Brussels to Tokyo in two hours

A typical flight from Brussels to Tokyo takes over 11 hours – but imagine if that time was shaved to just two and a quarter.

Researchers are designing planes that can travel at eight times the speed of sound. Credit: Pixabay/ joelfotos

That is the sort of possibility offered by hypersonic jets, which travel at many times the speed of sound – and which researchers in Europe are trying to make a reality.

'Getting in a couple of hours to the other side of the world is quite impressive and nearly unimaginable,' said aerospace engineer Dr Johan Steelant of the European Space Agency in the Netherlands. 'I'm still amazed that classical aeroplanes weighing 500 tonnes are able to hang in the air travelling at 800 to 900 kilometres per hour – but just imagine if we could crank this speed up to seven to eight times faster.'

The speed of sound – 1 200 kilometres per hour – has been broken by civilian aeroplanes before, albeit only by two models: the Anglo-French Concorde and the Soviet Union's Tupolev Tu-144, both of which flew at about twice the speed of sound. Both are now retired.

But even those supersonic aircraft would be left well behind by the prototype being developed by Dr Steelant and colleagues. Known as HEXAFLY, it is expected to travel at seven or eight times the speed of sound.

Fast target

Such speeds would not easily be reached. One problem will be generating enough thrust to overcome air beating past at over 8 000 kilometres per hour, and even then there are issues of stability and managing the thousand-degree temperatures generated by aerodynamic friction.

Fortunately Dr Steelant has had prior success: HEXAFLY's precursor project, LAPCAT-II, saw the researchers test a 1.2-metre physical model in a wind tunnel at 7.4 times the speed of sound. In HEXAFLY, he and his colleagues want to test a 3-metre prototype at similar speeds in the open air.

The basic design of the aircraft is nearly complete, and they are now optimising its mass before the proposed launch in 2018 or 2019. This particular prototype will not generate its own thrust and will be launched from a rocket in order to test flight stability and other factors.

'This test will demonstrate that we have mastered the different aspects of the design and the related technologies,' said Dr Steelant.

One of those related technologies has been developed as part of a project that Dr Steelant also coordinated. Known as ATLLAS-II, it sought to create materials that could withstand the heat generated at hypersonic speeds.

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