It has been eight years since Concorde was retired from service, and with it the supersonic dreams of millions around the world. Now supersonic travel is on the cards again after a manufacturer unveiled plans for a plane that will travel twice the speed of Concorde. HyperMach claims its SonicStar aircraft will take you from London to New York will take just two hours. A trip from New York to Sydney, meanwhile, will be cut by a staggering 75 per cent – from 20 hours on a commercial airliner to just five hours.
British firm HyperMach revealed its plans for the 20-seat plane at the Paris Air Show last week. It will be able to cruise at Mach 3.1, a speed made possible by S-MAGJET hybrid gas turbine engine technology. Its top speed, however, will be Mach 3.6. Richard Lugg, the chief executive of HyperMach, said, “Mankind has always been inspired to do things better, quicker and faster and that is our ambition.” yperMach plans to build its engine by the end of the decade and to have the plane itself constructed by 2025. With relatively low fuel consumption, the Sonic Star ‘overcomes the economic and environmental challenges of supersonic flight to revolutionise the way we travel and drive air transportation forward into the future,’ claims HyperMach.
By using electromagnetic currents across the fuselage to suppress the sonic boom, the plane is able to overcome the noise regulations that constrict supersonic travel. It has a range of 6,000 nautical miles and its 54,700 thrust class S-MAGJET engine – actually two engines – is optimised to fly the aircraft at 62,000ft. But it is the reduction in jet engine emissions that HyperMach believes will prove the secret of SonicStar’s success.
