Ever since the legendary Concorde was retired in 2003, engineers have been dreaming of the next step in supersonic passenger planes, and Spanish designer Oscar Viñals thinks he has it licked with his Hyper Sting.
The designer, who has so far only mocked up the craft, tells The Sun he conceives flying 180 passengers from New York to London in just 80 minutes — faster than the Concorde.
By comparison, the Concorde set a pond-crossing record of just under two hours, fifty-three minutes; the flight currently takes around seven hours.
At the heart of the Hyper Sting is a pair of ram-jet engines, far faster than a conventional turbofan power-plant, that could see speeds of 2,486 mph — twice as fast as the Concorde.
“Concorde was a brilliant piece of machinery, a noble experiment, but it put too many emissions in the environment, too much noise into our communities, and was too expensive to operate,” Viñalsexplains.
However, there’s a catch — and it’s not a small one. Viñals conceives the Hyper Sting as running on nuclear power, powered by a cold fusion reactor, which doesn’t yet exist.
That said, another company will likely beat the Hyper Sting to market. In August, American Airlines reportedly plunked down an order of 20 Overture jets from aviation startup Boom Supersonic, The Guardian reported.
The company, which has also worked with Virgin Atlantic, says its jets aren’t as fast as the Concorde was, but run much cleaner and boast a top speed of 1,304 mph — meaning it could get passengers from The Big Apple to Jolly Old London in less than half the time it currently takes. Boom Supersonic hopes to have Overture in the air by 2029.