Venus Aerospace, a Texas-based company, is aiming to develop a vehicle that can travel at speeds nine times faster than the speed of sound with its groundbreaking aircraft called Stargazer.
Stargazer Passenger Aircraft is being designed to reach speeds of 11,104 km/h, allowing for a journey from New York to Sydney in just 90 minutes, according to a report by Tech Times on May 27. Even the Concorde, the pioneering aircraft in supersonic travel, only achieved a speed of Mach 2 (2,414 km/h).
Design of the supersonic Stargazer aircraft. (Image: Venus Aerospace).
To put this into perspective, no aircraft has surpassed Mach 6.7 (8,273 km/h) since the U.S. X-15 test aircraft accomplished this feat in 1967, according to NASA. The famous Lockheed SR-71, also known as the Blackbird, came the closest to this record with a maximum speed of Mach 3.2 (3,951 km/h). However, these achievements are overshadowed by the remarkable speed of rockets, which frequently break the Mach 9 barrier, reaching low Earth orbit at speeds around 23,358 km/h.
Stargazer is an ambitious project by Venus Aerospace that operates using rocket propulsion and has the potential to revolutionize commercial air travel. Although it uses rocket thrust, the vehicle will take off and land like a conventional airplane using jet engines.
Andrew Duggleby, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Venus Aerospace, emphasized the impracticality of using rocket engines at airports due to high noise levels. Instead, once the aircraft reaches a predetermined altitude and is away from densely populated areas, it can rely on a rotating detonation rocket engine (RDRE) to continue its journey.
