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Boeing Has Proposed A New Plane That Could Go From London To Australia in Six Hours

Boeing Has Proposed A New Plane That Could Go From London To Australia in Six Hours

Boeing has proposed a hypersonic plane that could cut the travel time between London and Sydney to just six-and-a-half hours

Mike Wood

Mike Wood

It probably isn't the time of year to be thinking of a trip to Australia.

They're shivering through a record winter, while the UK are enjoying a little-seen phenomenon known to the rest of the world as summer. Meanwhile, the Socceroos are already on their way home from Russia after getting knocked out of the World Cup, while the Three Lions are still roaring and the England cricket team just did the unthinkable and whitewashed the Aussies.

Still, come December we'll all be dreaming of the beach in Sydney and, if scientists have their way, the chance of going there without the gruelling 24-hour flight is a genuine possibility.

Boeing


A brand-new hypersonic plane design has been released by Boeing that could travel at speeds up to 6,500km per hour and take passengers from London to Australia in just six-and-a-half hours.

For an idea of how much of an increase that would be, the flight time from the first point at which you see Australia - that is, when the plane first approaches the continent - is still six hours from Sydney if you're flying from Europe.

Kevin Bowcutt, senior technical fellow and chief scientist of hypersonics at Boeing said: "We're excited about the potential of hypersonic technology to connect the world faster than ever before.

"Boeing is building upon a foundation of six decades of work designing, developing and flying experimental hypersonic vehicles, which makes us the right company to lead the effort in bringing this technology to market in the future."

PA

Such a plane would be capable of travelling at five times the speed of sound and would be smaller than the current planes that are used for long-haul flights, such as the Boeing 737.


Hypersonic jet planes are an advance on supersonic planes such as the Concorde (see above), which used to hop from London to New York in less than three hours.

The idea remains a fair way off, of course, with Boeing waiting for technological advances and market conditions to change to produce their new baby.

They don't estimate it to be ready for any time in the next 20 to 30 years, by which point Australia will probably be so embarrassed by their poor sporting results that they won't want anyone to come to visit them anyway.

Featured Image Credit: Boeing

Topics: Science, World News, tech, Australia