This week in travel tech

Technology is expanding options for traveling from one place to another--the determining factor between the two seems to be whether you want to complete the trip in months or minutes.

A team of documentary filmmakers completed its quest to pilot the Segway Human Transporter across the United States on Tuesday, when rider Josh Caldwell successfully navigated his trusty scooter across an invisible finish line in plain view of the Atlantic Ocean.

Looking tired and cold, but enthused by his achievement, Caldwell posed for pictures in front of a small gathering of interested onlookers, reporters and Segway enthusiasts.

The trip, dubbed "America at 10 mph," started Aug. 9 in Seattle and took the five-person team across 14 states. It was undertaken in the name of capturing on film "a true sense of what this country is about."

Caldwell said the scooter held up "incredibly well" during the ride and underwent no major mechanical breakdowns. At last count, the machine had required 409 battery charges. The trip averaged 60 miles per day.

That same day, NASA launched an experimental rocket-powered airplane that smashed the previous airspeed record, reaching close to 7,000 miles per hour.

The test of the X-43A "scramjet" was the third and most ambitious in a series of tests. The second test reached 5,000 mph, while the first was aborted after problems with a rocket booster. Tuesday's flight reached Mach 10, or about 10 times the speed of sound.

NASA researchers declared the test--which was aimed at examining both the capacity of the supersonic engine and the performance of the vehicle at the extremely high speeds--a success.

The Mach 10 speed reached by the plane would be fast enough to travel from Washington, D.C., to Los Angeles in about half an hour.