New York to London in half an hour? Just sign me up for the Screemr. The new supersonic plane concept, dubbed Skreemr, could be the passenger airliner of the future. Getting you from New York to London in just half an hour with a top speed of Mach 10, which is 10 times the speed of sound, or around 8,000 miles per hour, it will make the Atlantic seem more like a lake than an ocean.
The jet concept is the brainchild of Charles Bombardier, a Canadian engineer and inventor who describes in details his futuristic prototype designs in the Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail.
If such an aircraft were ever built, it would be five times faster than the Concorde, a now-retired supersonic passenger jet that once soared through the sky at speeds at Mach 2.00, which is more than twice the speed of sound.
Bombardier’s vision involves a 75-passenger craft that would be shot out of a magnetically charged electric launch system at gunlike speeds close to Mach 4. From there, the jet would ignite liquid oxygen in order to rise in speed and altitude until it was traveling fast enough to fire up a scramjet engine. The engine then would use the incredible speed of the craft to compress incoming air for engine combustion, burning hydrogen and compressed oxygen to accelerate to an unbelievable speeds of Mach 10, or about 6,600 miles per hour at 40,000 feet.
Of course, there are huge technological barriers to be cleared before the Skreemr ever leaves the drawing board. One of the big issues is heat: objects traveling past Mach 5 can reach upwards of 1800 F, and there is a limit to the type of materials that can withstand those kinds of temperatures; the pressure during takeoff at the intensely high, speeds; the sonic boom when an object breaks the sound barrier and becomes a menace in urban areas.
Though Skreemr remains a concept at this stage, it could change traveling forever.