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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

A proposed supersonic plane design [cnn.com] would be capable of carrying passengers from London to New York in just 11 minutes. The plane is described as decades away from commercialization, assuming it can be built at all:

Remember the Skreemr [cnn.com], a concept for a supersonic plane that could travel at Mach 10? Scratch that, there's now a design for a plane that could cruise from London to New York in 11 minutes, traveling at Mach 24 -- that's 12 times faster than the Concorde!

Charles Bombardier, the industrial designer [imaginactive.org] who came up with both designs, has dubbed this newest concept the Antipode, which he conceived in collaboration with Lunatic Koncepts [lunatickoncepts.com] founder Abhishek Roy. In theory, it could carry up to ten passengers up to 12,430 miles in under an hour.

[...] The Antipode's wings would be fitted with rocket boosters that would propel the aircraft to 40,000 feet, and enable it to reach Mach 5. Like the Skreemr, the plane would be powered by a scramjet [nasa.gov] engine.

[...] After the Skreemr concept made the rounds, Bombardier was contacted by Joseph Hazeltine, an engineer at Wyle [wyle.com], which provides technical support to both NASA and the U.S. Department of Defence. Hazeltine suggested using an aerodynamic technique called long penetration mode [nasa.gov], or LPM, which would use a nozzle on the aircraft's nose to blow out air and cool down the surface temperature, while muffling the noise made from breaking the sound barrier.

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