Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Fly from India to US in 45 minutes?

New York: From New York to Mumbai in 45 minutes—an American company has developed an aircraft that it claims can do that in a years time.
The Silver Dart hypersonic glider, developed by Chicago-based PlanetSpace, will be used to commercialise space travel and revolutionising air travel.
Potentially, this would mean that the daylong journey between, say, New Delhi and New York could be cut down to under an hour on the Silver Dart, which functions like a space shuttle.
“It can glide anywhere from any point on the earth, for example, from New York to Bombay in 45 minutes and it's very stable. Also, what's very important from a technological point of view, on re-entry its deacceleration is one earth gravity. What that means is it approaches the speed of a normal jet plane on landing and basically can land on any runway that a 737 can run on. So, it's an ideal vehicle for intercontinental travel,” says Chairman, PlanetSpace, Chirinjeev Kathuria.
PlanetSpace plans to start accepting space tourists for the Silver Dart towards early 2009.