They call it a “scramjet,” an engine so blindingly fast that it could carry an airplane from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., in about 20 minutes
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I don’t think I’d want to be pushing that service cart.
Next week, NASA plans to break the aircraft speed record for the second time in 7 1/2 months by flying its rocket-assisted X-43A scramjet craft 110,000 feet above the Pacific Ocean at speeds close to Mach 10 — about 7,200 mph, or 10 times the speed of sound. The flight will last perhaps 10 seconds and end with the pilotless aircraft plunging to a watery grave 850 miles off the California coast.
I guess they meant to say New York to San Fransisco!
Imagine the military application. In the science fiction, The Nano Flower, Peter F. Hamilton wrote that a multi-national corporation which was fighting a war against another multi-national was able to send their tactical team anywhere in the world in ‘about 15 minutes. Of course, this corporation also has a captured astroid in L5 that’s out of the laws of any Earth bound government.