Word: sst
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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With a Soviet SST and the Anglo-French Concorde already being successfully test-flown, what has delayed the American SST? Two years ago, the U.S. made the decision to build an SST. Later, Boeing, the contract winner, encountered major design problems: its radical swing-wing concept was an economic disaster. The engineers went back to their drawing boards and last fall came up with another SST, this time a fixed delta-wing titanium plane capable of cruising at a speed of 1,800 m.p.h. while carrying more than 250 passengers 4,000 miles...
...delay gave opponents of the SST time to rally their forces. They question whether the Government can afford to underwrite 85% of a $2 billion plane at a time when urban needs are so pressing. Lately, some top airline executives, worried about how they are going to pay the bill for-and then fill with passengers-the $5 billion of subsonic jets already on order, have quietly suggested delaying the project. Other objectors argue that the SST will be the noisiest and most nonproductive luxury transport ever built. In reply, General William Maxwell, the FAA's Director of SST...
Even if Volpe had tried to make a strong case for the SST, his stand would be flimsy. The arguments about the increased speed and efficiency of the supersonic planes sounded convincing three or four years ago; but since then, scientists have compiled a steadily-growing mound of evidence to suggest that those advantages are illusory...
...special presidential panel that has been invetigating the SST for several months has uncovered new sources of opposition. Many airlines have become skittish about the mammoth financial outlay it would take to buy new fleets of SSTs, and several airline executives have told the presidential board they hope the SST is scrapped. Budget-conscious government officials are also having second thoughts about the $1 billion they are spending in chunks to get the first SST prototypes in the air. And all these fiscal arguments ignore a more basic objection: the right of Americans to live in their already-polluted cities...
...need to build a big, bumbling jet, he said, because the Russians and the French are building them. "The United States cannot afford to be a third-rate power in this kind of project." In pragmatic economic terms, the international-competition analysis suggests that the U.S. should quit the SST race. Since the French and Russians are at least two years ahead of the American SST pace, the tardy U.S. model would probably find few buyers in the international market...