Ordinary Gweilo

There are certain places that somehow manage to stick in the memory. I don’t mean very famous sights such as the Eiffel Tower, the Sydney Opera House or Big Ben, but actually somewhere rather more mundane.

For example, that large model of Concorde in the middle of a roundabout on the approach road to Heathrow Airport has a certain resonance for me. Perhaps because I was born in London and enjoy going back there, but also (because I normally notice it when going to the airport) I am always happy to be on my way back to Hong Kong.

Unfortunately, it’s a long tiring journey. However, if this interesting story (also here) is true, it will one day be possible to get to London much quicker than the present 12-14 hours.

The story is that NASA have developed a plane that can fly at nearly 5,000 mph. In theory this would make it possible to fly from here to London or Sydney in around an hour or to New York in two hours. However, although the plane did really fly, it was only for ten seconds under its own power, and it had to be launched from a B-52. So we are a long way from anything that is commercially viable!

I remember reading about another similar project a year or two ago, but that was about sending a plane high up in the stratosphere, and the drawback (as I suspect is the case here) is that it will take time to get the plane up into the sky and down again. My guess is that would add around an hour at each end, but that would still make it much quicker than anything we have available today.

The bad news is that it will be at least another 20 years before this might be available commercially. Still, it’s a nice idea that a weekend in London, New York or Sydney would be feasible.

On which note I am off on holiday for a few days (on a boring old jet plane). So probably no posts for a while. Back soon.