Oxfordshire-based Reaction Engines has designed a hypersonic airplane that could one day fly passengers between Europe and Australia in less than five hours. The company says that the A2 could be operating within 25 years. It would carry 300 passengers and is capable of sustained travel at Mach 5 (3,800 mph), more than twice the speed of the Aérospatiale-BAC Concorde.

At 143 meters long, the A2 is roughly twice the size of the biggest current jumbo jets. It runs on a liquid hydrogen Scimitar engine being developed by Reaction Engines that is based on existing technology.

The LAPCAT (Long-Term Advanced Propulsion Concepts and Technologies) project is being funded by the European Space Agency (ESA). The ESA wants to encourage companies to push the boundaries of commercial air travel using technology more commonly associated with space travel.

The ESA’s website states that hypersonic flight is generally considered to begin at Mach 5. The first man-made object to reach hypersonic speeds was the two-stage US “Bumper” rocket, assembled from a captured German V-2 rocket in 1949. While hypersonic flight is not new, current research is focusing on sustained hypersonic flight within the Earth’s atmosphere.