Kevin checks his watch anxiously. School starts in an hour and he is still 2,000 miles away: unless the shuttle arrives soon he will be in serious trouble. Suddenly, to his relief, it glides to a halt in front of him. Clutching his text books, he climbs aboard. Fifty minutes later he is at his desk in the classroom. 

Not everyone's journey to school in 2030 will be as dramatic as Kevin's. But the latest developments in technology mean that it could be possible.

A Texas company, Venus Aerospace, is working on a hypersonicTravelling at speeds of more than five times the speed of sound (Mach 5). jet called the Stargazer. If it works, the flight time from London to New York could be reduced from almost seven hours to less than one.

The Stargazer's revolutionary ramjetA type of jet engine that draws in air using the forward speed of the vehicle and compresses it for combustion. engine is designed to reach MachA unit of measurement charting the speed of an object in relation to the speed of sound. Travelling at Mach 1 means travelling at the speed of sound. 6 or 3,600mph. The aircraft will fly at an altitude of 110,000 feet - so high that the passengers will be able to see the curvature of the Earth. It will have a range of 5,000 miles.

But there is an economic challenge as well as a scientific one. The Stargazer is estimated to cost £26m - and will only have room for 12 people.

Another problem is noise. Even travelling at Mach 1, an aircraft creates a sonic boomA loud explosive sound caused by shockwaves created when an object travels faster than the speed of sound. which is hugely annoying for people on the ground and can damage buildings. So the Stargazer could face many legal objections.

Next year will be the 50th anniversary of the first supersonic airliner, Concorde. A joint Anglo-French project, it was much admired, but suffered a fall in passenger numbers after a fatal crash. It was taken out of service in 2003, and only now is the idea of superfast air travel being revived.

Environmental concerns are much stronger today than when Concorde was designed. To this end NasaThe National Aeronautics and Space Administration, responsible for the US space programme. has been working on an aircraft called the X-59. According to test pilot Jim Less, it will "turn loud supersonic booms into quiet supersonic bumps."¹

An American company called Boom Supersonic is also aiming to produce a supersonic passenger jet. Its XB-1 prototypeOriginal or test version of something. almost reached Mach 1 on a test flight in December, and is expected to break the sound barrier early this year.

According to Kaif Shaikh, writing in Interesting Engineering: "These advancements signal a historic moment in aviation," initiating "a new supersonic era of rapid, efficient and sustainable air travel".

Another company, VeriJet, aims to cut journey times by using small, single-engine jets controlled by AIA computer programme that has been designed to think. . It points out that these can travel between local airports where check-in times and security queues are much shorter than at larger ones.

On the ground, rail travel could be revolutionised by Hyperloop trains. The idea is to send pods at very high speed through a sealed tube which reduces air resistance. It is hoped that a journey from London to Scotland would take just 45 minutes.

Meanwhile, the network of conventional high-speed trains across Europe is growing rapidly. It is now possible to travel from London to BarcelonaA city in Spain's Catalonia region, known for its architecture and art. - a distance of nearly 1,000 miles - in a single day.²

Is superfast really better?

Yes: A huge proportion of people's waking lives is spent travelling, whether to work and school or for leisure. A superfast system would give us all extra hours to do things that are actually productive.

No: We already live at a ridiculously fast pace. What we really need to do is slow everything down so that we can appreciate our planet, rather than increasing energy use and making more demands on it.

Or... It might be useful, but it is incredibly expensive to achieve. The money being invested in it would be much better spent on other things, such as relieving poverty and helping the environment.