How real is the hypersonic aircraft revolution?

We live in an era of fast technological change: self-driving cars, drones, artificial intelligence. Yet the tube-shaped subsonic airliners we keep flying on wouldn't look out of place in the 1960s.

Take, for example, the Boeing 737.A 50-year-old design that remains one of the workhorses of the airline industry.And going strong: Its latest iteration, the Boeing 737 MAX is expected to enter service next year. To be fair, although from the outside it may look structurally similar to its earlier versions, decades of cumulative improvements have made the airliner of today a vastly more sophisticated, efficient and reliable machine.

Aircraft-making is an extremely capital-intensive activity and, given the financial and technical risks that launching an entirely new model entails, it's understandable that the industry prefers to keep milking proven concepts.

But how long before the current generation of airliners reaches its limits?

From electric propulsion to hypersonics, from NASA to private entrepreneurs, the quest for new, truly groundbreaking, aircraft concepts is on. And it has the potential to forever change our idea of air travel.

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