Dateline: August 20 2034
In a development that has upended the airline industry and transformed the pace of global commerce, hypersonic flight has become the new normal for business travellers.
Yesterday, SkyFlash Airways announced its fifth daily hypersonic service between New York and Shanghai, trimming the journey to a mind-bending one hour and 50 minutes. The age-old barriers of geography have crumbled; a dinner date on the Bund is now as routine for New Yorkers as an evening in Manhattan’s Soho.
Take the case of Li Wei and Jordan Smith. After exchanging emails Li booked a table at Ultraviolet in Shanghai and Smith confirmed their rendezvous from his Manhattan office. At 6am New York time Smith boarded SkyFlash’s hypersonic flight.
By 8:15pm Shanghai time he was seated across from Li, toasting a contract signed just hours before. Return flights mean both parties can be back for lunch, with zero jet lag thanks to advanced circadian alignment cabins.
Legacy carriers, packing their planes with budget conscious leisure travellers, face an uncertain future without the lucrative business segment. Demand for conventional, comfort-focused long-haul first class suites has evaporated, replaced by high-frequency point-to-point hypersonics. Airport infrastructure now prioritises rapid turnaround and biometric security, while carbon-neutral fuel makes it eco-friendly.
Thanks to rotating detonation ramjet engines, space-age materials and ultra-sleek aircraft designs, boardrooms have become borderless. “Deals are struck face-to-face, no matter where your partners live,” says SkyFlash CEO Alex Mercer. “Hypersonic travel has shrunk the world, and expanded its possibilities.”
With dinner dates and mergers crossing hemispheres in a single evening, hypersonic travel hasn’t just changed how we fly — it’s changed how we live and work. /First published on Mindbullets August 21 2025.
SpaceX reinvents airfreight
Starlifters will ship your cargo from Shanghai to New York in 60 minutes
Dateline: April 23 2028
You can’t blame Elon Musk for having a big, fat grin on his face. He’s taken on the aviation and shipping giants, including Boeing, FedEx and DHL, and he’s winning. But instead of using Jumbo Jets he’s got a fleet of Starships.
As the pioneer of reusable orbital rockets SpaceX has been launching satellites and sending cargo and astronauts to the International Space Station for years; but some people were still surprised when Nasa chose SpaceX to ferry its crews to the Moon and back, even before the first successful landing of the new Starship prototype.
Since then the gigantic stainless steel Starships have become a familiar sight, launching from and landing back on their converted oil rig platforms, conveniently moored close (but not too close) to strategic launch sites and coastal cities.
But it was the mass production of a fleet of Starlifters — dedicated cargo-carrying Starships — that has disrupted the decades old airfreight business. With a payload of more than 100 tonnes and costing a fraction of the price of a 747, a Starlifter can deliver a full load on a semi-orbital flight from Shanghai to New York in under an hour. And because they only burn fuel for launch and landing, these rocket ships use less than a jetliner.
More importantly, because they launch and land vertically, Starlifters don’t need runways or airports, and don’t need to compete with other air traffic. They’ve got their own dedicated “spaceports” and unique flight paths. That brings a whole new level of efficiency — and cost reduction — to their operation. Just think of the fuel wasted by a traditional cargo plane while it’s waiting for a landing slot!
Oh, and no pilots either. Computers and engineers do all the heavy lifting, and they’ve reinvented the airfreight industry.
First published on Mindbullets April 22 2021.
Despite appearances to the contrary, Futureworld cannot and does not predict the future. The Mindbullets scenarios are fictitious and designed purely to explore possible futures, and challenge and stimulate strategic thinking.
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