8.1. WORKING OF HYPERSOAR (Seminar Hyperplanes)

Hypersoar Design Views

The HyperSoar escapes heat build-up on the airframe by skipping along the edge of Earth's atmosphere - much like a rock skipped across water. A HyperSoar aircraft would ascend to power outside the Earth's atmosphere - then turn off its engines and coast back to the surface of the atmosphere. There, it would again fire its air-breathing engines and skip back into space. The craft would repeat this process until it reached its destination. A flight from US to Japan will take 25 such skips. The skips will be angled at only 5 degrees. The passengers will feel a force of 1.5 Gs which what you would experience on a child's swing. The plane will power up to 39 kms, from where it will coast to double that altitude, before it starts to descend. Each skip will be 450 kms long.

All previous concepts have suffered from heat buildup on the surface of the aircraft and in various aircraft components due to friction with the atmosphere. A HyperSoar plane would experience less heating because it would spend much of its flight out of the Earth's atmosphere. Also, any heat the craft picked up while "skipping" down into the atmosphere could be at least partially dissipated during the aircraft's time in space(it is cold out there).HyperSoar has a promised fuel efficiency comparable to today's commercial aeroplanes. However, possible adverse environmental effects from emissions or sonic booms have not been looked into, which have plagued attempts to develop slower, supersonic transport planes.