China plans hypersonic passenger flights more than twice the speed of Concorde

Sign up to Simon Calder’s free travel email for expert advice and money-saving discounts Get Simon Calder’s Travel email Get Simon Calder’s Travel email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy A Chinese tech company has unveiled plans for hypersonic flights, which could fly at one mile per second, covering long-haul routes such as Shanghai to New York in two hours. The brand Space Transportation, also known as the company Beijing Lingkong Tianxing Technology, has released an animated video which shows how its proposed “space flights” might look - with a rocket launcher “boosting” a jet to the edge of space, before separating from it to fly at around 7,000km per hour. The Shanghai-based company’s website says that it plans to launch test flights as soon as 2025, with views to operate a “full-scale global hypersonic vehicle flight by 2030." The company’s promo video shows what the views of Earth would be like The company announced in August that it had raised more than 300 million yuan in its latest funding drive, following a 10-year roadmap of its plans for consumer travel on the edge of space.