A few days ago, representatives of the relatively young aerospace company Venus Aerospace of Houston published some details about the Stargazer, a hypersonic passenger plane, which is being developed starting in 2020. This plane, designed to carry 12 passengers, will be able to accelerate to a speed of Mach 9, and its maximum flight height is almost 52 kilometers.
Though Venus Aerospace calls the Stargazer a “space plane”, it will never even approach the edge of space and the atmosphere, the Carman Line, which is another 50 kilometers above maximum flight altitude. Nevertheless, passengers will be able to see through the plane’s window views of Earth as close as possible to what it all looks like from low Earth orbit.
Moving at its cruising speed, the plane will be able to take passengers from Los Angeles to Tokyo in about one hour. By comparison, a conventional commercial airline plane takes 11 hours to cover the same distance.
During takeoff, landing and maneuvering, the Stargazer’s engines run normally in turbojet mode. But as soon as the aircraft climbs to a high altitude and is far enough away from any populated areas, the engines switch to rocket supersonic operation.
