While we see many businesses competing against each other in different aspects, what truly thrills us is the rivalry between airplane manufacturers and the race to get the fastest airplane title in the market. The current title holder is the Gulfstream G650; however, Cessna Citation X is all set to get the certification from FAA early during this year and is capable of attaining a speed of Mach 0.935 rendering it as the world’s fastest civilian aircraft. However, we advise Cessna Citation X to not get too comfortable since Spike Aerospace, a Boston based company, plans on taking a lead in this competition by introducing their S-512. According to Spike, S-512 will claim the title of world’s first supersonic business jet that will be able to attain a speed of Mach 1.6 while Mach 1.8 will be its top speed.
Spike has been working on this for the past few years, its engineers who have had experience with Gulfstream, Eclipse and Airbus have all put in hard work to come up with this design for the Spike S-512. The initial target will be the business class users who can’t afford to lose time. The S-512 comes with a capacity of 18 passengers and a price tag of $60-80 million. According to Spike, the speed (Mach 1.6-1.8) means that this beauty of an airplane will be able to make the flight from New York to London in 3-4 hours as compared to the current flight time of 6-7 hours and the Los Angeles to Tokyo flight in 8 hours which currently takes about 14-16 hours.
However, beware that the design stage is not complete yet.Moreover, the development stage and specs are not concrete and might vary from the original. However, as of now, Spike is confident to give us this much; it will have a maximum range of 4,000 nautical miles, a length of 40 meters, wingspan being 18 meters and the cabin will measure 12 meters in length, 2 meters in height and 1.89 meters wide.
For now, the problem lies with the sonic boom, that has been the main reason why the market got limited for the Concorde. Even Spike team has confessed that bringing the sonic boom down to the level where FAA accepts is going to be one major challenge. However, they are confident that they can overcome it and start the deliveries of this magnificent plane in December 2018. Fingers crossed!
