Hello from bizjournals.com! David Mueller (kawika42@mac.com) thought you might like the following article from Pacific Business News: Japanese SST in tests ------------------------------------------------------------ The National Aerospace Laboratory of Japan began test flights Thursday in the Australian outback that could change long-distance air travel forever. The lab has built an $80 million supersonic jet which it calls a one-tenth scale model of the next generation SST -- the term stands for "supersonic transport" and was applied to the original faster-than-sound jet developed by Britain and France before they named it the Concorde. The scale model, in development for five years, is unmanned. It's propelled by a rocket. By remote control, engineers intend to send it more than 12 miles up, lose the rocket, and then fly the plane back to a landing at nearly twice the speed of sound, or Mach 2. Japanese officials say they are probably 10 years or more from selling the aircraft commercial, but when they do it will carry 300 passengers, well over twice as many as the Concorde carries. The time frame is loose because the plan is for the developers to enter joint ventures with Boeing, Airbus or some other company that is already in the business of building aircraft. It should also be noted that Boeing and Airbus are both already engaged in developing supersonic jetliners. The aviation industry sees supersonic technology's market as being very long haul flights where a nearly Mach 2 aircraft could cut flying time in half. Copyright(c) American City Business Journals Inc. All rights reserved. You can view this article on the web at: http://pacific.bizjournals.com/pacific/stories/2002/07/08/daily43.html