One-hour flights anywhere may be some way off yet, but artificial intelligence could play a massive part in speeding up the development of hypersonic airliners. U.S.-based Argonne National Laboratory announced a partnership with NASA to boost hypersonic flight research and make vastly shorter travel times a reality with the help of AI-enhanced computer simulations, a press statement reveals. Hypersonic flight is achieved at a speed of Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound at sea level -- sound travels differently at different altitudes and on different planets. Argonne will bring its supercomputing capacity to the table to help NASA develop its hypersonic testing systems, including experimental aircraft such as its X-43A scramjet-powered aircraft, built as part of its Hyper-X program. The company uses computer fluid dynamics (CDF) to model and predict how an aircraft will react to the forces around it at hypersonic speeds.