Tokyo to New York in 1 hour? Hypersonic ‘Stargazer’ jet aims to best Concorde
- Venus Aerospace’s planned jet is being designed to fly at around 8,000km/h with rocket engines to climb to an altitude of 52,000 metres
- The husband-wife team behind the project are aiming for tickets to cost the same as the current price of first class – but there’s no guarantees
The last time humans witnessed supersonic travel was the legendary Concorde, which operated from 1973 to 2003. Equipped with four powerful engines, the super-speedy plane could journey from New York to London in less than four hours – a tremendous feat for the era.
However, some ambitious engineers are hoping to fly even faster, including European start-up Destinus, Georgia-based Hermeus, and Texas-born Venus Aerospace – all of which are developing hypersonic planes.
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Venus, in particular, was only founded in 2020 but has big plans for Mach 9 travel. Company co-founders Chief Executive Officer Sassie Duggleby and Chief Technology Officer Andrew Duggleby were interviewed at the Paris Airshow in June for this article to learn more about their planned jet, dubbed “Stargazer”.
Flying at least five times the speed of sound, Stargazer is designed to bullet from San Francisco to Tokyo in just one hour – 11 times faster than today’s flight time.
