A radical hypersonic passenger plane that could travel at 6,500km/h (4,000 m/h) and ferry passengers from Australia to Europe in just five hours has been recently unveiled by Boeing.
The company believes the creation could be used for military concerns as well as for commercial use.
The aircraft would be capable of travelling at almost 6,500km/h – about five times the speed of sound – which would drastically reduce international flights across the globe.
The hypersonic plane would be bigger than some of the already proposed business jets, but not as large as the conventional sub-sonic airliners.
‘We’re excited about the potential of hypersonic technology to connect the world faster than ever before,’ said Kevin Bowcutt, senior technical fellow and chief scientist of hypersonics.
‘Boeing is building upon a foundation of six decades of work designing, developing and flying experimental hypersonic vehicles, which makes us the right company to lead the effort in bringing this technology to market in the future.’
It appears the arms race is on between Boeing and Elon Musk’s SpaceX program, which also intends on creating almost instantaneous cross-country travel.
