Zehst which stands for Zero Emission Hypersonic Transportation is a concept jet made by EADS, parent company of the Airbus. This is a zero emissions environment friendly jet which was unveiled at the Paris Air Show today.
This Concorde look alike is as mean though it wont be that noisy. It can achieve speeds of up to Mach 4 in three stages. It will use conventional jet engines to take off from normal runways unlike the Concorde, once it reaches a suitable altitude the rocket engines will take charge taking the jet even higher and ultimately the ram jet engines will take over. In concept the Hypersonic jet can carry atleast 100 passengers plus crew at a speed of 3,125 MPH at an altitude of six miles above the earth.
So what does this speed mean? It means you can travel from Paris to Tokyo in mere 2 hours. London to Spain in 20 mins and London to Istanbul in 30. Crazy isn’t it? What more? You get all of this, keeping the environment intact. After all it runs on seaweed biofuel which consists of hydrogen and oxygen and emits water vapor only.
The sad thing about this exciting and amazing concept is that it would take another 8 years to see a prototype i.e. in 2020 and the manufacturing may begin only in 2040. That is a very very long time indeed. Well we just hope that they are able to introduce these planes much earlier maybe 2020 itself.
Well till then you can go ahead and view the video below:
