After the Wright Brothers made the first flight in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on December 17, 1903, aviation developed at an incredible pace. They were the source of inspiration for the commercial aviation industry to look into the creation of supersonic transports (SSTs), or civilian supersonic aircrafts.

The Concorde made its first transatlantic crossing on September 26, 1973, and it inaugurated the world’s first scheduled supersonic passenger service on January 21, 1976. For the next 27 years, Great Britain and France offered flights that cruised at 1,354 mph and had a maximum speed of more than twice the speed of sound. Flying at about 60,000 feet, Concorde soared at the edge of space, flying from New York to London in three hours and 15 minutes.

At an aerospace convention held in Atlanta, Boeing unveiled it’s first-ever design for a hypersonic passenger plane. Will they be the planes of the future?

What Is The Difference Between Supersonic & Hypersonic?

The rate at which objects travel faster than the speed of sound is expressed in terms of supersonic and hypersonic speeds. They are measured in terms of Mach. Mach number is defined as the ratio of speed of the aircraft to the speed of sound. Supersonic and Hypersonic are the two main types of speeds of flight. In scientific language, they are better known as the regimes of flight. Hypersonic is considered to be above Mach 5 (five times the speed of sound), while supersonic is merely above Mach 1.

The idea is that the hypersonic passenger flight would fly at the speed of Mach 5, or simply at 3,900 miles per hour. This would readily decrease the time taken to travel from LA to Tokyo in under 3 hours and from LA to London in about two hours. The present time duration for both these flights now is 11 and 7 hours, respectively.

Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg is pushing the aerospace giant to explore the potential of ultra-fast passenger planes.

“I think in the next decade or two you’re going to see them become a reality,” Muilenburg told CNBC at the Paris Air Show last year. “We see future innovations where you could connect around the world in about two hours.”

The most significant question is how willing is Boeing to build a passenger jet that can fly between far-flung locations in just a few hours? The only way to get this futuristic jet into use is if they can develop lightweight materials for the fuselage and new engines that will propel the jets at greater speeds. All of that will have to be designed and tested, so we are looking at years.

Will Boeing spend billions on a plane that has limited commercial viability?

John Plueger, president and CEO of AirLease Corp., has been sceptical of a hypersonic jet flying with airlines.

“It’s hard for me to see, at least in the next 15-20 years, that it’s going to be so cost competitive that it’s going to compel the airlines to take a stab at it, ” he told CNBC.

We will soon find out if hypersonic travel is a relic of the past or reality of the future.

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