The Concorde jet flew 20 kilometers above the ground at more than twice the speed of sound. From that altitude one could see the curvature of the Earth's surface, it also meant you could coast from London to New York in about 3 hours flat.
In retrospect, the Concorde flew faster than the rotation of the Earth and, in a way, it was a time machine: if the Concorde plane left London at 10:30 am it arrived in New York at 9:30 am the same day seemingly traveling back in time while the passengers experienced a three hour sonic flight.
One of the greatest mechanical challenges for the engineers on the original Concorde aviation design was the immense heat problems that were generated; the air was compressed so much that the body of the plane overheated: the passenger windows would become very hot to the touch and the front of the nose reached well above the boiling point with opposing exterior subzero temperatures. This process may have caused expansion pressure on the plane cabin or the wings that cooled the body of the plane.
In the year 2000 an Air France Concorde flying to New York crash landed outside Paris shortly after take-off killing 113 people on board and four people on the ground. One day earlier Air France disclosed having found cracks in four of its six Concordes' wings. The Concorde was grounded and in addition to the heating challenges, the Concorde could only travel supersonically over water because the sonic boom over land was too disruptive and a technical problem that engineers could not overcome.
Since then, this past decade XCOR Aerospace began test firing a fairly new jet design concept: the Methane Rocket Engine. The rocket engine was designed to improve on some of the Concorde engineering challenges and as a result the engine prompted the creation of the XCOR spacecraft named Lynx; a rocket ship type plane capable of sub-orbital flight to altitudes more than 60 kilometers above the ground (3 times higher than the sonic Concorde).
XCOR is a private California based rocket engine and spaceflight development company headed by Jeff Greason. Unlike the famed Concorde supersonic tourist aircarrier that had potential for sub-orbital travel, the XCOR model always focused on the weightless zone of our outer atmosphere.
This altitude, also known as the Karman line, is the point where the atmosphere is thin and where a vehicle can fly fast enough to support itself with aerodynamic lift from the Earth's atmosphere.
'By definition, to reach space, the rocket engine has to lift the sub-orbital craft to a spaceflight altitude higher than 100 kilometers above sea level.' (Space-Travel.com).
Sub-orbital tourist flights will initially focus on attaining the altitude required to qualify as 'reaching space.' The take-off flight will be a highly juiced g-force ride, either vertical or very steep and landing very much like a plane or shuttle. The spacecraft will shut off its engines well before reaching maximum altitude and then coast up to the highest point. Those few minutes from where the engines shut off to the point where it begins a slow downward acceleration is when the passengers would experience true 'weightlessness.'
With companies like Space Adventures and the Suborbital Corporation offering carrier planes with sub-orbital spaceflights (the project financed by unnamed American investors) is indicating a significant change in aviation over the last few years with a promise of a safe and affordable sub-orbital spaceflight. This will undoubtedly mark a new era in commercial flights and spark a golden age in spaceflight aviation.
The XCOR Lynx was launched in March 2008 at Mojave California and the spacecraft is expected to be scheduling regular flights by 2010.
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