Controversy, Confrontation, and Cancellation

The American involvement in combat operations in Vietnam escalated by the late 1960s to something that was not called a war by the Government but actually was. The public turned against the war as casualties and costs escalated; by 1968, a sense of distrust of the Government and all its programs also affected a significant portion of the populace. The Apollo program was about to achieve President Kennedy’s goal of landing on the Moon, but people were beginning to question its value. A youth – oriented cultural shift had not only a pro-peace stance but also an anti­technology bent, and environmental movements such as the Sierra Club were becoming increasingly influential. Nuclear powerplants and nuclear weapons were increasingly cited as being harmful to the environment, and many people wanted them limited or banned. The United States SST program was a high-visibility target and opportunity for environmental movements. Initially, the arguments focused on the sonic booms to be produced by an SST fleet. Dr. William Shurcliff, a Harvard University physicist, formed the Citizens League against the Sonic Boom to argue against the SST. As the SST and Sonic Boom Handbook (published in 1970 by an environmental activist organization) stated on its jacket, "This book demonstrates that the SST is an incredible, unnecessary insult to
the living environment, and an albatross around the neck of whatever nations seek to promote it.”[1094]

American legislators were not deaf to this increasing clamor. The sonic boom problem remained real and apparently technically unsolv­able. An operational solution was to ban overland supersonic flights by the SST. This had a serious impact on the economic case for an air­plane that would have to fly at off-design cruise speeds for significant amounts of time if flying on anything other than transatlantic or trans­pacific flights. Transcontinental flights in the United States had always been a prime revenue generator for airlines. A further noise problem was represented by New York City airports surrounded by densely pop­ulated communities. Subsonic jets with 10,000-pound thrust engines had difficulty meeting local noise standards; engines with 30,000 and even 60,000 pounds of thrust promised to be even more intractable. But even solving these problems would not satisfy some later environmen­tal concerns. Water vapor from SST exhaust at high altitude having the potential to damage the protective ozone layer was a major concern, which later proved to be unwarranted, even if 500 SSTs had been built (although this was not so for fluorocarbons in spray cans at sea level). At a hearing before the United States Senate in May 1970, a member of the President’s Environmental Quality Council referred to the SST as "the most significant unresolved environmental problem.”[1095] By late 1970, polls showed that American voters were 85 percent in favor of ending Federal funding for the SST program. In May 1971, the Senate voted to withhold further Government funding. Boeing, already developing the 737 and 747 at its own expense, said it could not proceed without $500 million in Federal funding. The American SST program of the 1960s was over.

The international SST race ended with only one horse crossing the finish line, albeit at a walk rather than a gallop. Although the Soviet SST flew first at the end of 1968, it required redesign and never was commer­cially successful. Two were lost in crashes during trials, and it only flew limited cargo flights from Moscow to Siberia over the sparsely populated Russian landmass. The SST field was left to the Anglo-French Concorde, which finally entered service on the transatlantic run in 1976 and flew for over 25 years. Only 13 aircraft entered service with the British and French national airlines, and most of their traffic was on the transatlantic run
for which the aircraft had initially been sized. The fuel price increase that started in 1974 and the de facto ban on overland supersonic flight meant that there was no move to improve or expand the Concorde fleet. It essen­tially remained a limited capacity first-class-only means of quickly getting from the United States to Paris or London while experiencing supersonic flight. Boeing’s privately financed gamble on the 747 jumbo jet turned out to be the winning hand, as it revolutionized air traveling habits, especially after airline deregulation began in the United States in 1978.[1096]