The world will not only be a better place, it will also seem much smaller if EADS can pull off its latest concept airplane called ZEHST (Zero Emission High Supersonic Transport), revealed at the Paris Air Show in Le Bourget, France. Plans are to produce an airplane that impacts the environment minimally, while having the power to fly from Los Angeles to Tokyo in less than 2 hours and 30 minutes.
Innovators at EADS used ideas from the Astrium suborbital spaceplane project, currently in a slow developmental phase, to come up with the ZEHST concept. A propulsion system that uses several different engines is on the drawing board, some operating on biofuel, others on a liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. The combination is expected to enable an initial climb speed of .8 Mach, and a continuous climb speed of Mach 2.5. Once at an altitude of more than 17 nautical miles, the airplane is expected to reach speeds in excess of Mach 4.
