(PCM) You may think that this is impossible, however industrial designer Charles Bombardier is currently working on a new project called The Antipode which is a plane designed to fly between New York and London in just 11 minutes. This idea gives us extreme anxiety just thinking about it!
Bombardier explains that the plane would work by climbing quickly to 40,000 feet using rocket boosters and would only hold 10 passengers who would be traveling at the insane speed of 12,430 miles per hour. To put it in perspective, an average 747 plane flies at only 570 miles per hours.
Thus far there are no prototypes of the plane, so this is all in theory. Bombardier’s previous project called The Skreemr would have traveled at Mach 10 speeds, which is faster than the speed of sound. It never got off the ground because of issues with heating and a giant sonic boom sound. The Antipode would be set to travel at Mach 24, alleviating the issue of the sonic boom sound and it uses a technique called “long penetration mode,” “which would use a nozzle on the aircraft’s nose to blow out air and cool down the surface temperature.
It could be several years before any type of prototype for the Antipode is ready for human testing and we are certainly not in that big of a hurry!
