Reaction Engines – an engineering company out of Oxfordshire, England – have designed and proposed a new hypersonic jet just after the last Concorde went out of commission. The A2 aeroplane is engineered to travel at speeds reaching mach 5 (almost 4k mph (double the Concorde’s speed)) and would be able to fly from Europe to Australia in under five hours.
One of the most attractive bits about this project (with the obvious speed increase aside) would be its use of liquid hydrogen as a propulsion energy source. This would replace the paraffin oil-based jet fuel of today and would expel water and nitrous-oxide versus more harmful carbon emissions. The Euro Space Agency-backed project is hoping to see their bird in the sky within 25 years.
Due to the heat created by traveling at such a speed, the passengers would have to fly sans-windows. This is a problem already being explored and may be remedied by creating simulated LCD “windows” so no one has a panic attack. Fares are projected to run as much as a first class ticket of today.
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