There are some real benefits to being abroad. One of those I discovered today. I was on Google Finance tracking some of the revolutionary stocks we’ve tipped in Revolutionary Tech Investor.
For the life of me I couldn’t figure out why the stock prices were moving about every other minute.
It took me a while to realise that I wasn’t operating on Melbourne time anymore. The time gap between London and New York is only five hours. I’m used to 14 hours in Melbourne.
One of the other benefits of travelling is you get the time stop and think. You take notice of things that you probably wouldn’t otherwise.
On the typical day-to-day grind most people will simply go about their business in a lemming-like mode. But when you take the time to smell the roses you see how far the world has progressed.
This particularly struck a chord when I was sitting in departure gate A22 at Dubai airport on Wednesday last week. It was a striking 38 degrees outside and not a cloud in the sky. This gave me a clear view of the Airbus A380 I was about to board.
The A380 is a sheer miracle of modern technology. There is no doubt it is one of the modern day marvels we take for granted.
Think about the numbers for a second. 565 people plus 30kg of luggage each. Then there’s the food and drinks needed to feed everyone over a 6 hour and 52 minute flight. And of course add in the jet fuel needed to power the thing. Oh, and I almost forgot the sheer size and weight of the plane itself.
All up the take off weight of the A380 is 560 tonnes.
But that’s not the really amazing thing about the A380. The mind-blowing part is how the thing gets off the ground. Laws of Physics aside it’s due to the huge engines that sit under the 79.8m long wings.
Courtesy of technology developed by Rolls Royce, the power the engines put out (per engine) is roughly the equivalent of 127 Bugatti Veyron’s at full throttle.
Even with all that power, the sheer fact that you can sit in an environment quieter than a car at about 10 km above the earth travelling at about 1,000kph is utter madness.
But then I started thinking about the next 10 to 15 years. I asked myself, in the future will I take the time to marvel at the hypersonic plane I’m boarding? I hope so.
The thing with long haul flights (when you’re 6’3”) is that it’s not fun to be in a cramped space for 23 hours. And with all the song and dance about the A380 and the Boeing Dreamliner, my attention turned to the fact of speed vs. comfort.
I concluded that unless everyone gets to fly business class for the price of an economy ticket, I want my planes to get there faster than they currently do.
Hypersonic flight will be the key transportation technology that will truly link the globe like never before. It will be to global transportation what the car was to personal transportation.
The SABRE engine in development by Reaction engines and the European Space Agency (ESA) is the answer we’re looking for. It will have 9.45 times more power than one of the A380′s engines. That means a potential speed in excess of Mach 5 at a height of a tick over 25km.
If you haven’t, take the time to read Elon Musk’s proposed Hyperloop Alpha Design. You’ll then appreciate even the genius of Musk believes hypersonic flight will be the true answer to long distance transportation.
And I agree with him. Even factoring in takeoff and landing at normal aircraft speed, a plane with the SABRE engines would do Sydney to London in less than 4 hours. Now in that amount of time I’ll barely have time to watch two movies, let alone allow my lower torso to cramp uncontrollably as the person in front reclines their chair.
In short, as I pondered the future of long distance transportation and I alleviated cramps in my quads, I concluded that between the work of Reaction Engines, the ESA, Elon Musk and companies like Airbus, the future of travel will be mind-blowing.
We’ve already achieved so much from the beginnings of powered flight to putting a flying city in the air. And as technology continues to improve and we are able to use new materials and processes to build things, the future is going to be very exciting, and tall people will experience considerably less cramping when travelling overseas.
Sam Volkering+
Technology Analyst
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