Supersonic Jet Could Fly NYC To London In 3 Hours

An anonymous reader writes: A new supersonic luxury plane that could fly people from New York to London in just three hours is being developed by a team of engineers. Spike Aerospace's S-512 Supersonic Jet was introduced in 2013, but the company recently announced a few updates to the plane's design. Discovery reports: "Spike Aerospace's engineers claim the S-512 could reach a maximum speed of Mach 1.8 (1,370 mph, or 2,205 km/h), which is 1.8 times the speed of sound. For comparison, the fastest Boeing 747 commercial "jumbo jet" can reach a maximum speed of Mach 0.92 (700 mph, or 1,126 km/h). If the S-512 really is built to reach these supersonic speeds, it would be as fast as an F-18 Hornet, a military fighter jet with a max speed of Mach 1.8. This would also make the supersonic jet about 450 mph (724 km/h) faster than the fastest civilian jet, according to Spike Aerospace."

Comments

Re:Concorde 2.0

[squiggleslash]

As someone who lived in Reading, 30 miles from London and right under Concorde's flight path, I can honestly tell you the noise issue was NOT a red herring.

That plane, tens of miles away from LHR, drowned out the TV when it flew over daily. It sucked. I think those States that banned it did so entirely reasonably.

Re:Concorde 2.0

[kimvette]

That is actually partially true; America hadn't yet built a supersonic passenger jet and outlawed overland supersonic flights over populated areas citing sonic booms (at FL600 sonic boom really isn't much of a problem) to protect the American airline system; having foreign airlines' supersonic airliners take business from American airline companies was unacceptable. It was an anti-competitive move. Had we not done that and in response instead developed supersonic airliners, the problem of sonic booms would have been eliminated a couple decades earlier - it wasn't until recently airfoils with wave cancelling properties (essentially creating two opposite-phased sonic booms) have been developed, so there won't be any need to outlaw low-altitiude sonic booms, let alone ones generated below 60,000'.