Hermeus is building the world's fastest commercial aircraft. And we got to tour their hypersonic flight lab.

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The aircraft startup Hermeus is aiming to do something unprecedented: build an aircraft that can take off from sea level, hit hypersonic speeds, and land to be reused, all while using one jet engine.

To achieve that goal, Hermeus is experimenting with a demonstrator aircraft called Quarterhorse — a small single-engine autonomous vehicle designed to test the company’s one-of-a-kind engine and briefly hit Mach 5 to collect data.

Freethink asked Hermeus whether early experiments with Quarterhorse are likely to succeed. The answer? No. Failure is still the most likely outcome. "And every day that inches a little bit closer to success, a little bit closer and a little bit closer,” said the founder of Hermeus. “And there'll be days when we go the other direction, where we learned something we didn't know, where we fail in a test, and we take a step back. We just keep moving, keep moving a little bit by bit, until we will this into existence.”

Watch on Freethink.com ► https://www.freethink.com/series/challengers/commercial-hypersonic-flight

0:00 The Hermeus mission
0:57 Meet Quarterhorse
1:44 Hitting the runway
3:06 Supersonic vs hypersonic speed
3:41 Extreme hypersonic heat
4:54 How the engine works: Chimera
9:37 A testing failure
12:52 Vertical integration tech: The smart way to fail
13:31 Hypersonic passenger flight experience
16:06 The Hermeus moonshot

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Read more of our stories on hypersonic flight:
Coast-to-coast in 30 minutes: solving the physics of hypersonic flight
► https://www.freethink.com/space/hypersonic-flight
A 20-seat hypersonic plane is being built in Atlanta
► https://www.freethink.com/technology/hypersonic-plane
World’s fastest passenger jet hits near-supersonic speeds
► https://www.freethink.com/technology/fastest-private-jet
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