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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neeka who wrote (48532)	10/1/2002 1:06:25 PM
From: Win Smith	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Whines about the "environmental propaganda machine" from the local war advocates hit my ironic bone. But that's old news. A couple somewhat more illuminating pieces: Boeing 2707-200 SST users.chariot.net.au This one shows the original swing-wing design and various permutations that Boeing went through before and after "winning" the contract by some bogus political means or other. SST: The American Concorde super70s.com This one gives a little better overview of the process. Boom! The Air Force conducted a six month experiment with military SSTs in Oklahoma during 1964 to see what the effects of constant sonic boom (created when the aircraft goes faster than the speed of sound) would be. The results? Over 8,000 complaints and 5,000 claims for damages. The plane was starting to get a reputation and it wasn't even off the drawing board yet. Grumbling at Home As it turned out, the biggest obstacle to the Boeing turned out to be a bit closer to home: American environmentalists. They saw the SST as a very noisy, gas guzzling, polluter. And they had unprecedented power in Washington at a critical time in the development of the SST. President Nixon proclaimed on September 23, 1969 "The SST is going to be built." Over $500M in federal funds had been devoted to the project at that point - an unprecedented amount for a single non-military project - and pressure was mounting from Senator Proxmire and others to stop spending taxpayer money on what was a civilian project. Demise of SST On May 18 1971, the Senate put the final nail in the coffin by voting to end payments to the various participants in a 58-37 vote. White House Press Secretary Ron Ziegler blamed Boeing's unwillingness to negotiate from its demands of between $500M and $1B to restart the project. Congress's actions were vindicated by the decision a few years later of almost all airlines to cancel orders for the Concorde. While this may have been considered a loss of prestige by some Americans and certainly disappointed some at Boeing, the airlines yawned. With rising fuel costs and the success of the 747, they were no longer convinced they needed the aircraft (though Boeing had at one time commitments from 26 airlines for 122 aircraft). OK, the "blame" is put on environmentalists here. But given that there was no solution for the noise problem on the horizon, and given that this all transpired before the oil shocks of the '70s, it seems rather fortuitous that this project got canned before boatloads more money got flushed down the toilet.