FOREIGN: London-Sydney Flight Time Could Be Reduce to 4 Hours by 2030s With New Hypersonic Engine
Flight times from London to Sydney could be cut to
just four hours by the 2030s with the advent of hypersonic engines.
The head of the UK Space Agency, Graham Turnock, said
work carried out by Reaction Engines on the pioneering Synergetic Air-Breathing
Rocket Engine (Sabre) engine would drastically reduce flight times.
Travelling from London to New York using the system
could one day take as little as one hour.
Turnock said: “When we have brought the Sabre
rocket engine to fruition that may enable us to get to Australia in perhaps as
little as four hours.”
Aircraft fitted with hypersonic technology would be
able to travel at twice the speed of Concorde – the equivalent of five times
the speed of sound.
The Sabre engine would help prevent engines overheating
while travelling at Mach 5.4 speeds, using tubes of supercooled helium.
Reaction Engines’ Shaun Driscoll told Stuff: “The
main thing with Sabre is it’s like a hybrid of a rocket engine and an aero
engine, so it allows a rocket to breathe air.
“Rockets really haven’t progressed in 70 years,
whereas aero engines have become very efficient.
“So, if you can combine an aero engine and a rocket
you can have a very lightweight efficient propulsion system and basically
create a space plane.
“The physics checks out but the challenge is
building a test regime.”
Trials of the engine are taking place in Denver,
Colorado, while test flights are set to be launched by the mid-2020s.
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