Lee-a-Roady Moor
12th Oct 2005, 14:05
"CONCORDE may be in retirement but soon another supersonic airliner will be flying across the horizon.
A scaled-down model of an aircraft that carries passengers at twice the speed of sound passed its trials recently. The 11.5m prototype was strapped to a rocket and launched to a height of 18,000m. It was then released and glided at MACH 2.
Its Japenese designers say it will fly twice as far as Concorde and seat 300 passengers. Plans are underway to get the 104m aircraft produced in 15 – 20 years.
Disaster struck the first launch attempt three years ago when the rocket carrying the model veered off course and burst into flames at the desert test centre in Woomera, South Australia."
A scaled-down model of an aircraft that carries passengers at twice the speed of sound passed its trials recently. The 11.5m prototype was strapped to a rocket and launched to a height of 18,000m. It was then released and glided at MACH 2.
Its Japenese designers say it will fly twice as far as Concorde and seat 300 passengers. Plans are underway to get the 104m aircraft produced in 15 – 20 years.
Disaster struck the first launch attempt three years ago when the rocket carrying the model veered off course and burst into flames at the desert test centre in Woomera, South Australia."