![]() ![]() The top speed of Concorde, one of only two supersonic passenger planes to have flown commercially, was Mach 2.04 (1,350 mph). It was basically a rocket with a seat, designed to achieve the record, and also had to be launched from altitude by a B-52.įor an air-breathing aircraft – that is, powered by jet engines rather than a rocket – capable of taking off and landing by itself, the speed record is “just” Mach 3.3 (about 2,200 mph), set by the SR-71 Blackbird, a military spy plane, in 1976. Both aircraft had to be launched from altitude by a B-52 bomber, and then brought up to speed by a rocket, highlighting the intricacies of these type of high-speed flights.įor aircraft with humans on board, the current absolute speed record is Mach 6.7 (4,520 mph), set in 1967 by the X-15. “We expect it to be profitable at today’s business class prices,” says Piplica, with the caveat that it’s hard to gauge how much people will be prepared to pay to fly five times faster, because “you can’t really answer that question until there’s a product out there and you have the real data.”īoom Supersonic aims to fly 'anywhere in the world in four hours for $100'īecause that flight only lasted a few seconds, the record for the longest sustained flight above Mach 5 belongs to the Boeing X-51, another unmanned experimental aircraft, which in 2013 flew for over three minutes at Mach 5.1 (about 3,400 mph). That’s not far from the capacity of a large business jet, which means there will be just one class. What came out of that was an aircraft with a 20-passenger cabin,” he adds. “We focused on the business class and first class travelers, and then played around with some parameters such as speed and operating costs. “To help us size the aircraft, we basically built a business model for an airline,” says AJ Piplica, CEO of Hermeus. That passenger plane is a long way away – Hermeus hopes to get it in the air for the first test flight before the decade is out, in 2029 – but because its technology has to be built almost entirely from the ground up, the company is already planning it out.įor a start, it will be much smaller than current airliners and even Concorde, which had a capacity of around 100 passengers. It does not store any personal data.The dream of supersonic passenger flight hits turbulence The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously. ![]() Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. ![]()
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