The Zero Emission Hyper Sonic Transport[1] or ZEHST[2] is a planned hypersonic passenger jet airliner project by the multinational aerospace conglomerate EADS and the Japanese national space agency JAXA.
[4][5] Such efforts have largely been constrained to theoretical work, however some progress has been observed over the decades; innovations have continued to be patented in the field, such as for a mixed-propulsion arrangement awarded to EADS in 2010.
[4] In addition to EADS itself, much of the propulsion-based development work on the ZEHST project had been made in cooperation with the European missile specialist MBDA and the French national aerospace research centre ONERA.
By 2015, Airbus Group (to which EADS had rebranded itself as) was reportedly working on two separate hypersonic projects, one in conjunction with Japanese partners and the other with Russian and Australian involvement.
[5] That same year, company chief executive Tom Enders publicly stated his enthusiasm for Airbus to complete development of a hypersonic long range passenger transport.