The Skreemr supersonic jet concept could be the passenger airliner of the future, making the Atlantic seem more like a lake than an ocean. If this wild creation ever gets off the drawing board, that is.

Designer Charles Bombardier and concept rendering creator Ray Mattison envision a jet that is launched from a magnetic railgun at speeds close to Mach 4. The Skreemr would then ignite liquid oxygen or kerosene rockets to increase its altitude and speed until it was traveling fast enough to fire up a scramjet engine. The scramjet engine then would use the incredible speed of the craft to compress incoming air for engine combustion, burning hydrogen and compressed oxygen to accelerate to an unbelievable Mach 10, or 7,673 miles per hour. (Scramjet technology is currently being tested by United States' and Chinese military organizations.)

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Of course, there are huge technological barriers to be cleared before the Skreemr could become a reality. It will be difficult to find an affordable material that could withstand the extreme heat of acceleration, especially at lower altitudes. And finding a way to successfully launch the craft without every passenger on board passing out from g-forces is another issue. Regardless, Bombardier is confident.

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"The Skreemr would be used as a commercial aircraft to fly from one continent to the next," Bombardier wrote for The Globe and Mail. "It would fly five times faster than the Concorde and it could carry around 75 passengers."

Even though supersonic commercial travel is a long way off from replacing conventional transportation, the race is on. Earlier this month, Airbus patented design concepts for the Concorde-2, which could travel at speeds in excess of Mach 4. A group of pilots and airline executives called Club Concorde has also pledged $250 million to bring the original Concorde back into production by 2019, Fox News reported. And of course, a test track for Elon Musk's Hyperloop is on the horizon, a train system that would travel at a top speed of 760 miles-per-hour, just under Mach 1.

The world is about to get a lot smaller. 

Source: The Globe and Mail

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Jay Bennett
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Jay Bennett is the associate editor of PopularMechanics.com. He has also written for Smithsonian, Popular Science and Outside Magazine.