Hypersonic 3,800mph ‘Stargazer' jet could now blast from London to NYC in 1 hour after Nasa-funded rocket engine upgrade
The Venus Stargazer has a flight range of 5,000 miles, and is set to arrive "as soon as the 2030s".
8
Venus Aerospace is working on a hypersonic plane
Credit: venusaerospace
8
It could reach cruising speeds of 3,800mph
Credit: venusaerospace
8
A Nasa-backed engine upgrade could make Mach 5 flights possible
Credit: YouTube/@venusaerospace
Venus Aerospace, its creator, recently completed revealed it was planning a flight demo "later this summer".
The company said that thanks to a Nasa-funded breakthrough, the "record-setting" engine system is nearly ready to try out for real.
Venus hopes that its rocket engine will be able to blast passengers around the Earth in record time.
"Stargazer M4 is Earth's first hypersonic, reusable aircraft," Venus Aerospace boasted.
"No one has ever built a hypersonic platform that makes two-hour global transport cost-effective. Until now.
"Our flagship product, Stargazer, will ascend from a central airport using advanced propulsion systems.
"Our vehicle will accelerate from taxi to cruise speeds of Mach 4 at 110,000 feet with a top speed capable of Mach 9."
The engine is set to feature a new Nasa-funded nozzle design. That's the part of the rocket that "shapes and directs power".
This hi-tech nozzle will reportedly allow for speeds exceeding Mach 5 – or about 3,800mph.
"We've already proven our engine outperforms traditional systems on both efficiency and size," said Venus Aerospace chief Sassie Duggleby.
Inside nuclear-powered 'Skytanic' hotel that can stay airborne for months with 360 degree views & room for 5,000 guests
"The technology we developed with NASA's support will now be part of our integrated engine platform.
"Bringing us one step closer to proving that efficient, compact, and affordable hypersonic flight can be scaled."
Typical flight distance between London and New York City is around 3,450 miles.
Even at Mach 4 cruising speeds (around 3,070mph), the journey would take just over an hour.
8
Hypersonic flights could be here as soon as the 2030s, according to Vertical Aerospace
Credit: venusaerospace
8
The company hopes that passengers will be able to reach anywhere in the world in a matter of hours
Credit: YouTube/@venusaerospace
8
Flights would cruise at altitudes of 170,000 feet – far higher than a Boeing 747, which usually cruises at between 35,000 and 40,000 feet
Credit: YouTube/@venusaerospace
Venus Aerospace says that its rocket engine could be used for lots of different flight types.
That includes:
Spacecraft landers
Low-Earth-orbit satellites
Space cargo transfer vehicles
Rocket kick-stages
Hypersonic drones and missiles
The company completed a supersonic flight test of a drone early last year.
VENUS STARGAZER BY THE NUMBERS
Here's what you need to know... Weight: 150,000 pounds
Length: 150 feet
Width: 100 feet
Top speed: Mach 9 (6,900mph)
Actual cruising speed: Mach 4/5 (3,000-3,800mph)
Cruising altitude: 170,000 feet
Picture Credit: Venus Aerospace
It saw the rocket firm blast a 300lb machine to Mach 0.9 (690mph) during a 10-mile flight.
Now Venus is hoping that its new Nasa-funded engine nozzle will allow for a proper flight test, bringing a 2030 commercial launch closer to reality.
"This is just the beginning of what can be achieved with Venus propulsion technology," said Venus Aerospace's tech chief Andrew Duggleby.
"We've built a compact, high-performance system that unlocks speed, range, and agility across aerospace, defense, and many other applications.
8
The Venus Stargazer could potentially reach top speeds of Mach 9
Credit: YouTube/@venusaerospace
8
Mach 9 speeds would bring the craft close to 7,000mph
Credit: YouTube/@venusaerospace
"And we're confident in its readiness for flight."
It comes after a massive plane dubbed the 'Skytanic' is set to take to the skies by 2030.
The US is reportedly planning for a 'Son of Blackbird' jet that could become the world's fastest plane.
And another hypersonic jet could whisk passengers from London to Sydney in just two hours.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
9 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Harvard prof says Earth-bound comet could be 'hostile' alien spacecraft sent to spy on our solar system
A Harvard professor has suggested a 'hostile' alien spaceship is hurtling its way towards Earth - and it could be an extraterrestrial spy. And if the object - known as 31/ATLAS and believed by most astronomers to be a comet - does land among us it will be 'a blind date of astronomical proportions,' Avi Loeb says. In a study paper, he and his fellow researchers suggest the object's size, trajectory and behavior - when taken together - suggest an unknown intelligence is steering it our way. NASA first spotted the object, traveling through our solar system at 37 miles a second, in early July and most experts expect it to come nowhere near Earth. But Loeb, a professor of astrophysics, and his associates – Adam Crowl and Adam Hibberd of the London-based Initiative for Interstellar Studies – advance a detailed theory about who or what this intergalactic visitor might be. They speculate that, far from being a comet, the object could instead be a sprawling mothership from a distant planet, armed with technology vastly more advanced than ours. Loeb and his associates have identified eight anomalies about 3I/ATLAS to support their outlandish theory. Each individual anomaly is statistically rare, they insist, and so taken together they strongly suggest that some as-yet-unknown intelligence is steering the object towards us. 'An encounter with an interstellar, alien technology is a blind date of astronomical proportions,' Loeb told the Daily Mail. 'You don't know what you will meet, because our imagination is limited to our experience on Earth.' He argues that the plots of science fiction films are 'pretty much tailored to fit the narrative of what we are doing here on Earth and just expanding [on it]'. That is, most of us have no conception of what a really advanced civilization might look like. Expecting present-day humans to comprehend the sort of technology aliens would have developed in order to reach us is 'like asking a caveman to imagine an iPhone,' says Loeb. He has suggested sending a message using radio waves to the object: 'Hello, welcome to our neighborhood. Peace!' However, he also acknowledged the risks of this, noting that any intelligent life might see the signal as a threat. Most of Loeb's professional peers have determined that 3I/ATLAS will turn out to be a comet. They believe it has been drifting through space for billions of years, accelerating thanks to the gravitational 'catapult effect' of the countless stars it has passed. Its current speed of 130,000mph makes it the fastest comet ever recorded, says NASA. Predictably, some of Loeb's fellow astronomers are peeved that he is, as they see it, letting the side down by venturing into science fiction. Oxford University astronomer Chris Lintott says he's spouting 'nonsense on stilts.' And Loeb, it has to be said, has been urging the world to keep an open mind about extraterrestrials for some time. An expert on black holes, he has spent years searching for signs of alien life and, in 2021, founded the international 'Galileo Project' to focus on this area. Two years later, he led an expedition to a site on the bed of the Pacific Ocean where a meteor was believed to have come to rest, claiming the remains his team discovered could have come from an extraterrestrial spacecraft. NASA, whose telescope in Chile first spotted 3I/ATLAS on July 1, says the object should remain visible to ground-based telescopes in September but will then pass behind the sun. It is expected to reappear by early December. So what are the anomalies about 3I/ATLAS that have so alarmed Professor Loeb? The first relates to its lack of 'tail.' Comets are propelled through space by gravity and solar radiation. The latter turns the comet's surface ice into gas, which – together with the dust it carries – creates a visible tail. Loeb said he was 'puzzled' that the object has undergone 'significant non-gravitational acceleration' without apparently having any such tail. He was also disturbed by its unusual 'retrograde' orbit around the sun (in other words, it's moving against the flow of the solar system). This, he argues, could be a 'defensive maneuver' by its alien pilots to make it harder for their craft to be intercepted by rockets fired from Earth. 3I/ATLAS's trajectory also means it will pass relatively close to Venus, Mars and Jupiter – again statistically unlikely but, he notes, affording it the perfect opportunity to snoop at the other planets in our solar system, like some sort of extraterrestrial spy. He points out that 3I/ATLAS will achieve 'perihelion' – reaching its closest point to the sun – on the opposite side of the sun relative to Earth. This, says Loeb, 'could be intentional to avoid detailed observations from Earth-based telescopes.' It would also, he warns, allow it to launch 'probes' or other 'gadgets' in secret to invade or infiltrate – or even change direction and visit our planet itself, arriving with little warning as early as late November. Some critics, while agreeing with him that scientists should be less dismissive of ET research, accuse Loeb of cherry-picking data to suit his argument. In the past few days, NASA has revealed an image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope which it hailed as the 'sharpest-ever picture' of 3I/ATLAS. The image remains blurred (hardly surprising given it shows something 277 million miles away) but NASA claims it suggests the object is a comet because it appears to show a 'teardrop-shaped cocoon of dust coming off its solid, icy nucleus.' But Loeb is adamant there is still no evidence the object has the tail of dust thrown off by comets. The jury's still out, he insists. So, if – and, yes, this is a big if – 3I/ATLAS does turn out to be an alien spacecraft, is there anything we could do? In the short term, Loeb and his co-authors have suggested using NASA's unmanned Juno spacecraft, currently in orbit around Jupiter, to photograph the object. But Juno may not have enough fuel left for such a mission. In the long term, Loeb argues, we should treat all interstellar objects entering the solar system as potentially the creation of aliens. He believes governments should co-ordinate through an international body. 'We talk about the existential risks from artificial intelligence, from climate change, from an asteroid impact, but there's no discussion about the risk from alien technology,' he told the Daily Mail. He'd like to see governments form 'task forces' to determine how to respond if and when alien intelligence is finally detected, and how to break the news to the public without triggering panic. Of course, the public reaction may depend on whether the visitors wish us well or ill. 'In the first case, humanity needs only to wait and welcome this interstellar messenger with open arms,' says Loeb. 'It is the second scenario that causes serious concern.' Loeb says we'll get a much better indication of what exactly 3I/ATLAS is when it can be seen – possibly as early as later this month – by the James Webb Space Telescope. The telescope, which is now a million miles from us, will be able to view the object in infra-red, allowing it to analyze the sunlight reflected from it and determine precisely what it is. It's easy to be cynical about ET hunters like Loeb and he concedes he is expecting to be wrong. But with all his expertise, one has to consider the daunting question: What if he's right?
The Guardian
11 hours ago
- The Guardian
Tempur Pro Plus SmartCool mattress review: a dream for your joints or too soft for comfort?
Let's get the Nasa thing out of the way first. Memory foam, so the internet tells me, repeatedly, was developed by the US space agency in the 60s to cushion astronauts during flights. Nice story, but there's no extreme G-force in my bed, just a pair of middle-aged people wanting to sleep. Do we really need Nasa's pricey wonder material for that? The Guardian's journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more. It does help, in small doses. I've found that a layer or two of memory foam can turn a good mattress into a great one. This soft, cosy material moulds to your body and does a brilliant job of tempering the solidity of springs in hybrid mattresses, such as the Simba Hybrid Pro and Otty Original Hybrid. It also absorbs bounce so well that it's helped me and my husband sleep in peace despite each other's fidgeting. A mattress made entirely from memory foam, though? I wasn't sure I'd enjoy lying on 25cm of chewy marshmallow. Mercifully, Tempur uses foam of many different firmness levels, including high-density base layers designed to provide support as strong as springs. I set out to discover how well it works by testing one of Tempur's most popular mattresses, the Pro Plus SmartCool. Tempur sent me a double-size Pro Plus SmartCool for sleep-testing in July. It was the best of times and the worst of times to test this mattress, because my bedroom was stifling. I was sent a medium mattress instead of the requested medium-firm, and this was unfortunate because heat can make memory foam even softer – and I find firmer mattresses more comfortable. At least the balmy conditions were perfect for testing the claimed cooling properties of the SmartCool fabric cover. Before any snoozing could take place, my husband, Alan, and I ran our usual mattress-testing experiments. Memory foam tends to trap heat, so we were keen to see if the SmartCool cover could offset this. We used a heat pad, a thermocouple and our bottoms to measure how efficiently the surface cooled down, and we also took the temperature of the foam beneath. We then deployed weights and wobbly cups of water to measure factors such as sinkage, motion isolation and edge support. Our family testing panel came over to score the mattress out of 10 on firmness, breathability and comfort. I prefer to sleep-test mattresses for much longer than a week because even the firmest cushioning materials soften over time. The Simba and Panda Hybrid Bamboo felt significantly softer after a couple of months. The Tempur was soft from the start, though, and Alan and I found it too cushioned for comfort. After a week of poor sleep, we gave it to my dad, Don, 85, to see if its pressure relief might help soothe the joint pain he's been suffering in his hip and shoulder (more on which below). He returned it to us for a second leg of sleep testing once temperatures had cooled down in late July. Tempur, founded in the US in 1992, was among the first brands to make mattresses from viscoelastic polyurethane foam. 'Memory foam' is how you know this stuff, but Tempur calls it 'Tempur Material' and uses its own proprietary formulas that cover a range of densities. Memory foam moulds to your body and doesn't spring back quickly when pressed. It feels quite different from the simple seat-cushion polyfoam used in many sprung mattresses under the sleep surface (in the Ikea Valevåg, for example). It's also more expensive. And so, as with many mattresses that contain high proportions of memory foam, Tempur mattresses are expensive. The Pro Plus SmartCool sits in the middle of Tempur's range, costing from £1,499 for a 21cm-deep single to £4,299 for a 30cm-deep 200 x 200cm ('special size'). The 25cm-deep double I tested costs from £2,299, almost twice the price of the Simba, the next most expensive mattress in the Filter's roundup. The medium SmartCool has four layers of foam, of varying densities: a 5cm upper layer of soft, elastic memory foam for cushioning and pressure relief; then 5cm of adaptive foam; and then 3cm of even denser supportive foam. Finally, the 12cm 'DuraBase' layer of even denser foam provides support and durability. Everyone on my panel rated it 5/10 on the soft-firm scale, so the 'medium' description is accurate. The sleeping surface sank a generous 4.2cm under 7.5kg of hand weights. That's well cushioned, but only marginally more than the Eve Wunderflip Hybrid, which sank 4cm and is described as medium-firm. Tempur doesn't say how the SmartCool's 'QuickRefresh' polyester fabric cover dissipates heat; it simply cites 'cool-to-the-touch' technology. The cover unzips easily with its stylish green handles, and it can be washed at 40C. You can also unzip and wash the base cover. Trying to wash or sponge the mattress inside, however, will invalidate your guarantee. The double-size mattress weighs a chunky 40kg, a few kilos more than the Otty or the Simba, but much less than the 65kg Millbrook Wool Luxury 4000. The Tempur's weight and floppiness – plus the absence of any turning handles – make it tricky to manoeuvre, but once you've got it on your bed, you'll never really have to. You don't have to turn it, although you can rotate it occasionally to maintain even support, according to the care guidelines. Tempur has several showrooms where you can try its mattresses before buying, although you'll need to make an appointment. Locations include Castleford in West Yorkshire, Bridgend, Swindon, Milton Keynes, Durham and both Westfields in London. Whether you buy in person or online, you get a 10-year warranty and a 100-night trial. Type: memory foam Firmness: advertised as medium, panel rated as 5/10Depth: 21, 25 (as tested) and 30cm Cover: unzip to wash at 40CTurn or rotate: don't turn; you can rotate 'to maintain even comfort'Trial period: 100 nightsWarranty: 10 yearsOld mattress recycling: not offered in UKSustainability credentials: Oeko-Tex Standard 100 certified; Pro mattresses are Danish Indoor Climate labelled; UK warehouse operations are zero landfill; Tempur aims to be carbon neutral by 2040 You wait years for a mattress to turn up without being vacuum-shrunk, then they all come at once. As with the Millbrook Wool Luxury 4000, the Tempur arrived full-size and flat. That meant it was ready to sleep on immediately, unlike the oodles of bed-in-a-box mattresses I've tested, and it came packed in significantly less plastic wrapping than they did. The downside of receiving a non-shrunk mattress is that it's harder to get it up the stairs. Tempur's helpful delivery team would have done it for me, but I wanted to see how my husband and I coped (sorry, Alan). The Tempur-branded delivery team was nice to see after so many third-party couriers, but I had to wait three weeks for the mattress to arrive. New foam often has a chemical 'off-gassing' smell, and the Tempur is quite stinky (or fragrant, depending on your preferences) for its first couple of weeks. I don't mind the smell, but you may find it distracting, especially when you're trying to get to sleep. Sign up to The Filter Get the best shopping advice from the Filter team straight to your inbox. The Guardian's journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. after newsletter promotion None like it hot when they're trying to sleep, so I was delighted by the genuinely fresh feel of Tempur's SmartCool cover. Iggy the cat was particularly keen to hog the stitched fabric when July's night-time temperatures exceeded 20C, perhaps because his 4kg body couldn't sink into the heat-trapping memory foam. Our bodies did sink into it, however. As we slept, the foam formed a cocoon around us (mainly our bums), and made us feel like we were floating in the mattress rather than on top of it. There was no sense of sagging, just of strong, deliberate cradling. Firmer mattresses are more to my taste, but they can give me niggling pain from an old rib injury, and the Tempur never did. If you live with pain and find it hard to sleep as a result, the memory foam upper layers of this mattress could be just what you need. My 85-year-old dad, Don, also enjoyed the pain relief of the mattress but has since switched back to the firmer surface to which he's more accustomed. He first tried it lying on his back and said: 'Oh, I like that … I think,' which echoed my own thoughts. I asked him to turn on to his right side to test his recently injured shoulder and hip, and he said there was no pain – a welcome relief for us both. The mattress's motion isolation is exceptionally good. This is something I've learned to expect from highly cushioned memory foam because it absorbs the movement of your body and dramatically cuts down on bounce. Alan and I are fidgety sleepers, so motion isolation helps us rest without being disturbed by each other. As mentioned, some of the higher-density layers of Tempur's mattress are decidedly firm. The Pro Plus SmartCool is also available in two firmer versions than the one I tested. But the medium version quickly turned out to be an over-enthusiastic hugger, at least for our tastes. After the initially pleasurable cradling, it just kept going until it seemed to be swallowing us. 'My bum is disappearing into it,' said Don. He and I are very small, so we didn't sink as far into this mattress as a person of larger build would. My husband, Alan, thoroughly average size, sank too far for comfort and declared it 'like being sucked into quicksand'. We wanted to give the Tempur a fair chance, so we used it on our slatted bed base for several nights, then Don used it on his solid divan base. It never felt lumpy or saggy, but my lower back felt unsupported, and our sleeping bodies made impressions so deep that it became difficult to roll over. If your sleep style involves plenty of tossing and turning, a firmer mattress will suit you better. Edge support is frankly poor for a mattress that costs this much. Even a soft mattress should have some firm reinforcement around the sides to make it easy to get into and out, but when we tried sitting on the edge, we all felt like we were sliding off it. Sitting up to read is difficult because your weight is concentrated on your bum, and you just, well, sink. Even the cover's cooling ability had its limits, as Alan and I discovered when sinking into the foam beneath it. We woke in the night, complaining that we felt we were cooking in the heat of our sleeping bodies. The cover helps by forming a barrier between you and the foam, but we found – in our experience and our heat-retention tests – that it couldn't stop the foam getting hotter than a mattress that contains springs. If you tend to overheat at night all year round, an all-foam mattress isn't for you. Environmental kudos is a challenge for a company that uses this much foam. High-viscosity polyurethane foam is non-biodegradable, has a chemical-intensive manufacturing process and is harder to recycle than fabric or springs. Given all this, Tempur has made decent strides in sustainability. The most noticeable example for me was the dramatic reduction in plastic packaging compared with bed-in-a-box mattresses. There isn't even any cardboard to get rid of. Behind the scenes, Tempur's products are Oeko-Tex Standard 100-certified, and its Danish production facility is ISO-certified for quality, environment, health and safety, and energy. Tempur mattresses are made in Denmark, and its Pro and One mattresses are certified by the Danish Indoor Climate Labelling scheme, a voluntary but internationally recognised standard for chemical compound emissions. Tempur's UK warehouses and distribution centres have been zero landfill since 2019, and the company aims to be carbon neutral by 2040. Foam isn't easy to recycle, but Tempur offers ideas on its environmental sustainability page. Old foam 'can be cleaned and shredded for use in new products, such as carpet underlay', it says, so I'm disappointed that the company doesn't offer to do this with its UK customers' old mattresses. Mattress collection is offered in the US 'on request', but not here. Tempur UK does at least run an online outlet store where you can buy refurbished products, including mattresses that have been returned by buyers within the 100-night trial. The medium version of the Pro Plus SmartCool is a soft, cradling mattress with excellent pressure relief. If you love your beds on the plush side, you may decide it's worth every penny. However, this sumptuous mattress is not for everyone – including my family and me. Perhaps the quicksand sensation was too close to our childhood nightmares to give us the sleep of our dreams. Jane Hoskyn is a features journalist and WFH pioneer with three decades of experience in rearranging bookshelves and 'testing' coffee machines while deadlines loom. Her work has made her a low-key expert in all manner of consumables, from sports watches to solar panels. She would always rather be in the woods
The Herald Scotland
12 hours ago
- The Herald Scotland
A clue about extraterrestrial life may be hiding deep in the ocean
"What makes our discovery groundbreaking is not just its greater depth - it's the astonishing abundance and diversity of chemosynthetic life we observed," said marine geochemist Mengran Du of the Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, one of the authors of the research published July 30 in the peer-reviewed British journal Nature. The authors suggest that similar communities may be more widespread than previously thought, and their findings challenge views about how the ecosystems might be supported. "Even though living in the harshest environment, these life forms found their way in surviving and thriving," Du said. To some, the findings prompt questions about the potential for finding life on other planets. Marine geologist and study co-author Xiaotong Peng said "we suggest that similar chemosynthetic communities may also exist in extraterrestrial oceans, as chemical species like methane and hydrogen are common there." Could this kind of life be found on other planets? Du told USA TODAY that similar chemosynthetic life forms could exist on Jupiter's moon Europa, or even Saturn's moon Enceladus. Europa might be the most likely: "Europa's ocean is considered one of the most promising places in the solar system to look for life beyond Earth," according to NASA. "There is very strong evidence that the ingredients for life exist on Europa," said planetary scientist Bonnie Buratti of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who was not part of this study. At the bottom of Europa's ocean, where the water meets the rocky mantle, there may be thermal vents where heat releases chemical energy. "They may be similar to thermal vents in the deep oceans of the Earth where primitive life exists and where life may have originated on the Earth," Buratti said. Europa Clipper will tell us more NASA hopes the Europa Clipper spacecraft will help "determine whether (Europa's) subsurface ocean harbors a habitable environment," Buratti said. She added that the current thinking is that life arose in the depth's of the Earth's oceans, so seeking a similar environment on Europa is the first step to answering questions about undersea life on other planets or moons. "Europa is the first ocean world to be studied in detail. Other bodies in the Solar System, such as Titan, Enceladus, possibly Ganymede and even Pluto, as well as many exoplanets or exomoons could also harbor habitable environments similar to those on Earth," she told USA TODAY. "We'll know much more after we get some results from Europa Clipper, starting in 2030." More: NASA's Europa Clipper launches in search for 'ingredients of life' on Jupiter's icy moon On Earth, amazing deep sea tube worms and clams Researchers found animal communities - dominated by tube worms and clams - during a series of dives to the bottom of the Kuril-Kamchatka and Aleutian trenches. The ecosystems were discovered at depths greater than the height of Mount Everest, Earth's tallest peak. The deepest one was 31,276 feet below the ocean surface in the Kuril-Kamchatka Trench. This was almost 25% deeper than such animals had previously been documented anywhere on Earth. This environment harbors "the deepest and the most extensive chemosynthetic communities known to exist on our planet," said marine geologist and study co-author Xiaotong Peng. The study reported that organisms such as these that live in extreme environments need to adapt to produce energy in different ways. Known as "chemosynthesis-based communities," they derive their energy from chemical reactions rather than from photosynthesis, which requires sunlight. Such communities can be found in deep sea habitats where chemicals such as hydrogen sulfide and methane seep from the sea floor, according to the study. Contributing: Reuters
