A new hypersonic plane could fill the gap left in air travel since the retirement of the Concorde — a tailless supersonic plane that last flew in the early 2000s. The new design is based around a blade-less Dyson jet engine, and it’s called the Sky Magnetar. The kicker? It could be able to fly from New York to London in just 90 minutes.
If you think that sounds like something right out of a science fiction novel, you aren’t wrong. The Magnetar concept measures 112 meters in length and has a quad-wing design to help it perform at maximum level at both high and low speeds, the designer Oscar Vinals says.
Aircraft engineers have been striving to recreate hypersonic planes like the Sky Magnetar since the Concorde aircraft were retired. Despite offering travel at Mach 2 speeds, the Concorde had several flaws, which designers like Vinals are trying to overcome.
Looking at the Magnetar in concept images, the plane looks a lot like a rocket and a plane had a baby. I do have to say that it looks a lot more like an airplane than China’s supersonic jet, which is supposed to be able to carry passengers from China to New York in just one hour. But it still looks less like a regular plane than Boom’s supersonic jet, which you can see in the image at the top of the page.
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Vinals says the Magnetar will be capable of flying at speeds of 4,200 miles per hour (Mach 5). That’s three times faster than the Concorde ever flew, which would make this hypersonic plane a huge improvement over the previous flights that were offered through the 80s and 90s.
That blade-less Dyson jet engine is part of a theoretical propulsion system that should be able to transform the turbofan engine into a rocket engine for hypersonic speeds thanks to the help of a movable diffuser for airflow control, superconducting magnets at low temperatures, a combustion chamber, plasma chamber, and a bypass ramjet engine, Luxury Launches explains.
Of course, this hypersonic plane is still just a concept. Hopefully, all the pieces will come together, and we will actually get to see something like this flying passengers from New York to London. I know it would certainly make the trip overseas less of a hassle. Of course, a plane capable of going Mach 5 will probably have some kind of health requirements, so I wouldn’t expect to see something like this replacing standard flights anytime in our lifetime.