Reaction Engines A2 - Development

Development

The vehicle is intended to have about 12,430 miles (20,000 km) range and good subsonic and supersonic fuel efficiency, thus avoiding the problems inherent in earlier supersonic aircraft. The top speed is projected to be Mach 5+. It calls for the use of liquid hydrogen as a fuel, which has twice the specific impulse of kerosene, and can be used to cool the vehicle and the air entering the engines via a precooler.

Our work shows that it is possible technically; now it's up to the world to decide if it wants it.

— Alan Bond, managing director of Reaction Engines Limited

The developers say it would be able to fly from Brussels to Sydney in about 4.6 hours, compared to around a complete day of travel with normal aircraft. The cost of a ticket is intended to be roughly business class level.

Read more about this topic:  Reaction Engines A2

Famous quotes containing the word development:

    I could not undertake to form a nucleus of an institution for the development of infant minds, where none already existed. It would be too cruel.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    As long as fathers rule but do not nurture, as long as mothers nurture but do not rule, the conditions favoring the development of father-daughter incest will prevail.
    Judith Lewis Herman (b. 1942)

    The young women, what can they not learn, what can they not achieve, with Columbia University annex thrown open to them? In this great outlook for women’s broader intellectual development I see the great sunburst of the future.
    M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)