US And European Union Said To Be Interested; Would Fly By 2020

Could a new supersonic airliner one day grace the skies again? Three years after the Concorde went the way of the dodo, it appears the US and Japan might team up to create a new supersonic passenger aircraft.

After the Japanese project was beset by a string of glitches, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is reportedly looking for an international partner for the project... and the US may be at the forefront of consideration.

"In the future, we think we need some kind of cooperation with NASA," JAXA spokesman Kiyotaka Yashiro told the Associated Press, in response to news JAXA was already in talks to work with Boeing and NASA on the project. "Every developed country is doing some kind of research, the US, Europe and Russia. International cooperation is essential."

Contrary to earlier reports in Japan's Nihon Keizai Shimbun newspaper, however, no formal agreement with partners has been set, Yashiro said.

Japan aims to have the 200-300 passenger jet enter service by 2020. Perhaps most significantly, however, the aircraft would travel at Mach 2 -- the Concorde's top cruising speed -- with only 1/100th of that plane's noise signature.

Several countries -- including the US -- banned the Concorde from flying over their lands at supersonic velocities due to such noise.

The US is not the only country interested in the Japanese project. Other reports have indicated European consortium Airbus -- along with its parent company, EADS -- are also very interested in the new aircraft and have lent the project quite a bit of research developed during the Concorde project.

One area that might make US help attractive to the new project, though, is that the United States has taken the lead in developing a Supersonic Combustion Ramjet -- or scramjet -- engine. The US has also successfully flown such an engine on a test aircraft. The Japanese SST project calls for such an engine... but while Japan has also flown a scramjet-equipped model, those tests were plagued with glitches.

The EU, Japan, China, Russia, and India are at different stages with their respective scramjet technologies.

FMI: www.jaxa.jp/index_e.html, www.nasa.gov, www.eads.int, www.boeing.com