Interesting topic !
I guess Buck Rogers will be very happy to hear that !!
However, I suppose that Boeing or any other aerospace company is still a big step away from this scenario. About two years ago the supersonic jetliner project which was run together with NASA was cancelled, and now they want to speed up a civil hyper-X ?? Just recently the X-38 (emergency crew return vehicle) for the ISS was stopped and Russian Soyuz will be used instead. X-38 was a very important technology base concerning high temperature resistant materials and new propulsion concepts, and now it's stopped.
The bottleneck of Hyper-X will also be high temperature resistant lightweight structural materials and the propulsion concepts. The reliability for a safe and of course economical use of these technologies is not there yet and I doubt they will be available in the next 5 to 10 years. The research teams have done an excellent job so far, but it will need a huge effort in human and financial resources to get the bird flying. And who wants to pay for it ?
It is a good marketing move from Boeing, however, let's be realistic, if you are not able to go from sub-sonic to supersonic in the first run, how do you want to reach Hyper-X speeds on a satisfying reliability level ?
With todays computer power and simulation tools, engineers are able to offer upper management nice cute marketing toys which are very sexy, have this "high tech" touch and are sold very good in public media and political institutions to claim public funds. However, the real world consists of hard work in the labs, fighting bloody details for months to get them finally running. Innovation needs time, also time to make mistakes and the ability to learn from mistakes. This type of innovation for Hyper-X can not be bought from the shelf, dear fellow managers, this is very costly and will hurt your wallet.
Overall, a great idea ! May be in 15-20 years from now we are able to fly such a thing and meet Buck Rogers up there !
Cheers
rtt