Japan Will Test Next-Gen SST

For those lamenting the retirement of the Concorde, take heart. Something new is on the horizon and it could be even faster. And even though this is primarily a Japanese project, the makers of the Concorde, Airbus and its parent company EADS, are involved.

It's being called the "next-generation" SST, a needle-like aircraft designed to fly at better than Mach 2. Sponsored by the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA), the new aircraft is about to undergo a second round of flight tests over the Australian Outback as early as next month.

The first such aircraft flew three years ago, but didn't fly far or long. Instead, the unmanned prototype prematurely separated from a booster rocket designed to accelerate the load to an altitude of more than 12 miles. The whole thing crashed in the desert.

"We've made some improvements so that won't happen again," JAXA spokesman Takaaki Akuto told the Associated Press in Tokyo Tuesday. "This is a pretty important test."

If the tests are successful, they could lead to more experiments designed to put a 300-passenger Concorde replacement on the ramp by 2020.

But any successor to the venerable Concorde, which flew for both British Airways and Air France, will have to overcome the same issues that plagued the European version during its 34-year career: high noise levels and high fuel consumption.

If this year's $10 million test is successful, Airbus and Mitsubishi, along with their partners, would split $1.84 million in research funds during each of the next three years looking for answers to those problems.

FMI: www.jaxa.jp/index_e.html