Images: High-speed hopes for the hypersonic A2

When will the plane actually get off the ground? Not for a while. At a design unveiling Tuesday, Reaction Engines' managing director, Alan Bond, told the press that the A2 could be operating within 25 years. That's the "long-term" part of the full name of the European Space Agency project in which Reaction Engines is a partner: Long-Term Advanced Propulsion Concepts and Technologies, or Lapcat. (Around this time last year, NASA said it would work with Virgin Galactic to explore commercial spaceflight technologies, including hypersonic vehicles.)

The "advanced propulsion" part of the name brings us back to the liquid hydrogen fuel, which Reaction Engines says is mandatory for meeting Lapcat's range requirements since fossil fuels don't pack the same amount of energy.

Photo by Reaction Engines

Caption by Jonathan Skillings