Jess Vilvestre reports that during a forum on the future of aeronautics representatives from NASA described the inevitability of passenger planes able to travel at speeds around 4,800 km/h (3,000 mph). Hypersonic aircraft not only allows for faster passenger travel but can also lead to faster response to global tragedy.
Going faster than the speed of sound is the new frontier in aviation since travel times seem to have stagnated within the past 30 years. Director of NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center, David McBride, stated that technology for both supersonic (faster than the speed of sound) and hypersonic (five or more times faster than the speed of sound) passenger planes is well within our grasp.
It is inevitable that hypersonic technologies are going to happen, said Curtis Bedke, former U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen.A recent development in getting hypersonic aircraft out in the public comes from the US-Australian military research project called Hypersonic International Flight Research Experimentation (HIFiRE). Their engine-rocket booster system has been going through testing with the help of Boeing, the largest aerospace company, and the German Aerospace Center (DLR). The system reached an altitude of 278 kilometers (172 miles) at a speed 7.5 times faster than the speed of sound.
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