Supersonic flights may just become a reality in the next 10 years. Imagine being able to fly from London to Sydney in just two hours. New research by the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) suggests that travelers will be able to fly at supersonic speeds through space and arrive at major cities faster than ever.
New York to London in one hour?
According to a study published in the Aerospace Medicine and Human Performance journal, most people handled the G-forces of suborbital space flights quite well.
“Physiological responses are likely to be benign for most passengers,” said the CAA medical lead for the flight, Dr Ryan Anderson.
Of particular interest was the fact that it was not necessary for someone to be fit or young to fly. In fact older people were better equipped to handle high-speed jaunts because they had ‘stiffer arteries’ that would lessen the pooling of blood away from the brain.
The Venus Aerospace hypersonic Stargazer plane will be able to fly at Mach 9 (nine times the speed of sound) or roughly 6,905 mph to get you from New York to Tokyo in one hour. Virgin Galactic’s Mach 3 business jet on the other hand will be capable of hitting 2,300 mph to get up to 19 passengers from New York to London in 90 minutes.
A Fortune
It is however anticipated that these flights are going to cost a fortune but the CAA is expecting that it will soon be less expensive and eventually accessible to everyone.
“Commercial suborbital space flights are now available for tourism and scientific research, and are ultimately anticipate to mature into extremely fast point-to-point travel, e.g London to Sydney in less than two hours,” said the study.
It will take a lot of effort and research to accomplish this however with many engineering challenges and regulatory requirements but it is still something that mankind can look forward to not too far in the future.
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