Fly from India to US in 45 minutes?

NO SCIENCE FICTION: Kathuria says in five to 10 years, the cost of a suborbital flight will be able to compete with a regular flight for jet plane travel.

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New York: From New York to Mumbai in 45 minutes—an American company has developed an aircraft that it claims can do that in a years time.

The Silver Dart hypersonic glider, developed by Chicago-based PlanetSpace, will be used to commercialise space travel and revolutionising air travel.

Potentially, this would mean that the daylong journey between, say, New Delhi and New York could be cut down to under an hour on the Silver Dart, which functions like a space shuttle.

“It can glide anywhere from any point on the earth, for example, from New York to Bombay in 45 minutes and it's very stable. Also, what's very important from a technological point of view, on re-entry its deacceleration is one earth gravity. What that means is it approaches the speed of a normal jet plane on landing and basically can land on any runway that a 737 can run on. So, it's an ideal vehicle for intercontinental travel,” says Chairman, PlanetSpace, Chirinjeev Kathuria.

Chirinjeev Kathuria has prior experience in similar ventures. He was the Founding Director of MirCorp when it sent Denis Tito as the first space tourist on April 4, 2000. Tito paid 20 million dollars for the privilege.

PlanetSpace plans to start accepting space tourists for the Silver Dart towards early 2009. That will cost each citizen astronaut $200,000. But Kathuria sees a cost-effective future for the venture.

“The Internet opened up the world to rapid information, communication within second and business transactions within minutes. Suborbital space flight and point-to-point travel will do the exact same thing. Eventually, in five to 10 years, the cost of a suborbital flight will be able to compete with a regular flight for jet plane travel,” Kathuria says.

Between 2009 and 2012, PlanetSpace hopes to have demonstration flights delivering crew and cargo to the International Space Station as well as the point-to-point travel within the globe.

This may sound like science fiction right now but there's a real possibility that a few years down the line, your drive into an Indian airport may actually be longer than your flight into the United States.