Shanghai to New York in two hours with Chinese hypersonic flights

New plans for hypersonic passenger flights have been unveiled by a Chinese tech company, with reported speeds of one mile per second, covering long distance flights like Shanghai to New York in a staggering two hours.

The Beijing Lingkong Tianxing Technology company, also known as Space Transportation, has released animated footage, proposing how its flights may look, with a jet being boosted to the edge of space by a rocket launcher, to then fly at speeds of 7,000km an hour. 

The company’s website states that its test flights should be seen in 2025 and they hope to operate a  “full-scale global hypersonic vehicle flight by 2030.”

A company investor, Zuo Lingye of Jingwei China, stated: “Imagine that in less than two hours, we can fly from the Eastern Hemisphere to the Western Hemisphere. This may be the next generation of aircraft, which will have a great impact on global passenger transportation and transportation.”

“Logistics has a major impact. There are very few teams capable of developing high-speed aircraft, and we are honoured to partner with them and look forward to being their first passengers.”

Passengers in the video, board the plane just like on an average consumer aircraft and are not shown to use oxygen masks or space suits, however the landing is vertical rather than horizontal.

In an announcement made in August, the company stated that it had raised over 300 million yuan (£35m) with its latest funding drive, however it faces competition with the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp (CASC) and sibling institution CASIC reportedly developing their own hypersonic aircrafts.

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