The Daily Populous Monday May 18th, 2026 morning edition
Authored by mainichi.jp and submitted by onee_san_bath_water

A concept image of a hypersonic passenger aircraft capable of flying at Mach 5, currently being developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). (Image courtesy of JAXA)

TOKYO -- A Japanese research team has conducted the country's first successful combustion test of a ramjet engine for an experimental Mach 5 aircraft.

The demonstration, conducted in April, advances technology aimed at realizing two-hour travel times between Japan and the United States on a plane that could also take passengers from airports into space. The team, including researchers from Waseda University in Tokyo and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), said it aims to get the technology into practical use in the 2040s.

Overseas, the supersonic Concorde passenger jet operated until 2003, but its speed topped out at about Mach 2. A Mach 5 hypersonic passenger plane would fly at an altitude of 25 kilometers, more than double that of a conventional aircraft, and at about 5,400 kilometers per hour, roughly six times faster than a normal plane. If equipped with a rocket engine, it could also reach space at an altitude of 100 kilometers. Because it would take off and land horizontally, it could use ordinary runways.

However, shock waves form around the aircraft, making it necessary to keep the engine operating stably even in complex airflow. Parts of the aircraft would face temperatures of about 1,000 degrees Celsius as air is compressed, so heat resistance is also required.

The research team began designing the experimental aircraft in 2013. In the latest test at JAXA's Kakuda Space Center in Miyagi Prefecture, it simulated conditions equivalent to flying at Mach 5 at an altitude of 25 kilometers, where atmospheric pressure is one-hundredth that at sea level. Using a 2-meter-long experimental craft -- about one-fiftieth the length of the passenger plane being planned -- the team confirmed that the engine's operation and heat-resistance performance worked almost exactly as designed. It now aims to conduct an actual flight demonstration.

Tetsuya Sato, a professor at Waseda University and a member of the team, said, "This result is still only a first step. Our dream is to connect it to a flight demonstration."

Hideyuki Taguchi, a professor at the Tokyo University of Science who is conducting joint research and who served as a senior research and development executive at JAXA through fiscal 2025, said, "Developing a conventional aircraft typically takes about 10 years. Since the development of hypersonic passenger aircraft requires two stages of demonstration -- an experimental aircraft followed by a passenger aircraft -- we hope development can be completed in about 20 years."

milsurp-guy on May 17th, 2026 at 14:15 UTC »

Love the Reddit wisdom of “it’s doomed like the Concorde!”, while completely ignoring how this tech is fundamentally different and has pretty significant defense applications.

RedditSuxDonkeyNutz on May 17th, 2026 at 13:53 UTC »

So maybe the east coast can finally get some Japanese baseball players?!?!

Hypervisory on May 17th, 2026 at 13:24 UTC »

Perfect time to capitalise on the current, historical low fuel prices.