NASA Paving Way for Development Of New Supersonic Plane

Almost 20 years after the U.S. abandoned efforts to develop a supersonic transport (SST), the National Aeronautics & Space Administration has quietly begun clearing the way for the development of a new supersonic plane dubbed the highspeed civil transport (HSCT). The agency's immediate goal is to determine if the environmental controversies that helped bury the earlier SST program can be overcome—controversies such as whether the exhaust from aircraft flying high in the stratosphere can destroy ozone. In 1971, after months of bitter dispute, Congress killed a NASA/Federal Aviation Administration plan to build a prototype SST. The program was doomed by its escalating costs and by environmental concerns, including popular opposition to the airport noise and sonic booms that were part of the package. The possibility that nitrogen oxides emitted from the jets could shrink Earth's protective ozone layer was raised late in the debate but was the last nail in the SST's coffin. ...