Word: sst
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Richard Nixon asks Congress for approval of the SST jetliner...
Appeal to Moscow. A vital element in advanced technology, nickel provides the strength and heat resistance needed for alloys used in jet engines and nuclear reactors. The noncorroding quality that it gives to stainless steel also makes nickel indispensable in spacecraft and SST airliners. The non-Communist world uses 830 million pounds of nickel yearly, and the total has been growing by 10% a year...
There is no doubt that the SST, like the jets before it, will lure more passengers into the air. A recent survey conducted for TWA revealed that two-thirds of all passengers responding would prefer to fly supersonically, and 56% would pay a premium of $50 to do so on a 2,000-mile flight. Still, each SST will cost more than most airlines earn in a single year. Even now, the airlines are stretching the tight money market to pay for the new generation of subsonic jumbo jets and airbuses, and smaller lines only wish that the SST would...
...SST remains inevitable so long as the Concorde and the Soviet TU-144 are in the air. Yet their threat to U.S. technology could prove to be a mirage. In 1964, Britain tried to cancel the Concorde because of rising costs, but was prevented from doing so by Charles de Gaulle's insistence that Britain live up to its contract. France's new President Georges Pompidou may be more amenable to the idea. As for the Soviet entry, it is largely an unreal threat; no Western airline could risk relying on Russia for spare parts...
...push to build the SST now emanates from the sheer momentum of technology. After the SST will come the hypersonic transport, with speeds of 5,000 m.p.h., and then suborbital flight. Each step will eventually be taken for the same reason that man climbed Mount Everest: it was there, waiting to be conquered. The still unresolved questions, which Congress must answer, are whether technology must move at a forced-march pace, and whether the boom of supersonic flight in the 1970s is worth the proposed investment of national talent and treasure...