Space travel to unlock new travel experiences

Saturday, November 12, 2022

Will Whitehorn, who headed the space operation of Virgin from 2004 to 2010 and sits on the government of UK’s space advisory panel, informed this week to WTM London that he thought there would be a huge demand for “rapid, round-planet” travel making use of the hypersonic aircraft, operating “within four or five years”.

An Atlanta-based company, Hermeus, is reportedly testing a new type of hypersonic engine. It will be capable of reaching Mach 5 eventually compared to the Concorde’s supersonic speeds of Mach 2.

As per Whitehorn, among a raft of “semi-space” tourism experiences, hypersonic travel would feature such as anti-gravity flights to the atmosphere of the earth that will be affordable and even more easily attainable than the commercial space travel race at present being fought by Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin and SpaceX.

Whitehorn also added that they would be considering lowering their prices as the market matured and to operate space flights, the technology used became even more easily available.

He said that for quite a while, he doesn’t think those costs will come down even though with something like hypersonic flights, it travels at twice Concorde’s height but for half the price of an actual space flight.

When questioned that how large a market he considers there would be for hypersonic flights, Whitehorn forecasted a sizeable interest.

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