Word: sst
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...their $500 million program to develop their own supersonic airliner, the needle-nosed Concorde. Last week, in a surprise turnabout, the British and French state-owned airlines-BOAC and Air France-placed six orders apiece for the rival U.S. supersonic transport. Though the exact design of the American SST has not yet been determined, the plane will definitely be bigger and faster, and will have a longer range than the Mach 2.2 Concorde. The British-French move not only gave a heartening boost to the U.S. project but stirred new doubts about the future of the Concorde. The British government...
...companies are under strict orders to keep their proposals secret, but enough has already leaked out to produce some reasonably accurate ideas about designs for the SST, as the supersonic is known in aviation. The most salient point about the U.S. SSTs is their unexpected size. All three planemakers proposed SSTs measuring about 210 ft. in length (v. 153 ft. for the longest Boeing 707 and 180 ft. for the Anglo-French Concorde supersonic). The big planes are designed to carry 150 to 210 passengers, depending on seating arrangements, and attain a speed of Mach 3 (three times the speed...
...among the U.S. designs is in the wings. Drawing on its experience as builder of the Air Force's RS-70, which will be rolled out within the next two months, North American has used the combination of a small stabilizing fin and a delta-wing for its SST design. Lockheed's proposal features a delta-wing design similar to the Concorde's. Boeing's design is the most advanced, employing a "variable-sweep" wing that can be adjusted to different settings. By extending its wings, Boeing's SST could take off and land...
...SST proposals-along with the power-plant proposals submitted by General Electric, United Aircraft and Curtiss-Wright-will be evaluated by a team of 210 Government aeronautical experts, will also be studied by the nation's airlines. If the FAA decides that the designs of one planemaker and one enginemaker are markedly superior to all others, the final contracts will be awarded in May. Otherwise the two leaders in each category will be placed in a one-year design competition to decide the winners. Even if contracts are awarded in May, the U.S. can hardly hope...
Early favorite to win the SST is Boeing. Beyond the fact that Boeing has done the most research on its own, there are political considerations. North American is well fixed for years to come with its Apollo moonshot contract, and Lockheed is relatively well-backlogged with its contracts for the Polaris missile and the new Starlifter military transport. But the end is in sight for Boeing's big KC-135 flying-tanker contract, and its current orders for Minuteman missiles will run out in two or three years. Besides, it was the loser in the hot TFX competition...