Evnironmentally Friendly Mach 5 Passenger Jet

Reaction Engines Limited is currently working on a design for an airliner capable of cruising at hypersonic speeds. The design, dubbed the A2, would be able to travel at Mach 5 (about 3,400 mph) for prolonged periods and carry 300 passengers. The engines on the A2 would be have two operating modes, one to get the jet up to about Mach 2.5, and another for traveling at hypersonic speeds. This would solve one of the key problems that plagued the Concord: it’s engines where very inefficient at subsonic speeds. The A2’s Scimitar engines employ an advanced ramjet design for hypersonic travel. The A2 would also run on liquid hydrogen, rather than traditional jet fuels, meaning that the airliner’s exhaust would be primarily water vapor with a small percentage of nitrous oxide. Don’t expect to get a good view cruising around at Mach 5 though, there aren’t any windows on the A2. Only the windows on the space shuttle could withstand the heat generated by hypersonic travel inside the atmosphere, and they’re far too heavy to put on an airliner. While there are still a number of technical hurdles to overcome, the technology behind this is fundamentally sound. I really hope this project comes to fruition. The idea of shrinking a 22 hour flight down to a 4.6 hour flight is just to good to pass up. You can check out Popular Science’s article on the A2 here and find more conceptual illustrations on Reaction Engines site for their LAPCAT Project. (Long-Term Advanced Propulsion Concepts and Technologies)