Is it possible to fly from FLORIDA to New Zealand in just 1 and 1/2 hours? Someone has just said that it's possible.

We would have the technology to do something similar, but it still has to be implemented:

"The real "quantum jump" (following the popular usage rather than physics terminology) would be a suborbital transport. Take off at any one place on Earth and land at another in under an hour. To do this the vehicle has to boost out of the atmosphere and take a suborbital ballistic path.

Purely ballistic manned suborbital flight has occurred, but rarely. In fact, the only examples I can think of offhand are the early Mercury flights, which used a smaller booster than the one which carried John Glenn into orbit in the same type of capsule. This sort of flight is not very efficient, at least in terms of getting the most out of the energy input. Still, it is the fastest way we know to get from one place to another on Earth, barring trains running in evacuated tubes at similar velocities. With a rocket launch, a ballistic suborbital flight, atmospheric re-entry and a rocket landing (perhaps aided by parachute) a flight form New York to Tokyo would take a bit over an hour, ground to ground. Adding a wing to convert some of that reentry velocity to lift would mean the same trip could be made nearly as fast but with a much smaller energy input.

This is not a new concept. During the Second World War, German researchers evaluating ways of improving V-2 (model number A-4) altitude and range performance noticed something interesting; put wings on it and the range could be greatly extend. This led to the A-9/A-10 proposal, which would have essentially put a winged V-2 on top of a booster, resulting in a maximum range for the standard payload of 5000 kilometers, in contrast to a bit over 300 km for the V-2. This projected range would have allowed targets on the eastern seaboard of the US to be hit from Europe. Some tests were made and some plans drawn, but nothing practical came of the idea. Still, the payload was limited to the same 1000 kilograms as for the V-2. Without nuclear warheads or some devastating biological or radiological weapon, what was the point? And the V-2 itself was never quite reliable enough to make the launch of such a deadly warhead worthwhile, often blowing up on the launch pad or breaking apart in the air while still over German-held lands.

Later in the war, Austrian engineer Dr. Eugen Sanger and collaborator Dr. Irene Bredt authored the "Sanger-Bredt Report." This outlined the idea for a craft which could take off from Germany, bomb a site in the US, and land on the other side of the world two and a half hours later. This "antipodal bomber" would have been huge vehicle carrying a relatively small bomb load, and bomb aiming accuracy would have been a major problem, but it was technically feasible. There were other problems, though; for instance, the antipodal locations for Germany cover Australia and New Zealand, Allied territory.

In spite of these problems the Antipodal Bomber (the term was soon capitalized) made a lot of converts. By taking off and accelerating to 6000 meters per second it would reach an altitude of 162 kilometers, then drop down to 40 km some 3500 km downrange. Whereupon it would bounce off the denser lower atmosphere (well, dense in comparison to the "air" at the peak of the flight) and rebound to an altitude of 125 km. Another 2500 km and it again would hit bottom and bounce back up. On the third bounce the bomber would have been over New York. After the ninth bounce the craft would go into an extended hypersonic glide for perhaps six thousand kilometers, then descended for a conventional landing.

Increase the maximum velocity to 7000 mps and the craft would go all the way around, landing back where it started... just 3 hours and 40 minutes later."

"The basic aircraft could (very theoretically) reach Mach 7 at 30,000 meters. That gives an initial velocity of about 2000 meters per second. Adding another 3000 meters from the rocket gives a suborbital hop of 3100 kilometers. The plane can then level off at 43 kilometers and glide for another 7000 kilometers. Then it descends, the ATR are restarted, and the plane flies to a standard airport. The craft would be about the size of a business jet and carry two people. Anywhere in the world. In a couple of hours. "
Source and further information:
http://www.dcr.net/~stickmak/JOHT/joht09goingballistic.htm

I think whoever told you that has mistaken a science fiction short story for reality. I remember reading a story in Analog magazine (is that even published anymore?) which dealt with suborbital hypersonic "spaceplanes" which , in the story, could travel from one point on the globe to the other side of the globe in just under 90 minutes.

Sounds like a question for.... Superman!

Maybe in a Concord? idk

The space shuttle when it is in orbit can do it in less than 1 hour.

Not unless you were taking off from Cape Canaveral on the space shuttle and going there.

They probably left off a 1.

No.

i believe it... when i was a kid i got to ride in a private lear jet once... we made it from Reno/Tahoe to the bay area in about 15 minutes