Word: sst
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...death of the SST need not be seen as a vote against exploring the unknown. It is not a triumph for the hysterical foes of all technology. For one thing, the SST was vulnerable to the criticism that it does not represent a genuine technical advance. Much of the know-how necessary to build a Mach 3 aircraft-in titanium metallurgy and engine intake design, for example-was already in hand from development of the X-15, the SR-71 and the B-70. Says Harvard Sociologist Daniel Bell: "The technology argument made no sense to anybody who followed...
...SST was not the kind of advance that the jet was over the prop plane...
Seen in that light, the fate of the SST represents a serious break with the compulsion to pursue any technological height only "because it is there." But that is not the same as turning against all progress; it means redefining progress. The new mood could lead to a new sophistication, a new selectivity about what kinds of technology are worth pursuing and at what pace. "Technological wizardry is not an end in itself," Arnold Toynbee observed recently. "It is desirable only if it makes for human welfare, and this is the test that any tool ought to be made...
Heading into the showdown Senate vote on the SST, proponents clung to a single hope, wispy as a contrail, of keeping the aircraft from crashing. Their head count showed 49 Senators against the plane, 47 for it, two absent and two wavering: Maine's Margaret Chase Smith and Kentucky's John Sherman Cooper. If Richard Nixon could land those two Republicans, the SST might yet take off. Vice President Spiro Agnew stood ready to cast a tie-breaking vote to continue the aircraft's funding...
Kentucky colleague, Republican Marlowe Cook, had switched from his anti-SST vote last year to stand with the Administration this time...