A NEW design has been unveiled for the Hyper Sting supersonic jet that would surpass the speed and size of the legendary Concorde.
Hyper Sting is a concept plane that could whizz passengers from London to New York City in just 80 minutes in the near future.
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The plane would travel at a speed of 2,486mph – twice as fast as Concorde.
Measuring 328 feet long with a 168-foot wingspan, the aircraft is also nearly twice its size.
Spanish designer Oscar Viñals, who is behind the mock-ups, says 170 passengers could enjoy travel aboard the Hyper Sting.
“Concorde was a brilliant piece of machinery, a noble experiment, but it put too many emissions in the environment, too much noise into our communities, and was too expensive to operate,” Viñals told The U.S. Sun.
“A new era of supersonic flight might be just around the corner, but there are challenges to overcome when it comes to flying faster than the speed of sound.”
“Today, there are some projects for a new era of supersonic flights from different private and public initiatives, some of those are well underway and could become in a few years a real concept.”
Viñals added that the name Hyper Sting is influenced by the shape of the aircraft.
“The fuselage would have the shape of a ‘big sting’ with a very sharp ‘nose,’ that would have the function to control the front airflow in order to redistribute it over the central part and over the wings.”
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How would it work?
Hyper Sting would be powered to incredible speeds by two ramjet engines, which would be fuelled by a small nuclear reactor.
And it would also require the use of a so-far theoretical cold fusion nuclear reactor.
This theoretical power source allows nuclear reactions at room temperature and produces huge amounts of electric power.
Hyper Sting is the latest project by Spanish designer Oscar Vinals, who previously unveiled plans for supersize aircraft the Sky Whale and Big Bird.
But with this idea, he is scaling down his ambitions. Still, he hopes the concept could help bring back the age of ultra-speed travel.
Concorde
There has not been a commercial supersonic airliner since the last Concorde was retired in 2003 after 27 years in service.
Concorde was a revolutionary British and French design – but was ultimately killed off by the high-cost tickets, low passenger numbers, noise, and safety concerns.
Ever since, lots of designers have speculated about a return of supersonic mass transit – but no one has yet taken the plunge.
Oscar hopes his concept for the Hyper Sting will help solve some of the problems with supersonic travel – while also being bigger and faster than Concorde.
