Essentially the goal is this: to use a giant electromagnetic launch track to accelerate a hypersonic aircraft to Mach 1.6. The aircraft would then separate from the track, ignite its engine and enter near space at seven times the speed of sound.

Does no one read the article anymore before commenting? I’m not responding to all the comments here since it’s clearly a waste of my time, but every single one of the concerns that people mention in this thread so far has been acknowledged in the article already.