So say your boss calls you at 10 a.m. and says he needs you in Hong Kong for a five o’clock meeting?  Soon you will have to agree to be there because a new jet powered by the Reaction Engines SABRE system could easily get you there in time.  It sounds like a dream when you describe how you can pick your girlfriend up at 4 p.m. and have dinner in Paris five hours later, but more than likely this kind of power and speed will be used first to propel commerce before it turns into fun.  I mean, it can’t be cheap right?  And that means it all that extra speed will have to make money for the people paying for the service.

The Reaction Engines SABRE system produces thrust in a manner akin to most jet engines, but it is able to cool incoming air much faster and that makes all the difference. Its “flash-cooling” system chills the incoming air to -150 degrees Celsius which means that the engines can run clean and cool at top speed. This means that Mach 5 speeds could be sustained for several hours by commercial aircraft.  But, at that speed, four hours is all you need to go anywhere on Earth.

In the time it takes you to read this article, for example, a jet powered by the Reaction Engines SABRE system could fly from NYC to Boston. That’s 214 miles in a twinkle. Not only is the SABRE system likely to completely modern change air travel it may even carry passengers and cargo into outer space within a few years.

Of course going this fast will require some design changes to aircraft. The Reaction Engines SABRE will first be used on the LAPCAT A2 for consumer transit and the SKYLON C1 for commercial space, two concept aircraft currently being developed.  Both airplanes would be windowless, featuring elongated fuselages which can handle the wind resistance of such super speeds. To compen-sate for the lack of windows new systems are being developed to replace windows with screens that wrap around the upper half of the cabin.

The LAPCAT A2, pictured above, can fly up to Mach 5 to and from major airports around the world.  Want more examples of how this works out?  It could fly from Brussels, Belgium to Sydney, Austrailia in two to four hours depending upon weather conditions. The SKYLON C1 is  being developed to carry passengers and cargo to and from outer space while being operated entirely from the ground.

It all sounds pretty exciting but remember how fax machines, computers, Federal Express and smart phones were going to make our lives easier?  By easier they mean more productive and by more productive they mean generating more money.  And that is how the world works.