Stratofly would need more than one kind of engine. The key technologies might not be ready until 2035, Viola says, with another decade needed before flight tests are completed and the plane is ready to carry passengers. But it will take many years to bring Stratofly to life.
Later this year, the Stratofly consortium plans to begin wind tunnel tests of the engine components.
With hypersonic flight, she adds, “it will be so much easier to travel to distant destinations.”īy flying at altitudes beyond the reach of conventional airliners, Viola says, Stratofly might also help ease the congestion that is expected to be an increasing problem as the population swells and more and more people take to the skies. “We want to go to Mars but still we have huge distances here on Earth,” says Nicole Viola, a professor of aerospace systems design at the Polytechnic of Turin in Italy and the project coordinator of the Stratofly consortium. It could zip from New York City to Sydney, Australia, in about three hours, according to the consortium, or make the trip from Los Angeles to Tokyo in about an hour and 45 minutes. While the Concorde was used primarily for transatlantic flights, Stratofly would likely be reserved for longer journeys. “It would be like going to space,” says Michael Smart, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Queensland’s Centre for Hypersonics in Brisbane, Australia, who is not involved in the Stratofly project.
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