Hypersonic Travel Could Be Just 20 Years Away

Brittany Jones-Cooper
·Reporter
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If development is successful, the SABRE could revolutionize the future of travel. (Photo: BAE Systems)

You know what’s better than a fast jet?

A faster jet.

And thanks to some engineers in England, we could soon be zipping around the world in a plane that makes the Concorde look like a horse and buggy.

In an interview with CNN, Mark Thomas, Managing Director for Reaction Engines, explained that hypersonic travel could come to passenger carrying vehicles in the next two decades.

In aerodynamics, hypersonic usually refers to speeds five times above the speed of sound, or Mach 5. This means that it would take just one hour to fly from New York to London.

Reaction Engines is a UK-based engineering firm that has developed what they call the Synergetic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine or SABRE. This revolutionary piece of engineering is an air-breathing engine that uses ultra-lightweight heat exchangers to cool very hot air streams that are typically encountered at hypersonic speeds.

Related: Concorde Comeback? Two New Jets Plan to Take Air Passengers Supersonic Again

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The SABRE (Photo: © 2015 BAE Systems. All rights reserved)

According to Thomas, the SABRE is essentially a rocket engine that breathes air when in the atmosphere. “You don’t need to carry so much liquid oxygen on board your vehicle,” he explained to CNN. “It massively reduces the weight, and you can put that into vehicle design capability or payload.“

The technology has been in the works for 20 years, but on Nov. 4, British aerospace company, BAE systems, announced their plans to invest £20.6 million ($31.8 million) in a 20% stake of Reaction Engines.

Related: NYC to London in 30 Minutes! Plane of the Future Is Coming

In their announcement, BAE expressed their support of the technology, calling it “a new aerospace engine class that combines both jet and rocket technologies with the potential to revolutionize hypersonic flight and the economics of space.”

Beyond potential commercial use, the SABRE engine could also make space flight cheaper and more accessible. If all goes as planned, the technology could potentially create a new breed of reusable space vehicle that takes off and lands like an aircraft.

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