High – Speed Dreams – Erik M Conway

As the Anglo-French lawsuit percolated its way through the courts, McDonnell-Douglas launched a campaign to get a new U.S. SST development program going. Despite Concorde’s 20 percent surcharge over standard first-class fares (which were also heavily subsidized by the two nations), Concorde’s Dulles service was very popular with first-class and business passengers.80 Both British Airways and Air France averaged load factors of over 90 percent during their first year, effectively “skimming” high-fare passengers off Pan Am and TWA, the two major domestic transatlantic carriers. Because first- and business-class passengers were the source of the majority of these airlines’ transatlantic revenue, the uneconomical Concorde was indeed a threat to their profitability.

It was this threat, combined with the belief that the SCAR technologies could produce a substantially more economical airplane than Concorde, that motivated Douglas’s campaign to begin a new SST effort in 1977. Douglas’s head of advanced SST research penned an article for Acta Astronautica in which he laid out the argument for a new start. “The supersonic era is a reality,” he argued. “For the first time in twenty-five years on the major airline routes of the world, the domination by U.S.

manufactured aircraft is seriously being challenged.”81 McDonnell-Douglas believed a “near term U.S. AST program” was necessary to protect the U.S. aircraft industry if the traveling public continued to demand supersonic flight, as Concorde’s high load factors appeared to promise it would. McDonnell-Douglas’s AST would be profitable in competition with the current jumbo jets by pulling first-class and “full-fare economy” passengers off the jumbos, although discount fares would not be feasible. Forty-two percent of the transatlantic fliers paid either first-class or full-fare-economy rates, and this was enough to support an AST manufacturing effort.

Thus in the Douglas team’s vision of the supersonic future, the aviation market would be segregated into a supersonic “first class” and subsonic “tourist class” market. This would result in substantial fare increases for both classes of fliers. The removal of high-fare, first-class traffic from the subsonic jets would render them unprofitable, and airlines would have little choice but attempt to replace that loss by increasing yields. And, of course, the lack of discount fares on the supersonics amounted to a fare increase by another name.

The supersonic future would be more expensive for everyone. In June 1977, McDonnell-Douglas president John C. Brizendine wrote to NASA administrator Robert Frosch to complain that NASA was not putting sufficient resources into its AST effort. After describing the accomplishments NASA had sponsored under the SCAR/VCE program, Brizendine argued that the SCAR technical advancements would not be transformed into a viable commercial product without much more substantial government investment.

Space Policy in the Twenty-First Century edited by W. Henry Lambright The Space Station Decision: Incremental Politics and Technological Choice Howard E. McCurdy Faster, Better, Cheaper: Low-Cost Innovation in the U.S. Space Program Howard E. McCurdy OceanofPDF.com HIGH-SPEED DREAMS NASA AND THE TECHNOPOLITICS OF SUPERSONIC TRANSPORTATION, 1945–1999 ERIK M. CONWAY OceanofPDF.com © 2005 The Johns Hopkins University Press All rights reserved.

Published 2005 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 The Johns Hopkins University Press 2715 North Charles Street Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363 www.press.jhu.edu Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Conway, Erik M., 1965– High-speed dreams : NASA and the technopolitics of supersonic transportation, 1945–1999 / Erik M. Conway.

p. cm. — (New series in NASA history) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8018-8067-X (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Supersonic transport planes—Political aspects—United States—History—20th century. 2. United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration—Research—History —20th century. I. Title. II. Series. TL685.7.C695 2005 387.7′3349—dc22 2004017271 A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Title page illustration: Concept drawing of Boeing Reference H, 1992.

Photo 92-03919, courtesy NASA and The Boeing Company. OceanofPDF.com TO MY DEAR FRIENDS from the University of Minnesota’s Program in the History of Science and Technology: Kai-Henrik Barth, Eric Boyles, Michael Buckley, Juliet Burba, Robert Ferguson, Steve Fifield, Kevin Francis, Eric Hinsdale, Mark Largent, Karin Matchett, Michael Reidy, Ioanna Semendeferi, Mary Thomas, Effy Vayena, and Chris Young. Thanks for great times. OceanofPDF.com CONTENTS Preface Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations Used in the Text Introduction 1 Constructing the Supersonic Age 2 Technological Rivalry and the Cold War 3 Engineering the National Champion 4 Of Noise, Jumbos, and SSTs 5 Of Ozone, the Concorde, and SSTs 6 The Airbus, the Orient Express, and the Renaissance of Speed 7 Toward a Green SST 8 Sic Transit HSCT Conclusion Notes Essay on Sources Index OceanofPDF.com PREFACE This book grew out of a contract from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Langley Research Center, which has been my home since August 1999.

I moved from a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., to Langley after the original awardee, Deborah G. Douglas, left Langley to become curator at the MIT Museum. In an unexpected telephone call, NASA Chief Historian Roger D. Launius invited me to submit a proposal for the rebidding. Without his willingness to take a risk on an unknown, recently graduated scholar, I would never have written this book.

The contract itself came about after NASA’s High Speed Research program was cancelled.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 34e793de8a9d1433
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 4,138,625 bytes (3.947 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• ISBN: 080188067X
• Pages: 470
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 751.87 minutes
• Total Words: 150,374
• Total Characters: 969,242
• Average Words per Page: 319.94
• Average Characters per Page: 2062.22

Most Frequent Words

sst (896), aircraft (878), program (862), research (714), supersonic (548), new (518), nasa (465), air (426), engine (385), also (337), technology (331), noise (330), boeing (301), design (283), two (280), development (267), one (267), boom (252), national (248), committee (246), see (230), transport (229), speed (219), high (215), first (206), aviation (201), space (197), american (196), office (188), flight (188), mach (183), ozone (179), force (179), technologies (175), hsr (166), concorde (165), environmental (165), however (163), effort (163), commercial (162), budget (162), langley (158), phase (158), believed (154), wing (154), united (149), aeronautics (149), president (148), hsct (145), sonic (145), problem (145), faa (144), states (143), propulsion (140), support (138), subsonic (137), made (136), time (135), market (135), government (133), much (133), fuel (133), group (132), future (131), engines (130), john (130), between (129), report (129), study (128), weight (126), years (125), percent (124), history (123), industry (122), team (121), company (120), nasa’s (120), major (120), boeing’s (119), box (119), thus (118), program’s (117), manufacturers (117), project (115), economic (115), performance (115), studies (113), materials (111), public (110), make (110), political (109), technological (107), three (106), campaign (106), companies (105), press (104), center (104), house (104), against (103), engineers (102).

PDF Download