»Japanese Make Play for Future of Aerospace«

SYDNEY, Australia (Reuters) -- Japan conducted a successful test flight of a supersonic jet in the Australian outback on Monday, taking a step closer to its goal of developing a successor to the Concorde.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said the prototype supersonic jet was launched on the back of a rocket from the remote Woomera rocket range in the South Australian desert and completed a 15-minute flight.
Japanese developers hope that a new supersonic jet could some day make the trip from Tokyo to New York in just under six hours -- less than half the current time.
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The new jet would carry 300 passengers, three times as many as the Concorde, and travel at Mach 2, or twice the speed of sound, roughly the same as the Concorde.
The Concorde was developed jointly by Britain and France in the 1960s. In July 2000, a Concorde taking off from Paris crashed, killing 113 people.