Rising production and consumption on the global scale have created the need for higher-speed mass transportation of raw materials and products. Ships have the advantage of transporting large quantities of cargo in each voyage, but are much slower than land and air transport. In order to realize a new type of marine transportation, the major Japanese shipbuilding companies are cooperating in a joint project to develop a super-high-speed cargo vessel called the "Techno-Superliner". The photographs show two prototypes of the ship, the hydrofoil type and air-cushion type, chosen for testing them on the high sea. When completed, the Techno-Superliner (1,000 DWT) is expected to travel from Japan to Southeast Asian countries in one or two days at a target speed of 100 km/h. Almost all conventional ships support the dead weight of the vessel and load with buoyancy corresponding to the displacement of the hull. The water resistance to the hull becomes greater with increasing speed, which necessitates very high propulsion power and limits the speed to about 45 km/h from the economic point of view. To decrease the water resistance the Techno-Superliner will use a hull support system comprising hydrodynamic lift or air pressure to augment the buoyancy force. Current hydrofoil craft can exceed the target speed, but these craft are limited to relatively small passenger vessels with relatively short cruising ranges. Thus, the objective is to make the ship larger. Stainless steel with a tensile strength of 1.1 gigapascals is used at present for the underwater fin of hydrofoil craft. One of the development subjects of the Techno-Superliner is to study materials with higher tensile strength that can be used for hull construction. The research and development of the Techno-Superliner, begun in 1989, is one of Japan's national projects. The basic technology has already been established, and practical use is expected by around the year 2000.