Word: sst
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Beset by problems from its inception, the American SST will not go into service for at least two years after its originally scheduled takeoff date of mid-1974. Boeing, understandably red-faced, denies somewhat defensively that it has made a final decision. But the economics of its swing-wing B-2707 has forced the Seattle company to put practicality over pride. Although wind-tunnel tests showed that the movable wing could perform well aerodynamically, it developed an insuperable weight problem. Carrying the 313-passenger payload envisioned for it, the 375-ton swing-wing SST would have had about one-half...
Less Time to Build. Boeing could see the difficulties coming. Even before President Johnson selected the company for the SST plum on New Year's Day of 1967, it had scrapped one movable wing design and substituted another. When new problems mounted, the company earlier this year ordered its engineers back to the drawing boards in an effort to salvage the original concept. Gradually, confided a Boeing executive, it became apparent that keeping the swing-wing would "reduce the payload to the point where the plane wouldn't be profitable...
Despite their basic similarity, Boeing's new SST design differs in some ways from the one advanced by Lockheed. Boeing's delta wing will not be swept back quite so dramatically as that of the Lockheed model, a fact that should make the B-2707 slightly more efficient at subsonic speeds, slightly less so at its maximum cruise speed of 1,800 m.p.h. And while Lockheed planned to build its plane without a horizontal tail, the Boeing version will have a relatively conventional tail configuration...
...space fragments may also rise. In the 1970s, supersonic transports (SSTs) will be soaring at 70,000 ft. -nearly twice the ceiling of present-day passenger jets. In that rarefied atmosphere, space garbage is still more of a menace; the tiniest fragment could puncture the metal skin of an SST. Pentagon, NASA and commercial aviation officials all concede the dimensions of the future problem. But at present, the only formal warning system for commercial aviation is Herb Roth's part-time effort...
...capital supporting American expansion in Europe is itself European. "American superiority," he insists, "is not basically a question of dollars but of industrial structure, far-sighted vision and unified command." He vividly emphasizes this in a chapter comparing the European supersonic transport, Sud-Aviation's Concorde, with the Boeing SST. He finds the Boeing model far superior. Yet the search that created the Boeing was based on two scientific advances that were made in Europe: the swing-wing plane and development of the highly stable metal titanium...