The SonicStar supersonic business jet concept looks like it fell out of the long and pointy tree and hit every branch on the way down. It looks the way it does for a very good reason: it's designed to travel quietly and efficiently at Mach 3.5, which gets you from London to Los Angeles so fast that you'll barely have time to get fed up with the in-flight movie.
HyperMach has been working for the last six years on engines to power their "VVIP" business jet, called SonicStar. The jet will be able to travel 6,000 miles at Mach 3.5, which is fast enough to make a complete circuit of the globe in under five hours. Cruising at 60,000 feet, you'll be able to see the Earth curve underneath you, although the plane can make it up to 84,000 feet if you'd like an even better view. The cabin is sized to comfortably seat 10-20 people or, no fooling, one thoroughbred racehorse, just in case yours feels like a vacation.
Of course, the whole reason that this plane can do what it does at all is because of its engines. HyperMach describes said engines thusly:
Engine produces sufficient power to operate the multi-stage counter rotating, superconducting, dual ring motor electric bypass fans and superconducting electric ring motor axial compressor, power generation and thrust comes from 5-stage superconducting axial turbine.
Yeah, so I don't know what any of that means either, but since the word "superconducting" appearsthree times in that sentence, luddites like me can't help but assume that there's some pretty awesome engineering going on.
Anyway, here's a funny little animated dude to tell you more about this plane:
2021 isn't exactly around the corner, but Mach 3.5 is likely going to still be pretty quick by then, considering that Concorde was only able to hit Mach 2, and it's not even flying anymore. Yay progress!
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