Boeing has revealed plans for a futuristic, sleek aircraft capable of flying five times the speed of sound, or about 3,800 miles per hour, NBC News reported.
Flying that fast, the airliner could reach London from New York City in about two hours, instead of the eight hours it takes on a conventional plane. It would cruise at about 90,000 feet, where passengers could see the blackness of space and the curvature of the Earth, the company's chief hypersonics scientist said.
The new concept, unveiled at an aviation conference in Atlanta this week, would fly the transatlantic route more than twice as fast as the Concorde, a supersonic plane that had limited routes to protect people on the ground from hearing the loud sonic boom produced by the aircraft. Boeing’s new aircraft proposal would fix that by using new technology that mitigates sound.
It's not yet clear if passengers would be willing to pay the high prices that hypersonic air travel would require.
