In a remarkable technological breakthrough, a prototype of a The revolutionary hypersonic aircraft developed by China reached the incredible speed of Mach 6 during tests in the Gobi Desert.

The hypersonic aircraft with an unusually large or bulky body was launched into the sky by Chinese scientists and reached a speed that could allow it to fly from Beijing to New York in two hours, the South China Morning Post reported. Currently, an average passenger plane takes around 12 to 14 hours to travel 11,000 kilometers between the two cities.

The test was originally conducted by Cui Kai, the project leader and researcher at the Institute of Mechanics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in 2021, but was kept secret for three years due to technological sensitivity. On December 10, the Chinese Academy of Sciences shared Cui’s remarks and a video of the prototype’s launch on Chinese social media.

A scaled-down prototype of the aircraft reportedly reached a top speed of Mach 6.56, more than six times the speed of sound. The SCMP report said the test provided early validation of a concept that was considered implausible when it was introduced six years ago.

“At the time, everyone thought it was a crazy idea,” Cui Kai was quoted as saying. “We were faced with skepticism almost everywhere. Luckily, we decided to persevere. I have always believed that innovation thrives in doubt.”

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The aircraft tested by Cui’s team has a bulky fuselage, a significant departure from the sleek hypersonic aircraft of the past. “It features a thick and round fuselage and cape-shaped wings at the rear,” the report says, claiming that the future hypersonic aircraft may be able to carry as much cargo or passengers as current jumbo aircraft.

The nearly 20-minute test flight reportedly solved a long-standing problem for aircraft designers: As flight speed increases, usable space in the cabin decreases. The report emphasized that any hypersonic aircraft currently capable of reaching speeds above Mach 5 will only be used for military purposes such as missiles and unmanned reconnaissance aircraft due to their extremely limited interior space. “At high speeds, the front of a large airframe experiences significant downward pressure, affecting its ability to climb.”

This problem was solved by Cui by adding a wide wing surface over the airframe to convert this downward pressure into lift. But this also led to an unprecedented level of complexity in the design. After releasing the concept in 2018, Cui’s team conducted numerous wind tunnel experiments and further improved the design.

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According to Cui, the cost of each test was hundreds of thousands of yuan. The test flight in 2021 was successful as the tests were repeated several times to confirm the functionality of different models. Cui did not disclose the status of the aircraft’s full construction or the expected date of its first flight.

“With such cutting-edge technology, we still face numerous challenges that need to be addressed head-on, including issues related to performance, materials and structure,” Cui said. “We have only completed a small portion of the work and taken a modest step forward.”

Despite the lack of details, EurAsian Times understands that China has been working to make commercial hypersonic travel a reality for several years.

The SCMP report states: “The team’s efforts could help revolutionize human transportation and bring the concept of the ‘one-hour global journey’ from science fiction to reality.”

China’s search for commercial aircraft technology

There is a fierce race among many nations to develop hypersonic technology. By 2035, China plans to build a small fleet of manned hypersonic aircraft that can reach anywhere on earth within a few hours.

In 2018, a Chinese research team claimed to have developed a new design for an extremely fast aircraft that would transport tons of goods and dozens of passengers from Beijing to New York in just two hours. Cui and his colleagues at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing conducted aerodynamics tests for China’s latest hypersonic aircraft prototypes in a wind tunnel, using a scaled-down copy of the aircraft.

Later, reports in 2021 suggested that China is developing a hypersonic aircraft capable of carrying ten passengers anywhere in the world in under an hour. The 148-foot-long (45-meter) aircraft was reportedly about a third the size of a Boeing 737 and had delta wings identical to those of the Concorde (the world’s first supersonic airliner), but with the tips pointed skyward.

The following year, in 2022, reports said that China had completed the first tests of a small hypersonic prototype aircraft for civilian use in preparation for the development of a full-fledged hypersonic aircraft capable of flying six times the speed of sound.

The prototype was called Nanqiang No. 1 and was intended to be a model that would serve as a technology demonstrator for a hypersonic aircraft. The report said scientists hoped to complete the test program and move forward with building a flyable prototype by 2025.

China’s arch-enemy, the USA, is also working on hypersonic aircraft technology. According to some reports, the US Air Force is planning to introduce the SR-72 “Darkstar”, a Lockheed Martin aircraft that is the fastest in the world with a speed of Mach 6.0.

In the late 1950s, American engineers took the lead in exploring the potential of hypersonic technology, including aircraft and missiles, marking the beginning of hypersonic research. As part of the ambitious X-15 program, the US military launched manned hypersonic test aircraft. However, when the United States became involved in the Vietnam War in 1968, the program’s encouraging progress was halted.

As hypersonic aircraft were considered less suitable for the specific requirements of fighting rebels in the jungle, the focus shifted away from them. Later, the United States turned its attention to international counterterrorism efforts.

On the other hand, China increased its efforts to build hypersonic weapons and aircraft and regularly conducted flight tests. In fact, Beijing made frequent use of publicly available American hypersonics research, which had been supported by the US government for many years. And if the new claims are to be believed, Beijing appears to have come very far in developing hypersonic aircraft – much further than the West might have previously expected.