Word: sst
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Second, the federal government has underwritten a large part of this cost--and therefore a large part of the risk if the project fails--while Boeing, the company to which the government awarded the contract, stands to make a large profit if the SST succeeds...
...SST project has a tangled history, but three facts are most significant. First, it is overwhelmingly expensive; development costs alone, before production is scheduled to begin in 1974, are estimated at 4.5 billion dollars or more, more than twice the cost of the development of the atomic bomb. Each plane will sell for 40 million dollars...
Third, and most important to the League's purposes, the government apparently undertook the project in the interest of national prestige without considering how many people will be using the plane--and under what conditions--by the time it is operational. The government originally decided to build the SST in the early '60's as a direct response to British-French plans for the supersonic Concorde. The Concorde was viewed as an important challenge to American technological superiority, so important that solutions to basic questions about the SST were deferred so that no time would be lost in catching...
Shurcliff thinks the SST will be obsolete before it is built. The Concorde will be flying by 1971, probably four years before the SST, and its headstart may cut into the SST's market. (Three hundred of the 40 million dollar SST's must be sold to airlines before the project can pass the break-even point). Also, another plane will be in the air by 1971, a conventionally-designed, subsonic "jumbo jet." This jet will carry upwards of 500 passengers (against 280 for the SST) at 700 miles per hour without a sonic boom; its proven design will...
Shurcliff first read of the SST in a scientific article by Lundberg about four years ago. Lundberg listed several of the SST's defects. "I was so amazed I practically memorized the article," Shurcliff remembers, and began writing letters to find out more about the SST...