BEIJING – Chinese researchers have unveiled a hypersonic plane design totake cargo and passengers from Beijing to New York in about two hours,one-seventh of the time it currently takes to make the trip.
“It will take only a couple hours to travel from Beijing to New Yorkat hypersonic speed,” researcher Cui Kai said in a paper publishedin February by Science China Press in the journal Physics, Mechanics andAstronomy. Researchers are planning for the plane to reach speeds of nearly6,000 km per hour. The route a normal passenger jet takes from Beijingto New York is about 11,000 km and takes around 14 hours.
The team designing the plane is also involved in China’s hypersonic weaponsdevelopment program, the South China Morning Post noted. Beijing’s weaponrydevelopment in this sphere “outpaces” Washington’s own development, US NavyAdmiral Harry Harris told lawmakers last week.
A scaled-down demonstrator has already been tested in specially designedwind tunnels, the Post adds.
The concept features a biplane design where two sets of wings are stackedon top of one another, a model that became drastically less popular, thoughnot extinct, after the 1930s with the advent of jet aircraft.
The dual-wing design reduces turbulence and drag while boosting liftcapacity at high speeds, researchers said in the paper.
However, that high speed comes at a price: the plane’s lift capacity ismuch lower than existing aircraft such as the Boeing 737. Supposing thehypersonic plane under development in China was the same size as a 737, thehypersonic aircraft would carry about one-fourth as much cargo andpassengers: about 50 passengers and five tons of cargo versus the 737’s200-passenger capacity and 20-ton cargo carrying ability.