Air travel has become so commonplace and convenient these days, that we are starting to look into commercial space exploration. However, this does not mean that the world of commercial aviation has not more room for improvement – no sir, I am quite sure that passengers would love to cut down the travel time whenever they go from one continent to another. After all, flying from the US all the way to Australia or New Zealand takes a very, very long time – imagine if you could arrive at your destination in just 4 hours instead of multiples of four.
A new engine system is being built for a passenger plane that will be able to take up to 300 people anywhere in the world in just 4 hours. The plane is being worked on by Reaction Engines which says the only new technology is the precooler. This allows the air entering the Sabra engine to be cooled by more than 1,000 degrees Celsius in .01 seconds – meaning the engine can run at a far higher power. To be specific the jet should be able to run at Mach 5, which is five times faster than the speed of sound. The aircraft itself will measure 276 feet long and go by the name of Skylon. It will be able to fly into space and be reused for cheaper space travel. While it would take off and land like a normal plane there would be no windows. This could be perfect for the internal wrap-around screens with outer cameras that lots of concept planes have showed off recently. And at £1.1 billion each Skylon planes won’t be cheap. There is also a plan to create a plane called Lapcat A2 which would be a commercial craft that could transport passengers from Brussels to Sydney in two to four hours. Skylon is planned to go into testing as early as 2019.
