Russia's 'Elon Musk' Developing Hypersonic Cargo Planes

Described by his PR team as "like Russia's Elon Musk," serial entrepreneur Mikhail Korkorich says his new company Destinus is building a hydrogen-powered, zero-emissions, transcontinental cargo drone capable of hypersonic Mach 15 cruise speeds, Loz Blain reported recently for New Atlas.

Photo Insert: The hypersonic plane will use an air turbo rocket first stage, then a rocket second stage engine, both powered by liquid hydrogen, to reach speeds up to Mach 15.

This Hyperplane, according to Destinus, would "combine the technological advances of a spaceplane with the simple physics of a glider to create a vehicle that meets the demands of a hyperconnected world," blasting cargo between Europe and Australia in just a couple of hours using clean liquid hydrogen fuel.

A fully autonomous machine, the Hyperplane would take off from regular airport runways and fly slowly to the coast before accelerating to supersonic speeds. In an interview with DroneTalks, Korkorich explained that this would be done using a "first stage air turbo rocket engine, which is, I would say, a known technology."

It would then ignite its second stage, a rocket engine, to accelerate to hypersonic speeds between Mach 13 and Mach 15 at mesospheric altitudes over 50 km (160,000 ft) where air resistance is greatly reduced.

"The logic is simple," said Korkorich. "If you want to move something from one place on Earth to another place on Earth, you need to spend energy in several directions. One, you need to overcome gravity as long as you're keeping the plane in the air. So, longer means more gravity losses. Second is against the friction of the air, and third is for your maximum velocity kinetic energy.

But recently, it's hard to find a mention of his name not linked to some controversy or another. Take the Momentus SPAC listing; the SEC alleges Kokorich and the Momentus team lied to the company about to acquire it about its "unique water-based propulsion system," saying it had been successfully tested in space when the only space-based test had failed.

He's been described by Tech Times as "an unscrupulous entrepreneur who seems to be in hot water with the US officials all the time," and has been repeatedly been rebuffed by US officials as a potential national security risk due to some of the relationships he has with business people back in the old country.

As a result, he had to resign as CEO of Momentus, and is now not allowed to know about the tech his own company is working on. Kokorich has explanations, and Europe is not America, but there's a fair bit of smoke around him.

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