Virgin Galactic Unveils New Supersonic Jet Design
The jet will implement NASA and Rolls Royce know-how
Speed to be around Mach 3; three times the speed of sound
Jet will include regular landing and take-off features along with business and first-class seating options
Virgin hopes to leverage $15 billion business
Billionaire Sir Richard Branson owned Virgin Galactic has announced an all-new supersonic jet design - capable of cruising at 3 times the speed of sound. Previous supersonic airliner, Concorde, in contrast, could achieve speeds of Mach 2.04 (a little over twice the speed of sound).
Virgin Galactic was founded with the goal of commercializing suborbital space flights. They have been in the limelight recently due to the renewed “space race” in which they are competing to be the first company to take passengers to space. Virgin Galactic competes for this achievement against Jeff Bezos owned Blue Origin and Elon Musk owned SpaceX.
With this announcement, the company took an unexpected approach. They are focusing on speeding up international travel rather than “galactic” travel (pun intended). If their plans were to go through, the aircraft could travel from New York to London in just 2 hours (compared to the 7 hours now) or Sydney to London in 4 hours (compared to up to 20 hours now!).
They have teamed up with Rolls Royce to design this aircraft. Earlier this year, in May, Virgin Galactic also signed a deal with NASA to share valuable resources and important expertise used to develop the design.
Virgin Galactic says that the concept is now ready to progress into the next phase of design. This phase will involve defining the specifics of how the aircraft will operate and other technical aspects. Once the design passes all the necessary tests, they hope to duplicate the experience of flying a regular airplane by taking off and landing the same way. They also envision including business and first-class seating options. With this aircraft, Virgin Galactic hopes to make a $15 billion business opportunity.
The company also announced that they plan to start taking passengers into suborbital space by early 2021, with a whopping $250,000 ticket. It may seem too much but 600 people have so far already bought it. They plan to launch two manned flights before the end of 2020, and then if they go as planned, Richard Branson will launch into orbit on the SpaceShipTwo vehicle, called VSS Unity along with 5 other people.
Conclusion:
Virgin Galactic seems to have upped their game with this new announcement. The promised Mach 3 speeds will make huge strides for reducing travel time. But, as we have learned with the Concorde, this technology has a lot of downsides, from loud sonic booms to high costs. Virgin has to tackle these major issues before it thinks about introducing its new jet to the market. This technology sounds great, but is unlikely to become a reality. As with most other new technologies, only time will tell.
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