Word: sst
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Volume One, Number One, Cost One Dollar of The Washington Monthly includes; Sidey interviewing Bill Moyers of LBJ and Newsday on "The White House Staff vs. The Cabinet"; a piece by Kempton on the Teacher Corps; a story about how Congress favors building SST's and not smogless cars (i.e., your basic air-pollution priority story); a short unfunny piece on what happens after marijuana is legalized in 1989 by Calvin Trillin of the New Yorker; something about Republicans by Stephen Hess, Moynihan's assistant; a piece on statistics; a story called "The Culture of Bureaucracy: The Special Assistant...
...travel time is used up by getting to and from the airport, Shurcliffe says that the difference that SSTs will make in transcontinental travel time will be worthless. Decreased reliability of the new planes may mean that more are held up at the airports; and probable limits on SST travel over major urban centers might make the SSTs as practical as Indianapolis racers on Mass...
Probably the most disturbing evidence Shurcliffe brings in is the data suggesting that SSTs would be substantially more dangerous than conventional commercial planes. Shurcliffe's documentation in his chapter on "Dangers in SST flight" is impressive, and he uses it to show two kinds of hazards...
...peep-hole windows will make for an unpicturesque flight. The speed advantage could conceivably overcome these annoyances, but Shurcliffe suggests a more compelling limitation. Since the needle-shaped SSTs will hold fewer passengers but cost more to run than conventional jumbo jets, fares will be much higher for SST trips. And so, Shurcliffe suggests, airlines that had stocked up on fleets of SSTs might find them losing propositions...
...there is a sense of urgency--and semi-futility -- behind Shurcliffe's mammoth attack. As his League knows, the U.S. push to build the SST is a self-perpetuating process: each year, more and more money has been poured into the project, and thrifty legislators are less and less willing to give up the whole idea. So what Shurcliffe now has to do is convince Congress that it's better to give up what's been invested than to throw away any more. To that end, he spends many pages trying to prove that the SST will be obsolete before...