Boeing's future "toy" will take you from London to New York in two hours
Imagine flying from London a New York in just two hours, when now it takes seven . This, which may seem like science fiction, is something that arises with the hypersonic aircraft , a ultrafast airplane concept that replaces the supersonic planes, which will sound like the elders of the place.
Boeing aircraft company is in charge of this feat of engineering that would cross the Atlantic and return on the same day, as if it were an AVE Madrid-Barcelona . Even the Pacific could be crossed in three hours, while the connection Europe-Australia It would be done in five.
According to the project, **the plane will travel at a speed of Mach 5**, which is equivalent to about 6200 kilometers per hour . Thus, the aircraft would travel at five times the speed of sound . Its uses could be both military and commercial flights. "Supersonic isn't fast enough to go back and forth in a day," said Kevin Bowcutt, chief scientist for hypersonics at Boeing. “There's an inherent value in speed,” he summarized, that appeals to business and military travelers. For him, humanity has always wanted to go faster, and hypersonic technology will allow to do it like never before.
Nevertheless, will have to wait. The plane was presented a few weeks ago at a congress of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, but it is scheduled to be launched within 20 or 30 years. At the moment, the company is working on it with specialists in hypersonic technology, and the first concepts have already been presented.
WHAT DOES HYPERSONIC TECHNOLOGY CONSIST OF?
To reach those speeds and make the flight a success, the ship would use new cooling systems to reduce the heat ; the company would be thinking of liquid methane as refrigerant.
A titanium cover is also proposed to protect the passengers, because the friction of the air reached at that speed would heat the device up to about 600 degrees Celsius.
Mach 5 would not be reached at the right moment of takeoff. For now, Boeing engineers think of a motor capable of reaching very different speeds and without the need for blades or blades : those of a traditional motor would disintegrate at those speeds. In addition, in the hypersonic aircraft they are not necessary, since they do not need to compress the air, your goal in the traditional aircraft to get the engines running.
THE TECHNOLOGY THAT WILL REVOLUTIONIZE AIR TRAVEL
Since the mid-1950s, Boeing has been working on hypersonic technology . In addition, there are Chinese and Russian engineers investigating it. In turn, the American company Lockheed Martin , focused on the aeronautical and military fields, is working in your own hypersonic aircraft model , the Lockheed Martin SR-72, intended for intelligence tasks.
Boeing also announced a hypersonic spy plane earlier this year. And also at the beginning of the year it became known that some Chinese researchers have been testing a supersonic aircraft model, with which you would travel from Beijing to New York in just 2 hours, when it now takes 14. To function, they have a second layer of wings that minimizes air resistance at high speed.
SUPERSONIC BACKGROUND
At Boeing they are very hopeful about the possibilities of hypersonic technology. And as for now we will have to wait a few decades to taste it, while we can remember the human feat most similar to this: that of the supersonic plane. Perhaps the concept of the supersonic plane sounds familiar to you because they were with us more than a decade ago.
Talking about the supersonic plane is do it from Concorde , a ship of British and French parents that was in operation for 1976 to 2003 , although the first tests took place a few years earlier.
The Aerospatiale-BAC Concorde (your full name) arrived at your destination in much less time thanks to reaching speeds difficult for conventional ships . Unfortunately, the Concorde had an accident in 2000 , in which its 109 passengers and crew and four people died in the hotel where it hit. With that only stain in his entire career and low profitability, his life ended in 2003.
On the other hand, compared to the Concorde , the new Boeing project would go at a speed 2.5 times faster than the French plane , and would be able to reach a greater height, **up to 30,000 feet (about 9100 meters)** more, up to almost 29,000 meters.
But it was not the only supersonic plane . Soviet-made, the Tupolev T-144 it was larger and could carry more passengers **(140 vs. 120)**.
However, the noise it generated was very great, and it consumed so much fuel that its operation was impractical. If to that is added that the ship was not soundproofed , there were situations as bizarre as travelers communicating through papers .
For its part, NASA announced in April this year the construction of the X-Plane , a piloted supersonic aircraft whose virtues would include that of flying silently (there were many critics for the sound of the Concorde) and with the aim of providing new data to popularize travel with this technology without noise.
Because the noise they generated, along with the cost of tickets, was one of the main problems of previous supersonic aircraft. When the plane broke the sound barrier, Mach 1, it generated the so-called sonic boom, a backfire sound that forced the Concorde to fly at supersonic speed only when it was in the middle of the sea. Thus, its usefulness was limited to transoceanic flights, something that reduced its profitability. And let's not forget the problems of the passengers of the Tupolev T-144 to talk to each other.
Another current supersonic aircraft is the AS2 , from the American company Aerion Supersonic and that it would be ready for flights with few passengers in 2023. As you can see, there are options for all tastes. Who knows: With this panorama, perhaps in the next few years, supersonic and hypersonic flights will be the most common to make our transoceanic trips.