Aerospace: No End in Sight

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All aerospace companies are sensitive to the hot and cold winds of international relations. "A Communist leader sneezes in Moscow or Peking," says Lockheed's Executive Vice President Kotchian, "and we feel it here in Burbank." Communist leaders have been sneezing pretty hard lately, and the aerospace industry has been affected accordingly. Thus, of the additional $12.7 billion that President Johnson recently requested to fight the Viet Nam war, $3.1 billion is earmarked to buy 2,000 helicopters and 900 planes (the U.S. last year lost 275 planes and 76 helicopters in the war zone). But the leaders of the airframe-turned-aerospace industry learned long ago that no war lasts forever, and this time they plan to be ready for peace.

Flying Buses. It is to such thoughts of the future that Courtlandt Gross turns today. "The commercial version of the C-5A will be an ocean liner of the air," he says. "And the supersonic transport, at close to 2,000 m.p.h., will carry you east to west, figuratively, faster than the sun." The supersonic transport is also aerospace's next big prize: a potential $20 billion income producer for its maker. For the Government, which may have to advance 85% of, the development cost, the plane seems crucial to keeping the U.S.'s lucrative position as the free world's chief source of aero space equipment.

Lockheed envisages the development of a whole new family of jet-helicopters to serve as tomorrow's interurban buses. After taking off vertically from downtown heliports in cities such as New York, they would fold their rotors in midair, whisk to, say, Boston in 30 minutes, then settle softly in midcity. Such flying buses could evolve from vertical takeoff and landing craft now being built by several firms. Lockheed's three entries: the Army's Advanced Aerial Fire Support copter-jet with rigid rotors that increase stability, the smaller XH-51A winged copter, or even the Army XV-4A Hummingbird, a tiny jet which can jump straight up, hover, or zip forward at 500 m.p.h.

"These planes are all in the near future," promises Gross. For the years beyond, Lockheed has already drawn preliminary plans for a semiballistic transport. "A trip in it," says Gross, "would be something like a trip in a missile." One imaginative designer has suggested that it could be used with a "sleep machine," already technically feasible. Explains Gross: "You arrive at the air terminal, enter a little room, lie down and clamp on a headset. In an instant you are asleep. Then you are stacked into the vehicle, shot to your destination and awakened when you get there." He adds dryly: "If this seems bizarre or even repulsive, consider whether in-flight sleep might not be a fitting accompaniment to in-flight movies."

Lockheed is investigating ocean-mining techniques, moving into metal-corrosion prevention, planning a pilot plant to make metallic powder, helping to engineer a water-desalting plant. It has even suggested how hospitals might save millions in operating costs by better information control. Considering man's challenge from the hostile environments of seas and space and from his intricate problems on earth, Gross maintains: "There is really no end in sight."