As Virgin Atlantic struggles and unravels the tangle it has been placed in since the pandemic ensued, there is much going on around Richard Branson’s empire. While Virgin Atlantic restructure and attempt to weather out this lengthy travel storm, Virgin Galactic have unveiled ambitious plans to bring supersonic flight travel around the planet. Virgin Galactic is a private British spaceflight company under Branson’s Virgin Group. This arm of the business specialises in space science and was founded in 2004. Their latest partnership with well-established Roll-Royce proposes to create a new way to fly with maximum speed. Going across the world in a number of hours will be a possibility as the commercial jets are aiming to reach Mach 3 speeds.
At three times the speed of sound, it’s certainly going to be an engineering challenge to achieve speed, safety, passenger comfort and scalability to operate in profit. Rolls Royce are no stranger to aircraft engineering and produce some of the very best engines that are used across the aviation industry. It seems that revisiting the legacy that was the Concorde is in vogue as this big partnership aims to deliver commercial flights at ultra-high speeds. With great speeds forecasted, it will definitely reshape the way the world travels and perhaps shorter flight durations will also change the way passengers travel. Long and arduous journeys through various connections might be a thing of the past and it’s encouraging to see that the flight programme is aimed at a wider demographic. With various tiers of seating accommodation, this may be the future of commercial flight standards.
It’s still early days but going faster, greener and safer through the sky is a natural progression. I had often mused around how air travel will change in the future. Perhaps an aerospace revolution is awaiting society in the near future and booming through the air at supersonic speeds is to become the norm. The X-planes are sure to shake things up in coming years if executed properly. They are intended to slot into existing infrastructure too, assuming similar flight protocols and landing procedure at existing airports. Zooming around the world in a few hours seems surreal but it’s certainly a development that I am keen for. With hopes of an eventual recovery in travel, commercial flight technology will be ever more important and it’s going to be an interesting next few months as airlines forge new deals and bailouts as 2020 concludes and time runs out.
https://www.space.com/virgin-galactic-rolls-royce-mach-3-supersonic-aircraft.html
Image credit: Virgin Galactic
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