The US military will test a new hypersonic plane on Tuesday which could eventually lead to flights from London to New York lasting just 60 minutes.
The X-51A WaveRider can reach 4,500mph - more than five times the speed of sound - by using a unique hydrogen engine known as a 'scramjet', which 'pulls' the air needed to burn its fuel from the air around the plane.
The £89m craft will take off under the wing of a B52 bomber.
Once it reaches 50,000 feet it will be dropped into the sky, and after about four seconds a rocket booster will fire and it will reach 3,400mph.
It's at that point that all the really cool stuff happens: after a few seconds the plane will ignite its revolutionary scramjets, and they will (hopefully) propel it to 70,000 feet -- and more than 4,000mph.
The test - even if successful - will not last long. The plane will cut its engines after 300 seconds and then the craft will fall into the Pacific ocean.
Its wreckage will not even be recovered, the Daily Mail reported.
The plane is built by Pratt & Whiney Rocketdyne, but is co-funded by Nasa and the US military. It is said to have no moving parts, and will not carry human pilots on its test.
Needless to say, the tech is still some way from hitting the mainstream - and previous tests of similar planes have not all gone smoothly.
Problems involved with hypersonic craft include the intense heat placed on the plane's structure as it moves at high speed through the air.
But according to the LA Times bosses are hopeful the tests could point to a new dawn for sustained, cost-effective hypersonic flight.
"Attaining sustained hypersonic flight is like going from propeller-driven aircraft to jet aircraft," Robert A. Mercier, deputy for technology at the Air Force Research Laboratory in Ohio, told the LA Times. "Since the Wright brothers, we have examined how to make aircraft better and faster. Hypersonic flight is one of those areas."