What's faster: Hypersonic or supersonic?

The proposed SpaceLiner would be more than 12 times faster than Concorde. (Image: Institute of Space Systems)

Back when their airline was flying Concorde SSTs, some British Airways executives used to refer to a trip on that plane as “riding the rocket.” And indeed, when the engines really kicked in during takeoff, you could feel the G forces pressing you back into your seat. But now researchers in Germany are exploring advanced technology that could bring new meaning to “riding the rocket” — at speeds that would leave Concorde in the dust.

The Concorde only hit a top speed of about Mach 2, or twice the speed of sound. But researchers at the Institute of Space Systems in Bremen, Germany, are developing a “hypersonic” airliner that could reach speeds of Mach 25, according to CNN. Hypersonic refers to travel at more than Mach 5.

That means flying from San Francisco to Paris in less than an hour, or from the U.K. to Australia in an hour and a half.

The institute’s SpaceLiner would consist of two parts, like the U.S. Space Shuttle — a rocket booster and a passenger vehicle. The booster would lift the SpaceLiner into the mesosphere — about 50 miles up — and then would separate, leaving the passenger vehicle to proceed to its destination under the power of its own pair of rocket engines.

The unmanned booster stage would return to earth for an automated soft landing, making it reusable — unlike the Space Shuttle’s booster rockets, which fell into the sea. The passenger vehicle would carry about 50 travelers, vs. 100 for Concorde.

Like any rocket, the SpaceLiner would take off from a vertical position, although the G forces encountered by passengers would only be about 2.5 Gs, or less than you’d experience on a modern roller coaster.

Here’s the downside: The researchers say deployment of such a hypersonic rocket plane is at least 30 years in the future. And what would a business trip on the SpaceLiner cost? Like they say, “If you have to ask…”

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