It may sound too good to be true, but it’s not just a fantasy. By the 2030s, it could very well be possible to travel from Australia to Europe in just four hours thanks to a hypersonic jet engine being developed in the United Kingdom.
British firm Reaction Engines is currently working on a Synergetic Air Breathing Rocket Engine (SABRE) that can propel an aircraft to Mach 5.5 – travelling more than five times the speed of sound, with a top speed of around 6437kph.
“This is not sci-fi. This is not a pipe dream. This is literally in the works,” said Dr Graham Turnock, head of the UK Space Agency.
“It has the potential to turn air travel on its head.
“Certainly the way you conceive air travel will completely change in 10 years’ time.”
What makes the SABRE so promising is that it uses liquid gases, which rules out the possibility of a melting engine – a key issue when it comes to high-speed air travel.
“The main thing with SABRE is it’s like a hybrid of a rocket engine and an aero engine, so it allows a rocket to breathe air,” said Shaun Driscollof from Reaction Engines.
“Rockets really haven’t progressed in 70 years, whereas aero engines have become very efficient, so if you can combine an aero engine and a rocket you can have a very lightweight efficient propulsion system and basically create a space plane.”
The engine is also eco-friendly, as it is powered by hydrogen, producing water vapour when it burns.
The project is supported by both the UK Space Agency and the Australian Space Agency.
Unmanned test flights for early prototypes are expected to commence as early as 2025.
