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A new aerospace company has entered the race to provide supersonic commercial air travel. On Monday, a US-based company named Hermeus announced plans to develop an aircraft that will travel at speeds of up to Mach 5. Such an aircraft would cut travel time from New York to Paris from more than 7 hours to 1.5 hours.
Hermeus said it has raised an initial round of funding led by Khosla Ventures, but it declined to specify the amount. This funding will allow Hermeus to develop a propulsion demonstrator and other initial technologies needed to make its supersonic aircraft a reality, Skyler Shuford, the company's chief operating officer, told Ars.
The announcement follows three years after another company, Boom Supersonic, declared its own intentions to develop faster-than-sound aircraft. As of January 2019, Boom had raised more than $140 million toward development of its Overture airliner, envisioned to travel at Mach 2.2, which is about 10 percent faster than the Concorde traveled.
Officials with Boom Supersonic have said its planes could be ready for commercial service in the mid-2020s, and they added that Virgin Group and Japan Airlines have preordered a combined 30 airplanes.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Barenflimski on Tuesday May 14 2019, @07:12AM (3 children)
How high do these things fly? What type of fuel do they run?
I did some quick calculations and in a SpaceX, it would take 10.377 minutes to go from New York to London at full speed. At $62 million each way, it's a bit pricey, but its currently the fastest trip across the ocean.
(Score: 4, Funny) by c0lo on Tuesday May 14 2019, @08:20AM
Not to mention that the landing and luggage collection will be a bit tricky.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday May 14 2019, @11:57AM (1 child)
Too lazy to RTFA, but... I would imagine this thing to be sized like a Citation X, room for maybe 8 passengers, not much cargo. Because, when you're going to charge $25K per ticket, each way, JFK-CDG, you're not going to fly a scheduled service - a fleet of 6-10 of these things available on-demand for charter seems like the most public service that a Mach 5 jet would be providing in tomorrow's world.
Of course, there are another 60-100 potential buyers of the fastest civilian jet in the world, at virtually any price.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday May 15 2019, @02:35AM
For reference, I believe the Citation X is (or recently was) the fastest available civilian jet - approximately 350 copies sold for approximately $23M a piece since it was introduced approximately 25 years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cessna_Citation_X [wikipedia.org]
If they can keep the Mach 5 under $50M, I bet they can sell 50 of them as fast as they can deliver them.
🌻🌻 [google.com]