Space tech meets aviation: The hypersonic revolution

(CNN) London to Melbourne in 90 minutes? Paris to San Francisco in under an hour?

That's travel at 25 times the speed of sound -- or barely enough time to take in an in-flight movie.

Few areas of aviation generate wilder predictions than hypersonic flight -- but a team in Germany might just have cracked it.

Hypersonic means speeds of Mach 5 or over, or more than five times the speed of sound. Supersonic is Mach 1, or the speed of sound.

Since the withdrawal of the Concorde in 2003, commercial aviation has remained purely subsonic, but that could change in the coming decades.


Take new aircraft concepts like the Japanese HYTEX, capable of speeds of Mach 5, or the EuropeanLapcat-II, expected to reach Mach 8.

Then there's the nascent space tourism industry, with companies such as Virgin Galactic and XCOR Aerospace hoping to take a select few on leisure trips to the edge of space.

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