Plans will be unveiled tomorrow for a hypersonic airliner which will fly twice the speed of Concorde on biofuel made from seaweed, taking just over two hours to travel from Paris to Tokyo.
The EADS Zehra mach 4.5 hypersonic liner
If the futuristic plans for ZEHRA, standing for Zero Emission Hypersonic Transportation, prove feasible, the 3,125 mph jet will transport up to 100 passengers at more than four times the speed of sound, soaring 20 miles above the Earth – just outside its atmosphere.
At such speeds, it will take just 90 minutes to fly from Paris to New York, compared to three and a half hours for Concorde and almost eight hours in a normal passenger jet.
EADS, the European planemaker which is due to detail its plans at the Paris air show starting today, expects ZEHRA's first commercial flight to take place in 2050, with the first non-manned test flight slated for 2020.
Under blueprints leaked to Le Parisien newspaper yesterday, the jet will be almost totally environmentally "clean", forgoing kerosene in favour of a mixture of biofuel, hydrogen and water. Most of what little pollution it emits will remain in space.
It will target business passengers willing to pay the same price as a Concorde, namely around £5,000 pounds return from London to New York.