Flights from UK-Australia could take just four hours by 2030

London-New York would take 60 minutes

New technology could cut flight times between London and Sydney to just four hours by the 2030s, the head of the UK Space Agency has said.

Referring to the pioneering work being done by Oxford-based Reaction Engines, which is developing the Sabre engine, CEO of UK Space Agency, Graham Turnock said: “When we have brought the Sabre rocket engine to fruition, that may enable us to get to Australia in perhaps as little as four hours.”

The company was presenting its work on the hybrid hydrogen air-breathing rocket, which is designed to propel an aircraft at twice the speed of Concorde, at the UK Space Conference in Wales this week.

At Mach 5.4 speeds, flights between New York and London would take one hour, while UK-Australia could be done in four.

Hypersonic travel, which is the equivalent of five times the speed of sound, is difficult to achieve without overheating the engine.

The Synergetic Air Breathing Rocket Engine (Sabre) deals with this problem by using tubes of supercooled helium to keep temperatures from soaring.

“The main thing with Sabre is it’s like a hybrid of a rocket engine and an aero engine, so it allows a rocket to breathe air,” said Reaction Engines’ Shaun Driscoll, reports Stuff. “Rockets really haven’t progressed in 70 years, whereas aero engines have become very efficient.

“So, if you can combine an aero engine and a rocket you can have a very lightweight efficient propulsion system and basically create a space plane. The physics checks out but the challenge is building a test regime.”

Trials of the engine are currently taking place in Denver, Colorado, with plans to start launching test flights by the mid-2020s and commercial flights by the 2030s. The hydrogen/oxygen engine would be far greener and cheaper than current air travel.

The news comes after the British government was told it needs to halve flight growth plans if it wants to hit its target of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

Official advisors the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) published a letter to Transport Minister Grant Shapps, highlighting the changes that need to be made to the aviation industry if the goal is to be reached.