The aerospace industry is already worth around $400 billion with some experts predicting it will rise to $1.2 trillion during the next decade.

While conventional industry giants Boeing and Airbus enjoy waiting lists of up to 12 years for their most popular planes, smaller firms are exploring ways to revolutionise air travel. One such is Atlanta based Hermeus, now at work on their Halcyon 24 seater plane that could cut a seven hour flight down to just 90 minutes.

You only really get to experience the speed of a plane during take off and landing, so when the pilot calmly mentions that you’re flying at 500mph in his mid-flight update you don’t register any sensation. The Halcyon will fly at Mach 5, that’s 3,800 mph in old money. In a private jet sized plane, I suspect you’ll be nailed to the back of your seat.

I was 13 years old in 1969 when Concorde made its maiden flight. It provided the fortunate few with a London to New York flight time of just three hours. That’s how David Frost was able to host talk shows in both countries every week and Phil Collins could perform in both the UK and US Live Aid concerts on the same day.

Hypersonic flight would make Concorde look like a London bus, bringing London to New Yoro down to just 90 minutes. Breakfast in the first class lounge at Heathrow, coffee in New York during your business meeting, then back for a late lunch at the Ritz. All in a day’s work for the CEO of the 2030s?

There are two challenges to this scenario becoming reality – the maturity of the technology and the affordability of ticket prices. If Concorde was still flying today, the inflation adjusted cost of a transatlantic round trip would be $12,000. So we’re not exactly targeting the Ryanair demographic.

One challenge earlier generations of hypersonic plane have experienced is the need for an oxidizer, requiring a tank of liquid oxygen that increases weight which in turn requires more fuel. A more efficient approach is to pull oxygen from the air using a ramjet, but that struggles to operate at low speeds because it can’t suck in enough air.

Hermus is tackling this conundrum with a combination of a traditional turbojet engine and a ramjet system. The turbojet handles the low speed take-off and landing stages of the flight then, once you’re at your cruising altitude, the ramjet kicks in like the turbo on your Porsche 911 and rockets you up to Mach 5.

This approach has been used before in U.S. secret squirrel spy planes, but never adopted for commercial flight. Interestingly, the U.S. Airforce was one of the earliest investors, ponying up $60 million to support research and development. It’s not at all uncommon for the military to fund early stage R&D into new aerospace technologies, but what’s far more exciting for me is that the next round of $100 million was led by Sam Altman, former head of Y Combinator.

The first prototype will be as light as possible and will fly short distances to test and refine the engine technology. The second will be designed for longer flights with the ability to carry cargo and, after that, a 20 seater that could carry the first commercial passengers of the hypersonic era.     

The company believes that they could be profitable at today’s business class prices, but obviously that’s a big assumption when the plane is not yet operational. A further twist could be the regulations that ban flying at supersonic speeds over land. That could restrict them to the London/New Yoro route because the forecast range of 4,000 nautical miles rules out flights across the Pacific.

Hermeus are not alone in pursuing the dream of hypersonic travel – Elon Musk’s SpaceX has a starship rocket under development that could carry 1,000 people and thus spread the cost of all that weight and fuel.

Maybe we’ll see a hypersonic Ryanair after all…

Until next time.

Graham

(Photo credit Hermeus)