![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() It took the British Airways plane less than five hours to make the 5541-kilometre stretch on February 9, clocking a top speed of 1327 kilometres per hour to arrive more than 80 minutes ahead of schedule. “If there is a source of electricity that is sufficiently abundant and clean (renewables or fusion for example), then hydrogen can be electrolysed from water to produce fuel,” said Quinn, “but this is a long way away from happening.Normal text size Larger text size Very large text sizeĪ monster storm bearing down on the United Kingdom has swept a flight from New York to London in record-breaking time. Using hydrogen as a fuel, because it doesn’t produce CO2 as a combustion product, has been proposed as a solution, though the energy costs in generating hydrogen are significant. Of course, another consideration is the carbon footprint of high-speed travel. Instead of decelerating the air to subsonic speeds using strong shockwaves, it uses fewer, weaker shockwaves to retain supersonic flow, limiting temperature increase. Once you reach 2000 Kelvin, you start to end up in a scenario where you are no longer adding temperature or energy to the flow by burning fuel, you’re starting to break apart the oxygen or nitrogen in the air.”Ī proposed solution is a scramjet (supersonic combusting ramjet). “The problem is that as you go faster and faster, your shockwaves generate more and more heat. “This sounds really good in theory,” says Quinn. However, scramjet and ramjet technology could be a key component to the future of high-speed travel.Ī ramjet uses the engine’s forward motion or shockwaves to compress incoming air without needing a compressor, which reaches an extremely high temperature during supersonic flow. It all sounds as though high speed travel is a long way off. Even if it did, it would take decades to develop and the sound factor would still need to be solved. Engineers in Germany are working on the SpaceLiner concept - a hypersonic, passenger space plane - but the project currently doesn’t have enough funding. Hypersonic travel is another area of research interest, which generally means speeds of Mach 5 (five times greater than the speed of sound) and above, though mainly in the missile industry. In April 2018, Lockheed Martin, an Aeronautics Company based in Palmdale, California, was announced as the company awarded the contract to build, design and test the experimental X-Plane. “Developing, building and flight testing a quiet supersonic X-plane is the next logical step in our path to enabling the industry's decision to open supersonic travel for the flying public," Jaiwon Shin, associate administrator for NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission, said in 2016. It is currently working on building a quieter supersonic passenger jet. NASA has been trying to find a quieter way with its project QUESST (QUiEt SuperSonic Technology). ![]() One problem with supersonic flight over land is the noise. The technology has improved since the Concorde’s day and the planes will use three engines instead of four, which reduces fuel costs. A small company called Boom Supersonic are attempting supersonic flight, now with the backing of Richard Branson. Supersonic flight is the next possibility. “Elon Musk proposed a solution to it by having a large compressor on the front of his Hyperloop train which took the air from the front and pushed it out the back, which is possible but then you’re essentially strapping yourself to a jet engine that’s flying through an underground tube,” said Quinn, adding that there’s no regulatory framework yet anywhere in the world.Ĭurrently, there are no solutions to the challenges and it’s unclear whether there ever will be. This can lead to loud noises, increases in pressure and vibration, and control difficulties. Also, as speed increases, the flow around the vehicle can reach the speed of sound. If the area is geologically active, any tectonic plate movements could cause significant problems and affect feasibility. In order to do that, you’re just pushing the energy costs that are required elsewhere.”Īnother challenge is location. “For it to be in any way scaleable you have to be able to reduce the pressure in an enormously long tube. “There have been quite a few attempts to do this in the past but they’ve never really overcome the infrastructure limits,” he said. It sounds promising, but Mark Quinn, lecturer from the School Of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering at the University of Manchester, isn’t optimistic. ![]()
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