This Jet Would Travel From NYC To L.A. in Under 3 Hours

The miracle of flight has grown stale. Our great grandparents may have been impressed by the ability to travel from New York to Los Angeles in five hours, but today, we're less than excited to spend that much time cramped in a 737.

Lockheed Martin is now working on an aircraft for commercial airlines that would make that trip much shorter.

The N+2 jet would cut the time spent traveling across the United States in half, from five hours to two and a half, and would seat 80 passengers.

One challenge the Lockheed Martin engineers are facing is building a craft that can travel at supersonic speeds but not make sonic booms, which are created by objects traveling faster than 760 miles per hour, the speed of sound. The N+2 has one engine on the topside of the craft, and two under the wings, in a configuration designed to reduce noise.

"To achieve revolutionary reductions in supersonic transportation airport noise, a totally new kind of propulsion system is being developed," Michael Buonanno, Lockheed Martin's manager of the NASA N+2 program, told the Daily Mail. "We are also exploring new techniques for low noise jet exhaust, integrated fan noise suppression, airframe noise suppression and computer customized airport noise abatement."

Lockheed isn't the only company developing supersonic aviation. Airbus is working with aerospace firm Aerion to create a jet that would make the trip from London to New York in three hours; a trip from Los Angeles to Tokyo could potentially take only six hours.

Earlier this year, Aerion revealed plans for its first supersonic business jet.

Although the Aerion AS2 business jet would fly much faster than a typical commercial airliner (1,217 miles per hour), it wouldn't fly as fast as the Concorde (1,350 miles per hour).

The last Concorde was retired in 2003. Operating the Concorde was an economic loss for the airlines that took it on, and the downturn in the aviation industry around the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001 led to the decision to retire it.

It remains to be seen whether or not the new supersonic jets would succeed where the Concorde failed.

Contributed by Jessica Plautz, mashable.com

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Japan Lets You Use Your Passport to Get Free Wi-Fi

IMAGE: KOJI SASAHARA/ASSOCIATED PRESS

BY ADARIO STRANGEJUN 07, 2014

Although Japan is renowned for having some of the best customer service on the planet, for various reasons, including language and cultural hurdles, it isn't known as the most tourist-friendly destination.

Some of those hurdles also extend into the tech arena, namely, Wi-Fi. Although sidling up to a café in Europe or North America and grabbing a bit of free Wi-Fi for your mobile device is common, finding such wireless access in tech-centric Japan's major cities remains notoriously difficult. But that's about to change.

SEE ALSO: Google Street View Says Japan Is Top Virtual Tourism Spot in Asia

A new program launched by NTT (Japan's largest telecom), is designed to serve foreign tourists on the hunt for Wi-Fi. For those who haven't traveled to Japan, the program might seem behind the times, but for anyone familiar with attempting to find Wi-Fi in Japan, this is huge news. (YouTube is littered with video commentary from frustrated travelers marveling at the lack of Wi-Fi access in such a technologically advanced country as Japan.)

Now, when a traveler arrives at a Japanese airport, they can present their passport and register for a Wi-Fi card that offers free Wi-Fi coverage via 45,000 hot spots in the eastern Japan area including Tokyo, Hakone, Mt. Fuji, Yokohama, Nagano, Nikko, Kusatsu, Tohoku, Hokkaido and Fukushima.

Additionally, a traveler outside of the country preparing to visit Japan can download the iOS orAndroid version of the NAVITIME for Japan Travel app and obtain an ID and password beforehand. The app also offers an augmented reality mode that shows you a Street View-style image of the location where an available Wi-Fi hotspot is located.

However, the access only lasts for 14 days (or 336 hours), just enough to get you used to the free access, but not long enough to be truly useful for anyone planning an extended stay in Japan.

According to the Nikkei, the program is also being directed by the Japanese government, which plans to use the initiative to get more buildings in the country to offer Wi-Fi access.

The trial program, which began earlier this year, will last until September 2014.