How long would it take to fly around the equator at Mach 10?

While the airliner needs more than 10 hrs to fly a distance equivalent from San Francisco straight to Madrid, the same distance could be traversed in 45 mins by a hypersonic flight system at Mach 10. Such system would turn around the world flying along the equator in less than 4 hrs.



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Its designers claim that it could travel at speeds as fast as Mach 10, reaching New York from London in 30 minutes.

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The fastest fighter jet ever created was the NASA/USAF X-15. It was an experimental aircraft that resembled more of a rocket with wings but managed to reach a record 4,520mph. The fastest fighter jet in the world today is the MiG-25 Foxbat, with a top speed of 2,190mph, half the speed of the X-15.

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Nevertheless, certain exceptional aircraft like the Concorde and the Tupolev Tu-144 have managed to ascend to altitudes of FL600 (equivalent to 60,000 feet).

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No airplane has ever gone this fast. The speediest airplane ever built is Lockheed's SR-71 Blackbird, which traveled at Mach 3.2. Anything above Mach 9 and you lose communications with the ground, as plasma starts enveloping the vehicle, as if it were a spacecraft returning to Earth through the upper atmosphere.

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Can you fly at 80000 feet? The US Air Force U-2 reconnaissance aircraft flies at 72 000 feet almost every day for many hours. The world's fastest manned aircraft, the SR-71, flew for many years at 80 000 feet and higher.

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A: No commercial or business airplane flying today can exceed 100,000 feet. Special rocket-powered airplanes can fly over 100,000 feet to gather data, but they are specially designed for it.

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Special rocket-powered airplanes can fly over 100,000 feet to gather data, but they are specially designed for it. Q: Much beyond the certified ceiling, can an aircraft maintain altitude? A: During certification testing, airplanes are flown above the certified ceiling, but the performance is limited.

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Cessna Citation X and Citation X+ The citation X+ possesses the speed of Mach 0.935 (536 kt, 993 km/h). This remarkable feature makes it the fastest civil aircraft in the mighty blue sky.

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Slowest aircraft The MacCready Gossamer Condor is a human-powered aircraft capable of flight as slow as 8 miles per hour (13 km/h). Its successor, the MacCready Gossamer Albatross can fly as slow as 9.23 miles per hour (14.85 km/h).

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