This may sound like fake news, but we’ve got it on good authority (read: The UK Civil Aviation Authority) that it’s not. Welcome to the future folks. It’s weird over here.
A ground-breaking new plan to cut the flight between the UK and Australia to just two hours by flying via space (yes, you heard that right – space) has just arrived on the aviation scene – and it could become a legitimate reality for travellers in as little as ten years time.
Suborbital flights are a cutting-edge transport revolution that work through taking travellers up into space for a period of time, and then dropping suddenly back into the Earth’s orbit. For people making the huge globe-crossing trek between the UK and the land Down Under, this technology would mean slashing a wild 20 hours off the travel time – and would probably change the world in the process.
This isn’t just a science fiction plot-line dream. The UK Civil Aviation Authority is currently in the process of hard testing to see how people would respond to being on a long-haul suborbital trip, with the findings currently being that most should be able to cope with the ‘G-forces’ of a suborbital space flight.
Suborbital flights actually currently exist – but admittedly, there's not a lot of them. Virgin Galactic is currently doing flights into space that cost £350,000 ($655,327 AUD) per seat, while Venus Aerospace has announced the plan for a hypersonic jet that will take people from Tokyo to New York in one hour. On top of that, China’s Space Transportation is currently building a jet that will speed people from NYC to Shanghai in two hours.
Plus, with Qantas having already dropped definite plans to fly directly from Sydney to London in 2025, it’s likely that this new wave of transport will be arriving in town sooner than we all think.
Is this the space age? We think so.