When, a decade ago this month, an Air France Concorde crashed on take-off, killing all 109 people on board, the dream of supersonic travel seemed to be over. Three years later, Concorde was mothballed, and with it the prospect of a commercial traveller zipping over the Atlantic faster than a speeding bullet.

But as the last Concorde flight touched down, a company in Abingdon in Oxfordshire was already part way through designing a bigger, better alternative. Reaction Engines may be a space plane developer, but now it was part of a European Space Agency (ESA) and an EU-initiated project to see if its Skylon shuttle might have a more earthbound spin-off.

It did: the A2 was a concept for a 300-seat aircraft, capable of non-stop flight to the other side of the planet at a cruising speed of Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound, around 3,500mph. "The objective was to design an aircraft that could travel from Brussels to Sydney in just a few hours," said Reaction's technical director Richard Varvill. "Our studies showed the A2 would do it in 4.7 hours."

The A2 is now in the second phase of an EU/ESA-backed study, due for completion in two years. "The A2 shows that such an aircraft is technically feasible," said Varvill. "We calculated that the ticket price would be about the same as today's typical business-class flight, which is not too bad. But the question is how to make it commercially viable and to also make it environmentally acceptable. There are still doubts about whether an aircraft flying at such an altitude would damage the ozone layer."

To provide the range that would allow it to travel non-stop, such an aircraft would, he contended, need to be fuelled by liquid hydrogen too. On the downside, this is expensive. On the upside, it is CO2 emissions-free and that structure might prove the launch pad for all aircraft to make the switch to liquid hydrogen. "The bottom line is that a large, long-distance supersonic passenger jet is looking very promising in terms of technical feasibility," said Varvill. "And it's just not credible that we'll be stuck at Mach 0.9 from now on. Someone will up and do it."

That someone may be a rather rich individual first. The A2 may not take to the skies before 2030, but it is possible that supersonic flight will be back on the agenda for the few within five years. At $80m a pop, Nevada-based research company Aerion Aviation's Supersonic Business Jet may not be cheap, even by private jet standards, but that has not stopped $4bn of advanced orders being placed. Then again, its proprietary 'laminar-flow' technology means it could cross the Atlantic in just two hours. The jet could also be scaled up to create a 50-seater version, half the passenger load of Concorde. The company is now in discussions with manufacturers to build its patented design and hopes to have a deal signed by the end of next year.

"The changes in technology since Concorde are such that the economics of building and getting a meaningful return on supersonic aircraft is that much more feasible," said Aerion's chief executive Brian Barents. "As an industry, we already have larger and more comfortable jets but we're still providing aircraft that fly at the speed they did in the 1950s. Speed is the next frontier. And business jets are a stepping stone to the commercial jets that there is no question we'll see."

Varvill is sceptical about the contribution made by such business jets in shifting us towards genuine supersonic commercial passenger flight, arguing that the companies producing them cannot sell enough of their craft to pay for the advanced research needed to make it happen.

But interest in that market is rising. Gulfstream Aerospace, one of the world's biggest manufacturers of private jets, launched one stalled design project with the Sukhoi Design Bureau of Moscow and is also now working on a new jet, and Nasa has established its Supersonics Project.

The biggest barrier is supersonic flight's signature: the sonic boom, the bang created by the movement of pressure waves around an aircraft as it passes through the sound barrier. When John F Kennedy created the National Supersonic Transport programme to develop the supersonic Boeing 2707, it was cancelled as a consequence of noise complaints.

"That is the single largest challenge to opening up the supersonic market," explained Gulfstream's Robbie Cowart. "There are negative perceptions of the sonic boom. There is the belief – and research suggests unfounded belief – that it harms animals and damages homes. People get very upset by it."

Yet for every person under a supersonic flight path who might object, there are enthusiasts to whom it is music. The Save Concorde Group has completed a 25,000-signature petition, rustled up celebrity support, and has just completed tests on the airworthiness of one of the mothballed aircraft engines, all with a view to getting at least one flying again, perhaps in time for the London Olympics in 2012.