HELLO FUTURE: Turkey at Mach 5

Speaker 1 (00:08):
More than thirty one million Americans are going to be
traveling this week via airplane, and the numbers just keep
on climbing year over year over year, according to Airlines
for America. But what if you could travel from Philly
to la in an hour? The future might be sooner
than you think. Hello future, it's me Kevin. This is
a dispatch from the Digital Frontier. The planet is Earth.
The year is twenty twenty five, and today I'm talking
about Turkey travel at Mock five. And my guest today
is doctor Kurt Barnhardt. He is the go to guy
in the country on aviation and he's a professor out
of Kansas State University. I know, I know, I went
to Penn State. It's I get it. But he does
know a thing or two about traveling fast via plane.
All right, so doctor Kurt, thanks so much for being here.
I gotta ask. I've never enjoyed flying. But if I
could go anywhere in the country in an hour, I
mean that would improve things. Or anywhere in the world
in an hour or two, you know, go to Japan
for sushi tonight, even though it's Turkey Week. I would
do it. So are we there? Are we getting there closer.
How close are we to just traveling at the speed
of light.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
At the speed of light, well, that's gonna be some
distance in the future, but getting fast the speed of
sound and an airliner is not all that far away.
We think we've got a good company working on it.
Zoom down near Greensboro, North Carolina, which is not far
from you. They're working on it.

Speaker 1 (01:35):
Okay. So supersonic hypersonic are what is supersonic speed? What
is hypersonic speed? And why should I care about them?

Speaker 2 (01:43):
So supersonic is anything that's greater than the speed of sound,
and of course that changes somewhat with atmospheric condition, but
it's north of seven hundred miles per hour, so anything
from there up to about mark five is going to
be supersonic. And when he hit Monk five in north
of molk five and you're talking about hypersonic, so really
really fast.

Speaker 1 (02:07):
Okay. So Chuck Jaeger is the guy that everybody thinks
of when they hear supersonic speed, and he, of course
was the first person to fly at supersonic speed back
in October fourteenth and nineteen forty seven. And is this common?
I mean, how common is it for people to be
traveling at supersonic speed, and his commercial supersonic travel closer
in our lifetime and maybe another generation. When will commercial
supersonic speed be a real thing?

Speaker 2 (02:37):
Oh well, I mean it has been in the past,
you know, with the Concord that was in the late sixties.
All the way up to the early two thousands, we
did have a supersonic airliner. British Airways operated one in
France had some so it was a European initiative, European built,
but extremely expensive. Traveling past the speed of sound is
a big deal. It's tough and it takes a lot
of money, and that airplane really never did pay for itself,
even at ten thousand dollars a ticket. So we have
done it and we will do it again. There's a
lot of movement in that area.

Speaker 1 (03:14):
So people it was ten thousand dollars a ticket back
in the early ought to see this is before my
time of being an adult. But that's crazy. So we
had the capability, but we didn't have the financing for it.
Is there any interest to have hypersonic travel? And how
much faster? You said it was faster, but put it
in context of me being able to go to I
don't know, around the world or something, just to be
able to do something at a commercial level.

Speaker 2 (03:39):
Yeah, I mean hypersonic and then that gets really into
the suborbital realm, and there have been those that are
planning in that direction, and so yeah, you'd be talking
about just about anywhere in the world in an hour ish,
you know, depending on the vehicle.

Speaker 1 (03:55):
Okay, so now you're talking about airplanes going up to
the suborbital l which is essentially using spaceships like their airplanes.
Is that what you're essentially saying, Well.

Speaker 2 (04:09):
Not quite spaceships, but definitely different than what we have now.
And so yeah, we would just kind of be peeking
up into that suborbital level and then going back down
on a kind of a parabolic trajectory. And yeah, it's
again really fast, but it's also quite some time in
the future.

Speaker 1 (04:28):
Define future for me, my lifetime, one hundred years from now.

Speaker 2 (04:34):
Yeah, no, I think it's in your lifetime, I really do.

Speaker 1 (04:37):
You know.

Speaker 2 (04:37):
Obviously, we have you know, passengers going up into space now.
It's really expensive and it's really rare, but there are
those that want to get there more commonly, and so
you know, future, gosh, it's tough to say, but you know,
I would say in twenty five years for sure, that's
crazy that that would be optional.

Speaker 1 (04:57):
Do you think it will be for for the wealthy
or do you think the average person who's you know,
traveling this week for Thanksgiving in the air and has
to you know, get on a seven hour flight or
a six hour flight to go somewhere across country, that
they be able to do it in an hour or
less with hypersonics or SuperSonics.

Speaker 2 (05:16):
No, I don't think it's gonna I think it will
be expensive, and it won't be for short range flights obviously,
so you know, there's still going to be slower airplanes
flying around. It will still be fairly rare. It's enormous
physics challenge that has to be overcome. So I don't
think it'll be cheap anytime soon. Yes, for sure.

Speaker 1 (05:35):
So what are some of the physics challenges that are there?
I would imagine. I mean, this is a very reductive statement,
but if you're traveling at hypersonic speed, all I can
see is, you know, a comic or a meme of
some guy's face with the with the air pressure just
zooming backwards and just like the wind just hitting his face.
Are there any impacts on the passengers or from a
human standpoint of it being a risk for traveling that
fast for a human.

Speaker 2 (06:03):
Yeah, I mean definitely there's more risk. And so the
risks are they're different, they have to be managed, you know,
and if they're managed well, then a lot of the
complexity involves around the human support system in those environments,
you know, keeping them warm and safe and secure. This
requires a lot of effort in a very hostile environment,
you know, hypersonic suborbital extremely hostile. I mean, we're a
hostile when we get up into the twenties and thirties
in terms of thousands of feet so much more so
that's where a lot of the complexity comes in. And
you know, the ability to get up that high quickly
and navigate, and then there's the regulatory challenges you know,
airspace boundaries and things like that. So there's a lot
to it, for sure.

Speaker 1 (06:53):
So let's talk about some of the hostilities of being
up that high just from a very from a very
elementary level, what are some of those hostilities compared to
the average person this week who might be traveling at
twenty or thirty thousand feet compare those hostilities to the
ones that are higher and traveling at a faster speed.

Speaker 2 (07:12):
Yeah. So, I mean, if you depressurize in that kind
of an environment and you know there's a compromise in
the structure, it really is almost instant death unless there
are backups you know, to handle that. But if you
do pressurize in a normal commercial error situation, you can
get down pretty quickly. And you know, the time of
useful consciousness isn't that much the higher you go for
the most part. You know, especially with the oxygen system,
you know you're going to get down. You're going to
get safe that even the temperatures you could survive for
a little bit of time until you got down and
so but but not so in the high altitude environments
that we're talking about, you know, hypersonic and suborbital. You know,
those temperatures are enough to freeze you instantly. It would
be unsurvivable.

Speaker 1 (08:02):
That's optimistic. Thanks for that, doctor Kurt Parhart. And then
when you talk about some of the regulatory challenges and
the different regulations and the boundaries elaborate.

Speaker 2 (08:13):
Yeah, so you know airspace obviously, the country is in
control of the airspace above them, and when you are
traveling that far that fast and coming down from that altitude,
you're obviously going to be going through other airspaces. I mean,
it would be an enormous challenge to try to get
to say, a smaller country from that altitude without some
of the transversing other countries airspaces and so not that
that couldn't be overcome. I think it could be. But
another element that we're not dealing with now.

Speaker 1 (08:48):
So all I wanted was to go to Japan tonight
to get sushi in an hour. Sounds like I could
maybe do it in twenty five years, So I'll put
it on my calendar after I get back from my
round trip ticket to Space, so that they can do
medical research on me because I am going to go
to space. But yeah, it sounds like this is a
very complicated topic, and I'm focusing on it from a
purely selfish standpoint of getting around the world and the
country faster in a plane. But I would imagine that
there are some supply chain implications. You know, if you
could get stuff around the world a lot faster, I
wouldn't have to wait for my package, you know, to
be tripped up in a port somewhere or on a
boat somewhere. Are companies looking at using this type of
speed hypersonic SuperSonics to send stuff around the world, Not
to my knowledge.

Speaker 2 (09:40):
On any kind of a scale. You know, that would
have to be really really valuable cargo. You know, there
might be a role for organ transport and things like
that on really critical things. But for the most part now,
most of the cargo innovations we're looking at involve larger capacity,
lower altitude vehicles moving slower. Get that cost down to
where you could actually afford to send the cargo.

Speaker 1 (10:06):
So this is one of those topics where we have
the innovation, but we don't have really the demand or
the financing for it right now. Correct.

Speaker 2 (10:15):
Yeah, it would be a really expensive whatever you were
sending would cost you a whole lot of money unless
we get it down. And I'm not saying point at
some point in the future that this becomes really routine
and definitely be on my lifetime probably yours, and you
know it's going to be out there.

Speaker 1 (10:32):
Awesome. Well, thank you so much to doctor Kurt Barnhardt,
professor at Kansas State University. A senior professor at Kansas
State University's Aerospace and Technology Campus, which is focused on
a host of different projects and entrepreneurship in the aviation building.
Appreciate it