Aviation: SSTart

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Into the Federal Aviation Agency's headquarters in Washington last week were carted more than three tons of closely guarded papers. The stacks of documents were the entries of three of the nation's leading planemakers—Boeing, Lockheed, and North American Aviation—in the biggest design competition in the history of U.S. civil aviation. At stake is the Government contract, worth at least $750 million, to build a supersonic transport.

The companies are under strict orders to keep their proposals secret, but enough has already leaked out to produce some reasonably accurate ideas about designs for the SST, as the supersonic is known in aviation. The most salient point about the U.S. SSTs is their unexpected size. All three planemakers proposed SSTs measuring about 210 ft. in length (v. 153 ft. for the longest Boeing 707 and 180 ft. for the Anglo-French Concorde supersonic). The big planes are designed to carry 150 to 210 passengers, depending on seating arrangements, and attain a speed of Mach 3 (three times the speed of sound) v. a Mach 2.2 top speed for the Concorde. To withstand the heat generated by the higher speed, the U.S. supersonics will be built of titanium and stainless steel.

The major difference among the U.S. designs is in the wings. Drawing on its experience as builder of the Air Force's RS-70, which will be rolled out within the next two months, North American has used the combination of a small stabilizing fin and a delta-wing for its SST design. Lockheed's proposal features a delta-wing design similar to the Concorde's. Boeing's design is the most advanced, employing a "variable-sweep" wing that can be adjusted to different settings. By extending its wings, Boeing's SST could take off and land at the same speeds as supersonic jets, tucking in its wings for swift supersonic flight.

The SST proposals—along with the power-plant proposals submitted by General Electric, United Aircraft and Curtiss-Wright—will be evaluated by a team of 210 Government aeronautical experts, will also be studied by the nation's airlines. If the FAA decides that the designs of one planemaker and one enginemaker are markedly superior to all others, the final contracts will be awarded in May. Otherwise the two leaders in each category will be placed in a one-year design competition to decide the winners. Even if contracts are awarded in May, the U.S. can hardly hope to get its SST into commercial service before 1972, two years later than the rival Concorde. But the world's airlines are so confident that the U.S. will produce a superior plane that they have already placed 70 orders for whatever plane is finally built v. only 49 orders for the Concorde.