Sorry for the late reply, SLJ. I should've add a wink (<img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" />) to my last post. I was speaking in tongue-in-cheek when I made that statement <img src="/images/icons/laugh.gif" /><br /><br />But seriously, sometime we research a project (such as a scramjet) not because of its immediate applications what we're after, but because of in the process of getting there -- the related technologies will advance more so and we'll train more scientists & engineers, both in industry & in universities, as we advance the state-of-art technologies and the underlying fundamental understanding of science. <br /><br />For example, research into scramjet propulsion encounters many area of fundamental phenomena that is perfect to challenge the science & academic communities, from basic fluid dynamics problems (i.e., turbulence modeling) to material technologies (i.e., titantium metal-matrix, carbon-carbon, carbon-ceramic matrix, et. al. composites, etc.) At the end, we may not be successful in reaching our final goal, such as a reusable scramjet as such, but the development of related technologies <i>because of this scramjet research</i> have advanced enough that they benefited other applications (space, commercial, etc.) and we've developed a new generation of young engineers & scientists as a result. At the end, the effort into this scramjet research was not wasted at all.<br /><br />Therefore I have nothing but the best wishes for India's scramjet research program. India produces many more engineers & scientists annually than we do, so they have a vast asset of untapped intellectual properties waiting to be challenged. It sure is better to have these talents to tackle the un-sovled mysteries of physics than it is to have them be employeed as 1-800 tech support for microsoft. Through this scramjet program, I expect they will gain much advances in their computational capabilities, fulid dynamics, heat transfer and material sciences. They <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>