NASA has moved a step closer to supersonic passenger flights which reckons that New York-London flights could take as little as 90 minutes in the future.
The space agency has confirmed in a blog post about its “high-speed strategy” that it has recently studied whether commercial flights at up to Mach 4 – over 3,000 miles per hour – could take off in the future.
The study by NASA’s Glenn Research Center suggested that there are already “potential passenger markets… in about 50 established routes.” These routes were confined to transoceanic ones, including over the North Atlantic and the Pacific, because nations including the US ban overland supersonic flight.
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However, NASA is developing “quiet” supersonic aircraft, called X-59s, as part of its Quesst mission. The agency hopes that the new aircraft could eventually prompt modification of these rules, with aircraft flying between Mach 2 and Mach 4 (1,535 – 3,045 miles per hour). Concorde’s maximum speed was Mach 2.04, or 1,354 miles per hour.
A jet traveling at Mach 4 could potentially make a transatlantic crossing in as little as 90 minutes.
