Commercial flights are an amazing innovation that have advanced dramatically in the past century. They have made it possible for people to travel across oceans in less than a day and opened up the whole world to travelers.

Even traveling at hundreds of miles per hour, however, some of the longer commercial routes can take 18+ hours to complete. Stratolaunch, however, is hoping to change that forever.

This company is working on some of the most innovative planes in the world, including the Talon-A2 hypersonic vehicle, which recently completed its second successful test flight.

To understand just how fast it was moving, some terms need to be defined.

For a plane to be considered supersonic, it has to travel as fast or faster than the speed of sound in air, which is 343 meters per second, which is 767 miles per hour, or 1235 kilometers per hour.

Now, that is really moving, but to be classified as hypersonic, the plane needs to travel at over 5 times the speed of sound in air (hypersonic is anywhere between Mach 5 and Mach 10). This translates to 6173-12348 kilometers per hour (3836-7673 miles per hour).

For those interested, the scale goes up from there to Ubersonic (Mach 10-25).

Scott Wilson, Program Manager of Mach-TB at Stratolaunch, put out a statement on the successful test flight, saying:

“These flights were a huge success for our program and for the nation. The data collected from the experiments flown on the initial Talon-A flight has now been analyzed and the results are extremely positive. The opportunity for technology testing at a high rate is highly valuable as we push the pace of hypersonic testing. The MACH-TB program is pleased with the multiple flight successes while looking forward to future flight tests with Stratolaunch.”

While this type of plane could someday lead to flights from the US to Europe dropping from 15+ hours down to under 3, it isn’t going to happen anytime soon.

The Talon-A2 can’t take off from the ground. Instead, it’s brought up into the air using Stratolaunch’s ROC plane, which is the largest plane in operation in the world.

The ROC looks like two commercial planes that are attached at the wing. The total wingspan of the ROC is 117 meters (384 feet), and without any load, it weighs 226,796 kilograms (500,000 pounds).

The company hopes to test its ability to lift the Talon-A2 into the air using a modified Boeing 747 near the end of 2025.

The speeds of these planes is ludicrous.

If you think that’s impressive, check out this story about a “goldmine” of lithium that was found in the U.S. that could completely change the EV battery game.