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Aviation History
1964
1964 - 0377.PDF
234 FLIGHT International, 13 February 1964 AIR COM MERCE . . . THE UNITED STATES SST CONTENDERS THE three designs submitted to the Federal Aviation Agency's supersonic airliner evaluation team were the result of more than six months' intensive and painstaking grooming from a selection of the most promising out of hundreds of preliminary schemes. These preliminary proposals were the culmination of over eight years' basic research by the US industry and government organiz- ations into every conceivable aspect and "problem area." Apart from that, the three companies making the submissions—Boeing, Lockheed and North American—each had virtually unparalleled experience in at least one major aspect of the T design. Yet the final configuration of America's rival to the Concord for the long- range air routes of the 1970s may still eventually differ just as much from the latest proposals as they have done from the SCAT designs so recently shown as the most promising. Current American thinking is undoubtedly influenced by the fact that the FAA's specification has attracted more "orders" than the firm Concord—which may be interpreted as a sign of airline faith in the FAA having the good sense to order the develop- ment of an aircraft that will also be good for the operator. After the shock of Pan American's Concord order last June, which strengthened the American determination to beat the Anglo-French machine on speed, range, timing and just about everything else, things seem to have settled down a bit now with the feeling that only token orders have been placed for the Concord and that what the airlines will buy in big numbers is an aircraft with longer range, a bigger (especially wider) cabin, and lower landing speed. This could be the philosophy behind the slightly reduced sense of urgency discernible in Washington and that even if a decision is delayed another year or so it will be made in the light of further advances in the state of the art, and will still be soon enough to curtail the Concord's monopoly. However, whilst American engineers might be able to show how to build the most superb transport aircraft ever conceived with operating economies the airlines can afford, there is still widespread uncertainty as to whether the US Government can, or will, agree to pay 90 per cent of the development cost—industry can only just afford the other 10 per cent let alone the 25 per cent which the Government has said it must bear. It has been estimated that to design and build two prototypes of the kind of aircraft the industry are now proposing will cost the Government at least £325m— albeit a figure only equivalent to a third of the current annual expenditure on manned space flight—itself only 60 per cent of the annual space budget. It must remain to be seen whether questions of prestige and the foreign balance of payments situation will be enough for the US Government to feel justified in asking the taxpayer to dip further into his pocket. According to Aviation Week, Mr Eugene Black, the former World Bank director appointed to study the economic aspects of the SST programme, has recommen- ded to President Johnson that the Government should underwrite at least 90 per cent of the development costs. One of the arguments he used was the military benefits to be derived from the SST, but the Defense Department has said that there is no military requirement for an SST. But what of the designs themselves, outlined in last week's issue of Flight International from the preliminary information released by the FAA? All three manufacturers have gone for aircraft in the gross weight range of 430,0001b to 480,0001b—30 to 45 per cent heavier than the biggest subsonic intercontinental jet—and with only slightly less payload than current long-range aircraft with the same sort of capacity payload/range. In the choice of range, as in most respects, the designs appear amply to meet the FAA specifi- cation. Each design proposed is largely built of titanium, vanadium and various heat-resistant steels, yet initially cruising speeds have generally been kept relatively low for this kind of construction. Only Lockheed, with their straightforward delta configuration similar to the Concord, have chosen to go straight to Mach 3 with the inevitable penalty of having to cruise at altitudes of between 70,000ft and 80,000ft in order to keep boom overpressures on the ground below l£lb/sq in. The success of any aircraft lies to a great extent in its powerplant, and there are nearly as many alternatives in SST propulsion system design as in the airframe configuration. Very little information has been released by the FAA on the proposals of the three engine manufacturers, Curtiss-Wright, General Electric and Pratt & Whitney. All three airframe manufacturers have stated that their projects will take any one of the proposed powerplants. Curtiss- Wright, who have yet to build a civil turbine engine, propose a simple basic turbojet design that would be developed from scratch for the airframe and mission finally chosen. It is stated that thrust would be about twice that of present subsonic engines. Gen- eral Electric, who have considerable experience of building engines Illustrated with "Flight International" copyright provisional three-view drawings. Although displaying a highly unorthodox variable-sweep wing, the Boeing 733 has a conventional and well-proven appearance in other respects
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