorde] as a novelty – it did not change the world, and the economy was not good."

But Craig said the new technologies and designs for supersonic and hypersonic aircraft Concorde's routes were limited in part because regulators banned supersonic travel over populated areas to protect people on the ground. To hear the sonic sound bangs that the aircraft has created. But in the years following the Concorde's retirement, Craig said researchers at NASA and elsewhere have made considerable progress in mitigating supersonic booms caused by supersonic and hypersonic devices [19659007]. It would be a bit like flying in a conventional plane – but with a few key differences.

Rather than sailing between 30,000 and 40,000 feet, as is often the case for conventional airliners, a hypersonic gear such as that proposed by Boeing at 95,000 feet.

"At this altitude, you will see the curvature of the Earth below you," said Bowcutt. "You will not see the entire Earth, but you will see the curvature – and above you, you will have the blackness of space.This is also a very gentle course as there will be There is no atmospheric turbulence at this altitude. "

But if there would be less turbulence, it would take longer to speed up to Mach 5. On a conventional flight, passengers feel the sensation to be pushed back into their seats for about a minute during and shortly after takeoff. On a hypersonic flight, said Bowcutt, this sensation would last about 12 minutes

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