It could whisk you from London Heathrow and have you stepping onto the air bridge at New York’s John F Kennedy airport just three hours later. It would take you in no small comfort – luxuriously so, if you’re in first class – at speeds approaching 2,300mph (3,680km/h), the Atlantic Ocean racing below your feet.

The Flash Falcon, looking like a spacecraft from the video game franchise Halo, is a futuristic peg to fill the hole left by the retirement of the Supersonic Concorde in 2003. No prototypes have been built though – the design so far lives only in the imagination of Spanish designer Oscar Vinals, who also designed a ‘whale-shaped’ giant airliner BBC Future profiled back in 2014.