Japan to fast track Supersonic Airliner

The Supersonic Transport Team at the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is reported to be set to begin talks with NASA and Boeing next month with a view to fast-tracking the development of its Scaled Experimental Supersonic Transport (SST) project into a full-blown, next generation Supersonic aircraft which will take over where the retired French-built Concorde left off when it was taken out of service six years ago. Tests of JAXA’s scramjet (Supersonic Combustion Ramjet) engine continue (20mb QT movie of lift-off here and 26MB QT movie of flight trial here) with the expectation that the engine can achieve speeds of Mach 5.5 (6700 km/h). Japan is expected to supply the engine for the project with Boeing building the spaceframe.