THE latest plans for the world’s fastest aircraft that could travel 7,000mph and reach ANYWHERE in the world in 90 minutes have been unveiled.
The “Venus Stargazer Spaceplane” intends to be the quickest, reusable, hypersonic passenger plane ever created.
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Announcing their ambitous plans, its creators said: “No one has ever built an engine that makes one-hour global transport cost-effective.
“Until now.”
The futuristic beast of an aircraft is being developed to travel at Mach 9, which is nine times the speed of sound or nearly 7,000mph.
The US aerospace start-up hopes to be able to carry 12 passengers wherever they want in the world in just 90 minutes by flying up to the cusp of space.
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“This isn’t science fiction, this is science fact,” says Dr Andrew Duggleby, a co-founder of Venus Aerospace.
The aircraft has been jointly-developed with Nasa’s top human spaceflight facility.
After taking into account take-off and landing, the jet should be able to cross 5,000 miles – the distance between Houston to London or San Francisco to Tokyo – in just one hour.
In comparison, the last time humans experienced supersonic travel was on the iconic Concorde, which operated from 1973 to 2003.
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It could travel between New York to London in less than four hours at a a speed of Mach 2.
However, its costly technical inefficiencies and risky operation forced it to be retired and none others have managed to grace the skies since.
The “Stargazer” will take off from airports using usual jet engines – but once away from city-centres, its rocket engines hope to send passengers soaring at an unbeatable speed.
The plan is that it will fly at four times as high as normal airliners, giving passengers a view of the Earth’s curve.
It wouldn’t quite touch space, but at 170,000ft – it would be pretty close.
The jet is set to be 100ft wide and 150ft long, with a take off weight of around 150,000 pounds.
Three key elements of its design will be used to carry out such a technological feat.
A liquid-propellant rotating detonation rocket engine should create 15 per cent more thrust for the aircraft to achieve its crazy speeds.
It would be the world’s first and means that Venus has to create it basically from scratch.
Next, state-of-the-art cooling technology will allow the wings to withstand the high temperatures of hypersonic flight.
Lastly, its unique wave-rider design should give “Venus” a boost-glide mode. This essentially helps the jet to ride its own shockwaves at hypersonic speeds.
The “Stargazer” is still firmly in prototype stage and it isn’t expected to go into service until the 2030s.
Its competitor, Destinus is also a decade away from creating planes that will travel at Mach 5.
They are building the Destinus S – a hypersonic aeroplane that should fly from London to New York in a groundbreaking time of 90 minutes.
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Developed by “Russia’s Elon Musk”, Mikhail Korkorich, the so-called “Flying Wedge”, is a hydrogen-powered plane capable of flying five times the speed of sound.
It hopes to carry 25 passengers, while its wider Destinus L model will have a capacity of 300-400 people.
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