Amazing news for International Travelers!

Air Travel Boom in Future, From Supersonic to Hypersonic!

The days are coming when International Travelers can fly in Rocket type hypersonic aircraft, which will fly eight times faster than sound and ten times faster than a current passengers transport aircraft.

By Onkareshwar Pandey

New Delhi, Aug 30, 2019:  The Globalised world will see a big revolution in the speed of international air traffic in the future. The days are coming when International Travelers can fly in Rocket type hypersonic aircraft, which will fly eight times faster than sound and ten times faster than a current passengers transport aircraft.

It will be a real revolution in air traffic. Hypersonic Airliner will carry 300-passengers with supersonic speeds of up to 5,400 miles an hour on more than 30 km above the ground in the stratosphere.

For example, your journey from Europe to Australia will take just three hours time or from Los Angeles to Tokyo 8820 kilometers in about an hour and 45 minutes which presently takes 11 hours.

The air travel (bird fly) shortest distance from Australia to Europe is 14092.82 km. If you travel with an airplane (which has average speed of 560 miles) between Australia to Europe, It takes 15.64 hours to arrive.

STRATOFLY MR3

Thanks to the EU funded project STRATOFLY, a 300-passenger airliner under development by a European consortium that includes the German Aerospace Center, the French Aerospace Lab and eight other universities and research organizations.

The STRATOFLY MR3 would fly faster than the Boeing, which unveiled a design for a plane last year capable of reaching Mach 5, the low end of a realm known as hypersonic speed.

“The STRATOFLY MR3, with its needle-sharp profile and advanced power plants, would hit speeds of up to Mach 8 - about 5,400 miles an hour - and reach altitudes of more than 98,000 feet, far above the operational ceiling of conventional airliners,” writes Kate Baggaley in NBC news.

More importantly, the passengers would experience smooth flights and see the curvature of the Earth - though the view would likely be visible through weight-saving window-like video screens rather than actual windows. Because, according to experts, at that heady altitude, there’s little turbulence or bad weather.

Two Decades after the Retirement of the Supersonic Concorde Airliner

In the almost two decades since the retirement of the supersonic Concorde airliner, jet-setters have had to make their peace with planes that poke along at about 500 miles an hour. But with help from new materials and advanced engine technologies, faster-than-sound air travel may be poised for a comeback.

STRATOFLY studies the feasibility of Stratospheric Flight

Funded from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, the STRATOFLY studies the feasibility of high-speed passenger Stratospheric Flight. The stratosphere is the atmosphere layer higher than the breathable troposphere and its extension goes up to an altitude of 50 Km. In additions, STRATOFLY represents the first step towards future reusable launchers.

The exploitation of this space could become necessary because the number of passengers transported by airplane could have a six-fold increase by 2050.

Worldwide Annual Air Passengers Exceeded Four Billion

In 2017, worldwide annual air passenger numbers exceeded four billion for the first time. At the same time, airlines connected a record number of cities worldwide, providing regular services to over 20,000 city pairs* in 2017, more than double the level of 1995.

In 2016, the airlines worldwide had carried around 3.8 billion passengers annually with 7.1 trillion revenue passenger kilometres (RPKs). Fifty-three million tonnes of freight were transported by air, reaching 205 billion freight tonne kilometres (FTKs). Every day, more than 100,000 flights transport over 10 million 4 passengers and around USD 18 billion worth of goods, according to an International Air Transport Association (IATA) report published in 2017.

The Commercial Aviation is booming

The Commercial Aviation today, which first took flight over a century ago, on just a short, 34-kilometre journey, is booming, with passengers and cargo being carried no less than 49 billion kilometres annually, or 10 times the distance from Earth to Neptune. With over 1,400 scheduled airlines, 26,000 aircraft in service, 3,900 airports and 173 air 1 navigation services providers, aviation has established an unmatched global network at the service of travellers and businesses in every corner of the world.

The STRATOFLY research project is being collaboratively developed by a consortium made up of Institut von Karman de Dynamique des Fluides (Belgium), Stichting Nationaal Lucht - En Ruimtevaartlaboratorium (The Nederlands), Centro Italiano Ricerche Aerospaziali Scpa (Italy), Deutsches Zentrum für Luft - Und Raumfahrt e.V. (Germany), Office National d'Etudes et de Recherches Aerospatiales (France), CNRS - Centre National de La Recherche Scientifique (France), Totalforsvarets Forskningsinstitut (Sweden), Technische Universitat Hamburg (Germany), Fundacion de la Ingenieria Civil De Galicia (Spain).

Germany’s Green Party says NO to the Domestic Flights

It is interesting to note that, Germany’s Green Party (GP)wants to eliminate the need for domestic flights by making big investments in trains to reduce emissions from air travel. The GP is adopting, proposing that the country should work to make domestic flights obsolete by 2035, saying “there is no longer any practical or economic reason to fly between places in Germany.”

‘Anti-Plane, Pro-Rail Movement’ in Europe

Not only in Germany, the ‘Anti-Plane, Pro-Rail Movement’ has taken off in Sweden and other parts of Europe also.

 “Two grassroots initiatives, both launched that year, helped spread the word: Flygfritt, which convinced 14,500 Swedes to renounce air travel in 2019 (it’s shooting for 100,000 in 2020) and Tagsemester, a Facebook group with nearly 100,000 members that offers information on how to travel by train. Throw in some selfies posted from the sleeping berth of the train Thunberg took to speak at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, as well as European and national elections in which climate concerns played a decisive factor, and Sweden’s anti-plane, pro-rail movement has taken off,” writes  LISA ABEND in the Time.

“This is the season of Flygskam, or “Flight Shame.” You don’t have to be Greta Thunberg, the teenage climate activist who recently announced plans to sail to New York in August, to recognize that a growing number of Europeans eager to reduce their carbon footprint are opting to limit air travel in favor of more environmentally-friendly means of transportation. Significant enough that even airlines are taking note, Flygskam–and its counterpart Tagskryt, or train-bragging—is encouraging both European governments and private rail companies to consider investing in the return of long-distance night trains,” Lisa wrote in her article titled – In Europe, the Movement to Give Up Air Travel Is Taking Off. Could the U.S. Be Next?

China’s new High-Speed Train will carry passengers at a speed of 600 km per hour

Just two months ago, China unveiled a sleek prototype of a high-speed train designed to carry passengers at a speed of 600 kilometers per hour, or 370 mph. That’s more than 150 mph faster than the world's fastest passenger trains now in regular intercity service, which touch 217 mph on runs between Beijing and Shanghai. The new train, under development by the state-owned China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation (CRCC), is designed not to run on rails but to float above the track using a technology known as magnetic levitation, or maglev, reports Tom Metcalfe in NBC news on June 6, 2019.

Japan is also working Maglev Train at the Same Speed

Japan is also working on a maglev train that could begin service between Tokyo and Nagoya in 2027, carrying passengers at about 370 mph — the same speed projected for China’s new train.

However, Germany is among those countries, who’s Scientists and engineers are developing airliners that would slash the time now required for long flights. The planes would not only fly faster than conventional airliners but also the vaunted Concorde, whose top speed was Mach 2.04, or a bit more than twice the speed of sound (1,354 miles per hour at cruising altitude).

It is not science fiction but a technology that could be ready to be tested outside research labs by 2035. The Stratofly consortium plans to begin wind tunnel tests of the engine components later this year. But it will take many years to bring Stratofly to life. So, just don't expect to book a flight anytime soon.

Before this, some aerospace firms are designing hypersonic aircraft capable of flying five times the speed of sound, or around 3,800 miles per hour. These ultra-fast planes would likely first be used by the military, but it could make its way into commercial jets soon. It would then be possible to fly anywhere on Earth in under three hours.

Photo Caption - Model of the Stratofly hypersonic plane / Boeing's concept for a jet-powered hypersonic aircraft.

A new high-speed train in China is designed to carry passengers at a speed of 600 kilometers per hour, or 370 miles per hour.Zhang jinggang 

Imaginechina via AP file / NBC News

Image Courtesy: Stratofly /Boeing/Zhang jinggang / Imagine china via NBC News.

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(Onkareshwar Pandey is Editor in Chief & CEO, Indian Observer Post and former Senior Group Editor- Rashtriya Sahara (Hindi & Urdu) and also former Editor - News, ANI. http://bit.ly/2mh7hih)