The Hyper Space

With a handful of start-ups on board, the development of hypersonic commercial flight is finally gaining speed.

- J George Gorant

THE PROMISE OF travelling from New York to London in less than 60 minutes, or Los Angeles to Tokyo in three hours, has been around since 1949, when an unmanned two-stage Bumper rocket blasted through the sky at 8,288km/h. About 12 years later, the US Air Force’s X-15 became the first piloted aircraft to achieve hypersonic flight, generally defined as reaching a minimum of Mach 5 (five times faster than the speed of sound) or 6,116km/h.

Yet the notion of a business jet operating at Mach 5 remained a science-fiction fantasy. That is, until recent advances in design and technology have brought the concept closer to a workable reality. “We're experiencing a renaissance of hypersonic that will lead to a revolutionary era in the transport of people and products around the globe,” says Zachary Krevor, CEO and president of Stratolaunch. The California-based aviation company has created Talon-A, a reusable rocket-powered flying machine that, after being released at 35,000ft from Stratolaunch’s Roc—the world’s largest aircraft—approached Mach 5 in initial flight tests last year.