The end of the Concorde and Tupolev airliners left the supersonic market empty. But now, 12 years after the Concorde fleet last flew, even faster airliners are taking shape in research facilities.
One of those designs is by Lapcat-II, a European-designed aeroplane capable of cruising speeds up to eight times faster than sound (8,500 km/h or 5,280 mph) taking passengers from Brussels to Sydney in 2 hours and 55 minutes.
At the AIAA Hypersonic Space Plane conference in Glasgow in Scotland in July, a paper submitted by Lapcat-II researchers said their early airliner tests suggested such a design would be greener than current aircraft, just as safe, and would not cost much more than today’s long-haul flights.
Johan Steelant, a senior research engineer at the European Space Agency (Esa) and coordinator of Lapcat-II, with his colleagues, has been testing two prototypes.
One is a Mach 5 plane – the Lapcat-A2 powered by a pre-cooled air-turbo ramjet; and a promising – Esa-designed – Mach 8 plane, also powered by a ramjet engine.
A ramjet is an air-breathing jet, with no major moving parts. The engine's forward motion compresses incoming air travelling at high speed, ramming it into a combustion chamber.
A similar concept powers the new missiles used by the Eurofighter Typhoon fighter plane, for instance.
Ramjets can move a plane very fast. But how do you power them?
Fuel choice is important, especially as one consideration for any future hypersonic fleet will be to try to keep its emissions as low as possible.
This is why hydrogen was chosen, rather than a fuel based on hydrocarbons. Read more:
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