A New Airline Wants To Carry Passengers At Mach 9
Venus Aerospace aims to create a commercial airplane that can fly Mach 9.
Venus Aerospace is attempting to turn one small step for man into one giant leap for mankind by creating an airplane that can travel at the speed of Mach 9, according to ARS Technica. For those not in the know, Mach 9 is really freaking fast, it means nine times the speed of sound, or 6,669.8729 miles per hour (or 111.16 miles per minute). While Tom Cruise’s Maverick might fly at a speed of Mach 10 in Top Gun: Maverick, we must remember that Top Gun is a movie, and that is simply one of many scientifically far-fetched stunts featured in the film—actually flying an aircraft at any speed close to that is not likely to happen in reality any time soon.
That is to say, if Andrew and Sassie Duggleby, the co-founders of Venus Aerospace, don’t do something to change that fact. The pair want to create a hypersonic aircraft capable of carrying a dozen passengers at a speed of almost 7,000 miles an hour. The idea is to make airplane travel ultra-fast (Mach 9 is literally science-fiction-level fast), with journeys taking just an hour to anywhere in the world.
There’s no doubt that the Dugglebys are aiming high, given that no airplane has ever traveled at Mach 9. Lockheed’s SR-71 “Blackbird” is the fastest airplane ever built, and it traveled at Mach 3.2. But Venus Aerospace is proposing a radically different flight profile, which involves performing a 10-minute boost with its rocket engine to send the aircraft to an altitude of approximately 50 km—in other words, halfway to space.
The key to making an aircraft fly at Mach 9 and actually work is using innovative engine technology based on “rotating detonation,” which has the potential to increase fuel efficiency. In a conventional rocket engine, a highly pressurized propellant and an oxidizer are injected into a combustion chamber, where they burn and produce an energetic exhaust plume. But a rotating detonation engine is different in that a wave of detonation travels around a circular channel, supported by the injection of fuel and oxidizer, and creates a shockwave that propels outward at a supersonic velocity.
Testing their technology, the new engines have provided about a 10 percent increase in fuel efficiency, which is important because by increasing that fuel efficiency, there is actually mass left over for everything you’d need for a commercial flight, like landing gear, wings, and even the most important part: a few passengers. “It allows us to truly build a vehicle that is like an airplane,” Andrew Duggleby said, speaking of his dream to create a passenger airplane that can fly at Mach 9.
The company has about 80 full-time employees and 20 contractors hard at work at the Houston Spaceport, attempting to make the Dugglebys’ dreams of actually having a passenger airplane fly at Mach 9 a reality. To make it work, the Dugglebys will need a lot of money, and so far, Prime Movers Lab has helped Venus Aerospace raise $41 million, and Sassie Duggleby said she aims to raise even more money.
In addition to refining the rocket engine, Venus Aerospace has also begun testing drones to define the shape of its plane. Recently, a 5-foot-long drone demonstrated a fully autonomous flight in California, and next up, Venus is planning to go supersonic with an 8-foot drone before the end of this year and then hit Mach 3 by early 2024 using a rotating detonation engine. A Mach 3 drone is still a ways away from an airplane flying Mach 9, but it is a step in the right direction.
So, can the Dugglebys and Venus Aerospace achieve their goal of building a hypersonic airplane capable of traveling at Mach 9? Only time will tell, but they seem to be heading in the right direction. One thing is for sure, though: if they succeed, it will be a game-changer in the world of travel.
