‘Son of Concorde’ that can fly to New York in 3.5hrs reaches new heights

A level dubbed the ‘son of the Concorde’ that could alert from London to New York successful 3 and a fractional hours has completed its eighth test.

The XB-1 jet, which engineers are hoping could scope supersonic speeds, has been undergoing trial flights since March of this year.

During a formation which lasted astir 54 minutes connected Saturday, the level reached an altitude of 25,040ft, surpassing its erstwhile grounds of astir 23,000ft.

And engineers don’t mean connected stopping there. The level is acceptable to alert higher, and faster until it yet reaches the velocity of dependable – Mach 1.

The jet’s latest trial run confirmed that flying astatine speeds of Mach 0.8 is safe, adjacent with the stableness augmentation strategy turned off.

The stableness augmentation strategy is important successful ensuring that aircrafts are safe. It enhances formation stableness by automatically adjusting its controls.

The squad down the caller level said: ‘XB-1 cleared this requirement, confirming that the aviator tin safely power the craft astatine higher speeds adjacent successful the lawsuit of a stableness augmentation strategy failure.

‘While XB-1 does person this benignant of system, called the stableness augmentation system, the squad is assessing the craft with the strategy disconnected astatine expanding speeds.

‘This is simply a request anterior to supersonic formation that XB-1 successfully cleared during this flight.’

Last week, during its seventh trial flight, the XB-1 reached its fastest speeds yet of Mach 0.82.

The Colorado institution down the caller pitchy is present acceptable to enactment their instauration done 2 much trial flights to corroborate its show and handling qualities.

Before it was banned successful the UK, the Concorde could scope speeds of Mach 2.

For reference, modern combatant jets, which are smaller than the Concorde, alert astatine speeds betwixt Mach 1.2 to Mach 2.5.

Supersonic flights were banned successful the UK due to the fact that they were truthful costly to run and deemed excessively noisy.

But now, determination are an expanding fig of companies trying to physique suitable supersonic craft with regulators urged to reappraisal their bans.

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