April 12, 1981
Mojave desert, California
THE MANY LIVES OF BOEING SST
The Boeing SST prototype stands on the dawn light. It is a sleek bird with a 300 ft long fuselage that graciously curves not unlike the fabled Lockheed Constellation – the longest fuselage in aviation history, and made of titanium with that. With the nose up the Boeing 2707-300 has a strong futuristic look. View from the cockpit is pretty limited – through tiny, triangular windows here and there.
Unlike Concorde and the ill-fated Tupolev, Boeing SST is a tailed delta with podded engines, four enormously powerful General Electric GE-4. The massive jet exhausts are a dark steel grey, constrasting with the aircraft beautiful day-glo NASA livery. The rear fuselage curves upward, the shark-like vertical tail towering 53 ft in the air. Their is a long ventral strake for improved stability.
The Boeing supersonic transport is a massively powerful machine, 750 000 pounds of high-technology hurtling across the sky at 1800 miles per hour, faster than 99 percent of military aircrafts. Even mighty F-15s can't catch up. A decade ago the immense supersonic airliner was the last in a serie of bigger and bigger Mach 3 flying machines. The SST is much longer than North American XB-70 Walkyrie, itself an order of magnitude bigger than Lockheed SR-71. All three aircrafts are cutting-edge marvels. Unlike the XB-70 and much like the SR-71, the Boeing SST is made of titanium rather than stainless steel.
Over the last two decades Boeing great white bird has had many different lives.
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National Research Council
Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board
Committee on High Speed Research
March 15, 1972
STATEMENT OF TASK
The High Speed Research Committee will conduct a 12-month study of the HSR program.
The committee will prepare a report that accomplishes the following:
- Assesses NASA's HSR planning;
- Evaluates progress to date; and
- Recommends appropriate changes in the HSR program.
To accomplish this task, the committee will meet approximately five times. Some meetings will take place at NASA centers and industry facilities where HSR research and development are underway.
The committee will receive extensive programmatic and technical briefings from NASA and relevant industry participants. The committee will review existing studies of the likely demands for supersonic transports in light of the dependence of these demands on aircraft characteristics. The committee may also request information on the extent of foreign programs from the Department of Commerce, NASA, and others.
The committee will take into consideration and build on relevant National Research Council reports issued by the ASEB, the Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, and the National Materials Advisory Board.
SPONSOR(S): NASA Code R
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The ASEB reviewed the following programs and aircrafts.
PART I PRESENT HIGH SPEED RESEARCH PROGRAMS IN THE UNITED STATES
A – The Lifting body
HL-10, M2F3, X-24A. The first two have been retired by 1970. The X-24A is currently being modified into the X-24B. A X-24C could replace the X-15 as an hypersonic testbed.
B - The X-15
There is only one X-15, left, the first X-15A. We considered rebuilding it to the X-15A2 standard.
C- Lockheed NF-104A
That program has been terminated last year. It was very much a "poor's man X-15" at a fraction of the cost. Consideration should be given to new vehicles. Of the three NF-104A, one was destroyed early on. The last two stopped flying in 1971 – June and December, respectively.
D- The Lockheed A-12 family and D-21B drone
NASA is currently flying all three YF-12s.
E- North American XB-70 Walkyrie.
Only the first XB-70 is left. North American however told the committe spares exists in storage to build a third aircraft.
F- Boeing 2707-300 SST.
A full scale mockup was completed and construction of the first prototype started before cancellation.
G – The Space Shuttle
While no hardware was build, a large volume of studies were done. A subscale model would be an attractive option.
H – Advanced propulsion
We performed an extensive review of ongoing research on airbreathing and rocket engines.
PART II RECOMMENDATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS.
We felt that a fleet of versatile subscale shuttle prototypes could consolidate past and present high speed research programs – namely, DynaSoar, the X-15, the Space Shuttle, lifting bodies, and X-24C.
Hence we recommend against more flights of the X-15 or a conversion into a X-15A2, and against the X-24C.
The subscale shuttle models will provide aerodynamic data on future orbiters. Meanwhile a much upgraded, twin seat NF-104A will be used to train future shuttle crews for the final phase of flight – from 150 000 ft to a glided runway landing. The NTF-104X could fly in formation with a subscale shuttle model.
Because NASA is already flying YF-12s, there is no point in flying D-21 drones or A-12 aircrafts.
Next we reviewed high speed passanger transportation, notably the crucial issue of materials. It essentially boils down to four options
- aluminium (Concorde, Rockwell AMSA)
- stainless steel (XB-70)
- titanium (Lockheed A-12 and D-21)
- nickel alloys (X-15 and DynaSoar).
Aluminium can't go past Mach 2.2, which is too slow for transpacific and transatlantic commercial service.
Nickel alloys are extremely expensive and can only be used for small vehicles.
Stainless steel is too heavy for commercial transports, albeit further progress could be achieved by building a third XB-70.
This leave titanium. Reports from the Soviet Union show this country embracing titanium for submarine hulls and eventually, aeronautics. Lockheed build both A-12 and D-21 and they also had a SST proposal that was rejected in favor of Boeing's.
Building a very large titanium or stainless steel aircraft will serve both SST, SSTO and TSTO future vehicles. For example, all-rocket SSTOs will necessarily be very large vehicles because of the enormous mass of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen they carry. TSTO airbreathing first stages will be equally large. The Space Shuttle program was cancelled before a decision could be made about its internal structure. A mix of nickel and titanium alloys was the prefered option, but consideration was also given to a cheaper – but heavier and more fragile - aluminium structure protected by ceramic tiles.
Advanced propulsion.
We recommend a major funding effort concentrating on five advanced airbreathing and rocket engines. First is Tony DuPont scramjet, the HRE once tested on the X-15A2. Then there is Marquardt SERJ promoted by William J.D Escher.
A third, promising technology is Mass Injection Pre-Compressor Cooling (MIPCC) as currently studied for the F-4X. Interestingly enough, both F-4X and NF-104 share the same engine, the General Electric J-79. Hence consideration should be given to a NF-104 with MIPCC.
On the field of rocket engine, we strongly recommend funding both F-1A and XLR-129. These two engines perfectly complement each other.
CONCLUSION
We recommend
A – A mix of NF-104 and varied subscale shuttle models.
A NTF-104X – a two-seater, F-104G based, MIPCC- and rocket- powered space trainer.
B – Funding of advanced airbreathing and rocket engines.
C – Flight testing of large titanium and stainless steel aircrafts (YF-12, XB-70, or SST)
...
The ASEB High Speed Research Committee considered supersonic transportation. We first heard North American Rockwell (NAR) representatives.
"The second XB-70 airframe would be modified to a limited passenger configuration by removing the military electronics and fuel from the upper fuselage (“neck”) and replacing it with a small passenger
compartment. The fuel would
either be moved into the area previously occupied by the weapons bay in the lower fuselage, or just simply be deleted and the range penalty accepted for the demonstration vehicle. Without changing the mold line of the upper fuselage, a total of 36 passenger could be accommodated in 4-
abreast seating. The internal
diameter of the fuselage was only 100 inches – four feet narrower than the contemporary Boeing 707. A single restroom would be located at the extreme rear of the passenger compartment. Interestingly, a
galley was not included, partially because of a lack of room, and partially because all flights were expected to be so short as to eliminate the need for one.
Two versions of this design were proposed. The first simply eliminated the fuel normally carried in the upper fuselage. This version had a gross takeoff weight of 337,000 pounds and a range of 2,900 miles. The second version moved 47,400 pounds of fuel into the weapons bay (for a total of 185,000 pounds) and resulted in an aircraft weighing 384,500 pounds with a range of just over 4,000 miles. Passenger ingress and egress, as well as emergency evacuation, would be complicated by the height of the XB-70 fuselage. Two other configurations were also proposed that slightly changed the outer mold line, but provided more realistic passenger
counts.
Both included the weapons bay fuel. The first extended the internal passenger compartment by 240 inches, resulting in seating for 48 passengers. This version had a gross takeoff weight of 427,000 pounds and could fly 3,850 miles while cruising at Mach 3.
The other version increased the passenger compartment another 264 inches (for a total stretch of 504 inches) to seat 76 passengers. The gross takeoff weight increased to 461,000 pounds, but range was reduced to only 3,600 miles at Mach 3.
North American's rationale for using an XB-70 as an early SST demonstrator had several valid points. The primary contribution was identified as the early definition of problems associated with the operation of an SST, made possible by limited passenger flights as early as 1965.
Since the FAA would not have certificated the aircraft, they would probably have been limited to military or government (NASA, etc.) operations. The expected problems included air traffic control, airport operations, maintenance, scheduling, etc Sufficient lead-time was available to resolve these problems in an efficient and orderly manner before large numbers of SSTs were produced. Regulations and systems could be developed to monitor and control the operations of supersonic aircraft by the time production aircraft were introduced into airline service. The FAA could use the early service experience to write new Federal Air Regulations covering the certification process and design criteria for supersonic transports. It would be possible to accumulate 4,000 – 5,000 flight hours of flight.
We then reviwed Boeing SST program. We first heard John Magruder. We were surprised to learn that the Seattle company was ready to team with the Lockheed Corporation. Magruder introduced the following summary.
Saturday, May 22, 1971 - SST Fund Offered By Japanese Firm
A Japanese trading company made a new offer to finance completion - of two prototypes of the 1,800 - mile - an - hour commercial airliner. Magruder said a representative of the Ataka Co. called him on May 21, 1971 and offered to try to raise the $500 million or more necessary to revive the program which Congress refused to finance any longer.
The company would act as a broker, raising money from such Japanese giants as the Mitsubishi Companies. Work on the prototypes would continue at the Boeing Co., the prime contractor, and General Electric, which was developing the engine for the aborted plane. When the program moved into the production stage, some of the parts would be manufactured in Japan, Magruder 'said.
Shortly after Congress first rejected the American SST program late March 1971, Ataka offered to send a trade mission to Washington to discuss financing. But Magruder said, the Japanese Ministry of Trade told Ataka to withdraw that offer.
"Apparently the Japanese government had second thoughts," he said in view of the new Ataka offer. Magruder said he urged the company to contact the State Department and outline its proposal to . Boeing and General Electric. "I told them that without a strong indication of production financing, I didn't think the industry here would be interested in starting up the program again, - " Magruder said.
He described Ataka as one of the 10 largest companies in Japan, with assets of $1.5 billion. Magruder confirmed reports that a German group made a tentative offer last month to finance the protoypes but had not followed through on it. Magruder said a Boston - based company with heavy investments in Middle East Oil had offered to put $75U million into the program to keep it going but withdrew it.
After this brief summary John Magruder told us about new developments happened since June 1971. It seems things accelerated after the Space Shuttle cancellation in mid-December. This coincided with renewed interest for the SST from the White House, related to an incident happened on December 13. This day President Nixon met French President George Pompidou in the Azores. Pompidou flew there onboard a Concorde. President Nixon was offered the opportunity to visit the aircraft and has been favorably impressed. Meanwhile Boeing reported to Magruder a surprising request. Lockheed CEO Carl Kotchian had met Boeing T. Wilson and proposed an agreement over the SST. Lockheed would make Boeing benefit from their extensive knowledge of building titanium aircrafts such as the SR-71 and D-21 drone. To Boeing and Magruder surprise, Lockheed had actually gone a step further. Hearing about the Ataka proposal through the press, Kotchian had met Japanese officials in the wake of the Nixon – Sato summit held in San Clemente, California, on January 7, 1972. Some days later Kotchian went to Japan. First he met Ataka representatives.
Together they worked on behalf that Ataka would act as a broker, raising money from such Japanese giants as the Mitsubishi Companies. Lockheed knows Mitsubishi pretty well since the two companies worked on F-104J fighter bombers. Kotchian then met with high-ranking Japanese officials, and was presented both NASDA and ISAS space agencies. Then again, Kotchian was on familiar grounds: NASDA is discussing utilisation and production of Lockheed Agena space tugs. Late January 1972 Kotchian reported to Boeing and Magruder very positive signals from Japan. He added his own, ambitious proposal. Before May 1971 and cancellation of the program, Boeing first SST prototype was to fly in November 1972. Six months or more have been lost, pushing the first flight well into 1973. Kotchian proposed that Lockheed Skunk Works got a SST crash program and build a pair of prototypes. These aircrafts would be flown on an experimental Supersonic Transpacific Service (STS). Kotchian acknowledged that the 2707-300, as build, would be far too noisy to operate over land, restricting the SST to flight over water. Yet both trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific trips would be realistic. Because of its limited range, when flying out of Tokyo to Los Angeles the 2707-300 would need to stop either in Anchorage or Honolulu. Even with these stops the SST cruise speed of Mach 2.7 would drastically cut trans-Pacific flight times.
Kotchian argued that Mach 2.7, not Mach 2.2, is the correct speed for a supersonic transport. The reason is related to the number of daily rotations between Europe and America. The more a passenger aircraft flies, the more the company earn money. Flying at mach 2.7 cuts trans-atlantic flight time to two hours instead of Concorde's three, with a major, positive result. It becomes feasible to fly from Paris to New York
and back, on morning; and then to repeat such flights in the afternoon. The entire sequence can be achieved between six in the morning and eleven in the evening – including one-hour stopovers, it respects airport night curfews related to noise.
The SST role could extend far beyond passenger transportation. Building such an enormous aircraft out of titanium would help gathering precious experience on future airbreathing TSTO first stages, and also Single Stage To Orbit vehicles which need excellent mass fraction.
Kotchian proposed an intermediate step: the SST could air drop rockets to improve their payload to orbit. That's the reason why he visited ISAS and NASDA. Among Lockheed proposals to our comittee was air dropping Agenas from A-12 Oxcarts. The SST however is far larger and could launch heavier rocket boosters. Kotchian and Skunk Works sketched a fascinating concept:
responsive access to space where Agena space tugs would be air-launched to the future NASA Space Station that is currently discussed.
We heard about Kotchian proposal and he made a testimony to our committe in February. We compared it with NAR proposal of a third XB-70 build as a passenger aircraft. On paper the two proposals are equally interesting – regarding stainless steel and titanium airframes.
A couple of XB-70 have actually flew and long-lead structural items for a third Valkyrie have been stored since 1964. As shown in the NAR document, it would be possible to graft a passenger cabin behind the cockpit, moving whatever fuel lost to the now unuseful bomb bay. That way 75 passengers could be flown at Mach 3 over 4000 miles.
There are some major issues with NAR proposal, however. First, the Air Force is reluctant because a third B-70 could threaten the AMSA program, either because of better performance (AMSA top speed is Mach 2.3, far below the XB-70) or simply by draining workforce out of AMSA.
The major issue however is that the XB-70 is not representative of Boeing or Lockheed SST designs. The XB-70 is too small, it is too fast (Mach 3.2 against the SST Mach 2.7). The six engines and overall ardynamic shape are unpractical for any passenger aircraft. What's more, NAR experience with the first two XB-70s is partially balanced by Lockheed SR-71 and D-21 programs. Finally, a stainless steel airframe would be far heavier than a titanium aircraft.
That's why we cautiously endorse Kotchian plan. Of a Skunk Works crash program to build two prototypes, involving Japan and America, NASA, NASDA, ISAS, Boeing, Lockheed, Ataka and Mitsubishi. These two prototypes would be outfitted as 225 seat passenger aircrafts strictly restricted to the Tokyo – Los Angeles airway, and eventually, transatlantic flights from New York or Washington to Paris and London.
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Part 1 - 1970
“The Boeing 2707-300 will carry people to any other place on Earth in 12 hours or less, out-racing the sun across the Pacific ocean at 1800 mile an hour, slicing through the night in about three hours when flying toward the rising sun.
One can ask why in 1963 the FAA ruled that the SST top speed should be Mach 2.7 – not Concorde Mach 2.2. They had excellent reasons.
Let's suppose a Boeing SST lift-off from Paris at 6 o'clock in the morning. Mach 2.7 cut flight time to New York to a mere 2 hours, when Concorde needs 3 hours and a 747, 6 hours.
The SST thus land at New York at 8 o'clock, followed by an hours of overhaul and passenger transit. Then it depart from N.Y at 9 o'clock, landing in Paris at 11 o'clock. Thus an entire Paris – New York – Paris rotation is done in a mere five hours, and can be repeated two more times in a single day (12 h – 17h, 18 h – 23h)
The aircraft will climb to 60 000 ft in 30 minutes, then spent two hours in supersonic flight near Mach 3, peaking at 64 000 ft as it burns 475 000 pounds of fuel. Landing will take another 30 minutes. It is already aknowledged that supersonic flight will be restricted to over water and uninhabited land masses to avoid sonic boom annoyance. The performance capabilities of the airplane permit subsonic flight at no appreciable loss in range.
The basic interior arrangement of the 2707-300 provides accomodations for 298 tourist passengers if six abreast seating is utilized. Cabin length of 194 ft includes seven lavoratories, seven galleys and seating for eight flight attendants. These service ratios are comparable, if not better, accomodations over the intermediate range aircraft of the 727 class which have comparable trip time duration.
Other body sizes are under consideration. While the prototype will be 287 ft long, production aircraft could be stretched to 298 ft and seven abreast seating for a total of 321 passengers. Even in this very dense capacity the 2707-300 could fly between Paris and New York (3600 miles). Maximum range is 4500 miles with 253 passengers and five abreast seating.
The SST prototype program will cost an estimated $1.283 billion by the time the two prototypes have completed 100 hours of flying. A breakdown of that $1.283 billion show that the government will contribute $1.051 billion, the airlines $59 million and the manufacturers $173 million.
The total costs of the SST development program are expected to be about $1.7 billion. For the sake of comparison, the Apollo program that landed a man on the Moon cost $22 billion and the cancelled space shuttle was well above $7 billion. Also, SST development costs are comparable to those of Concorde.
First prototype parts fabrication started in July 1970. Over the next two years major structural and final assembly will happen. Planned roll-out in August 1972, followed by first flight later in the year. “
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Part 2 – bringing back the dead SST
Initial step in recovering the SST was taken at the White House on May 4, 1971 at a Republican Congressional leadership meeting at the White House. Gerald Ford listened to treasury Secretary John Connally talk about the need to rescue the Lockheed Corp. with a federal financial guarantee and then spoke up. How could Lockheed be rescued, Ford asked, and the Boeing Corp. of Seatttle, prime contractor for the SST, be left in the lurch?
The administration was interested and listened to Ford's plan. A week later, May 12, the pro-SST forces struck with such miraculous fury that the House voted , 201-197, to revive the project it had killed two months before. Alas, a week later on May 20, 1971 the SST died again in the Senate, this time for good (or so it seemed). Meanwhile Time Magazine dated May 26, has a glimpse of the state of Boeing SST shop. And it was not exactly encouraging.
“The American supersonic transport is being packed away this time perhaps for keeps. In the Boeing company's massive Seattle Developmental Center, only a handful of employees is left to oversee the storage of the airplane's mockup and the numerous mastermolds, from which parts for the flying prototypes would have been made. Dozens of expoxy foam patterns are piled near the 298-foot-long mockup.
Boeing has already transferred many of its key SST employees to other projects and fired more than 5000 others. Hundreds of the laid-off workers had already left town. Boeing President William Allen cautiously predicted that, after having stopped the project in March, restarting it in May would probably add at least $500 million, or perhaps as much as $1 billion, to the federal cost of building two flying prototypes – a cost originally estimated at $1.3 billion. “In this business you don't turn on and off like a spigot” Boeing CEO Willian Allen complained. “
As of early June 1971 and despite the official gloom among the program's proponents, there was nontheless an undercut: rent of expectation — perhaps more intuition than anything else — that the United States SST was
not dead. A big weakness in this scenario was that there was no knowing how much of the SST engineering team could be kept together. Another difficulty was that an interruption of work appeared certain to drive up the cost. On the other hand, costs could go down if an outsider—either the Japanese or a consortium of American companies —took over the project from the Federal government.
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Part 3 - SPACE SHUTTLE OR SST ?
Recently declassified documents show that in 1972 there was a discrete investigation of Lockheed Agena space tug bid. There were rumours of corruption of NASA low-key officials - in a period of hectic turmoil for the civilian space agency. The investigation (that ultimately went nowhere) could have led to an earlier disclosure of Lockheed's briberies, a scandal that finally exploded in 1975 through the Church committee.
One has to figure that, had Lockheed bribery scandals exploded in 1972 rather than 1975, they could have crashed the 1971 government bailout of the company. Surely enough, people like William Proxmire would have happily pointed the bitting irony of handling taxpayer money to a private company that would then spent the money corrupting governments all over the world.
Most people think Lockheed was handled a $250 million check by the government in 1971, period. But the bailout was in fact spread over five years, with many loans every year. Lockheed finally shut down the deal with the government in October 1977... while the bribery scandal exploded 18 month earlier. So the two events actually
overlapped. Lockheed and its banks actually borrowed money to get ride of the government loan sooner rather than later.
It apears that Nixon administration John Magruder arm-twisted Lockheed because Boeing needed SR-71 titanium knowledge to build the SST prototypes. At the time Lockheed SR-71 and A-12 were classified so NASA was used as a surrogate to discretely exfiltrate titanium data.
Like Lockheed before them,Boeing technicians found that unexpected difficulties arose from the metal fabrication stage. Titanium was equal to stainless steel in strength, but its virtues as an aircraft metal; light weight, strength, corrosion resistance and high temperatures tolerance were accompanied by new manufacturing 200,000 psi with an aging process of 70 hours to bring it to full strength. With careful aging and quality control, the time could be reduced to 40 hours but a serious glitch appeared with either process. The titanium being manufactured in the United States in those days that lacked the required purity. In technical terms, U.S. titanium was hydrogen embrittled. In simple terms, if a piece dropped, it would shatter. The purity problem became a major stumbling block in A-12 production. Initially, all of the manufacturing material secured from Titanium Metal Corporation had to be rejected on pure quality basis. The entire first batch of raw material ended up being tossed out, along with the exiting "pickling process". A source of purer titanium had to be found and it would be outside the United States. The outside source was located in the Soviet Union. Not only was Soviet titanium of the higher quality, but also the USSR had the only 25,000 lbs forging press needed to form the basic material. In a remarkable stroke of irony, the CIA was able to price titanium from the Soviet Union under covert conditions. The Soviet Union remained unaware that it was aiding in the development of an aircraft that someday might over fly them.
There were other problems with titanium. It reacted to just about everything that touched it. Cadmium, mercury, mercury amalgam, cadmium-plated tools, halogens (chlorine, fluorine, bromine, iodine. even ink form some pens and lead from pencils. Ink from felt tip pens could actually eat a hole in a sheet of titanium in just under 12 hours. Skunk Works fabrications, after much detective work found that the spot welds done in the summer were more prone to deteriorate than those done during the winter. They discovered that the deterioration was related to problem with algae in Burbank's water supply. To prevent it, municipal water wads heavily chlorinated during the summer. This water was used to wash the titanium plates; it would eat away the welds. The airframes could be assembled by conventional construction techniques, but it would take hand-jigging or one by one assembly to keep the airframe Construction process moving. Despite the costs and fabrication problems there was a distinct advantage in using the titanium in the A-12: the hotter it gets, the more it "recurs" itself. That means that as heat builds up when the aircraft flies at Mach speed, the metal makes itself stronger, much the way it does in the annealing process.
There were separate test units treated to study the thermal effects on the large wing panels. When heated to the temperatures the aircraft could encounter in flight, the panels would warp badly. Notes from the first thermal test state that the wing section "crumpled up like an old dish rag" when exposed to the high temperatures of Mach 3 flight. The problem was solved by putting corrugations in the test wing section to control the shape and direction of the crumpling. When the titanium was heated, the corrugations merely deepened and retuned to their original shape when it cooled. This controlled the warping and resulted in the redesign of the A-12's wing to incorporate chord wise (longitudinal) corrugations.
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Part 4: John Magruder SST crusade.
Although dead in the Senate on May 20, 1971, the Boeing SST refused to die definitively. As the year 1971 ran its course, two more quagmires brewed up in the aerospace microscosm. They were Lockheed's bailout, closely followed by NASA space shuttle fiasco.
The key man in this effort, William Magruder, had been Nixon's head of the SST program. Ehrlichman recalls that Nixon gave an instruction: "Let's keep in science and technology, and let's find something good for Magruder to do."
William Magruder was a household name in the aerospace industry. His boasted an impressive biography, not the least feat piloting a DC-8 airliner into a supersonic dive. Then Magruder went to Lockheed and actually piloted SR-71s. He publicly aknowldeged his connection to the SR-71 during Congressional hearings.
On 27 July 1971, Magruder briefed President Nixon on a plan to keep SST research going temporarily. Part of NTOP added $20 million to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration ’s FY 1973 budget for research aimed at resolving the SST’s environmental problems. The president apparently agreed to the plan. Soon thereafter Magruder arranged with Roy P. Jackson, head of NASA’s Office of Aeronautics and Space Technology, that the agency begin planning a research program aimed at “technological readiness” for an advanced SST. Responsibility for designing the program was assigned to William S. Aiken, Jr. of NASA Office of Advanced Research and Technology. Aiken formed an “Advanced Supersonic Transport program (AST)” steering group to begin planning the new effort.
Meanwhile on 13 September, 1971 Magruder was appointed to become program manager in the White House of a government-wide study into ways the United States can maintain its technological lead over other nations. In his new job, Magruder was "special consultant" to the President and a member of the White House inner circle-even to the extent of sharing one of the President's secretaries and using one of his offices. Magruder's new job was to manage a broad-based study on means to exploit technology for solving basic national needs ranging from health care to the balance of trade. The New Technological Opportunities Program, as Magruder liked to call the study, might eventually embrace up to 400 individual projects. The program publicly surfaced on January 5, 1972, in the form of a presidential announcement. NTOP was important, for it represented a serious White House attempt to redirect the resources of aerospace toward new domestic priorities. When the attempt faltered, it soon became clear that Nixon would not try to help the beleaguered aerospace industry by having its people work on mass transit or pollution control. Instead, he would give them an election-year gift by keeping that industry's resources within the realm of aerospace.
That would be a daunting task: the only success had been Lockheed bailout, that had passed Congress by the slimmest of margin – 192 to 189.
Late December the space shuttle was cancelled and NASA administrator James Fletcher resigned in anger. Fletcher
had had little point in expending political capital on the SST when his own interest lay in advancing the Shuttle program. Magruder saw an opportunity to bring the SST from the grave. Because NASA was reluctant, Magruder turned to the National Academies aerospace committees.
The Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board (ASEB) had been established in 1967 “to focus talents and energies of the engineering community on significant aerospace policies and programs.” In undertaking its responsibilities, the ASEB oversees ad hoc committees that recommend priorities and procedures for achieving aerospace engineering objectives and offers a way to bring engineering and other related expertise to bear on aerospace issues of national importance. ASEB was tasked with a broad report over high speed research. An extensive, complete review of high speed aircrafts was completed.
Magruder pushed the ASEB review hard. Although the ASEB study is largely forgotten nowadays, the X-27 series of subscale shuttles originated there. Together with a revamped SST and Lockheed bailout, the whole package was directed at disgruntled California aerospace workers that would soon vote in the Presidential election.
Among the many options explored, Magruder's attention was caught by a brief newspaper headline ASEB staffers had dug out.
Part 5 – ENTER JAPAN
TOKYO, March 26 1971 — Ataka & Co. is “interested” in the supersonic transport program voted down by the United States Senate two days ago, but not in terms of buying up the billion‐dollar project, a company official said here today.
The official, who asked not to be identified but who said he was speaking for the company, gave the following information as background for the cable the company sent the State Department two days ago, in which it said it was “extremely interested in the SST program.”
About 10 days ago (March 16), the company was approached by an American source, a source not in the airplane field but one with whom the company has had many business dealings and in whose word it has confidence.
The source asked whether, in the event that Congress voted down the SST project, Ataka would be interested in recommending some Japanese manufacturers who might participate in a cooperative project to build the SST. It was Ataka's understanding that in the event that the SST was voted down as a Federal project, a group of American manufacturers might form a syndicate to build the plane privately. Ataka took its source's inquiry as an expression of interest in whether some Japanese manufacturer might be induced to participate in some way in this project.
“Not to buy or manufacture the SST here, you understand,” the official said. “Just to participate in some way in the project—making some parts for it, for instance. We were not sure whether any Japanese company had the interest to participate, or whether it had the requisite technology, but we were interested in exploring the idea. That was the reason for our cable to the State Department two days ago."
…
Magruder was taken aback by the proposal and asked himself,
who on Earth was Ataka ?
"Ataka & Co. is a major Japanese general trading company headquartered in Osaka. Ataka opened its first US office in 1918 and had 39 overseas offices around the end of World War II in 1945. Like other Japanese trading companies, it embarked on a major overseas business expansion in the 1950s with new offices in the United States, Southeast Asia and South America. In the late 1950s it developed an iron mining operation in Malaya and a copper mining operation in Chile to meet Japanese consumption needs. Its main lender is the Sumitomo Bank, one of the largest Japanese
keiretsu.
Within the last decade Ataka tried to diversify its assets, notably in aerospace. Japan is well-known being a locked fortress, a captive market that can't be penetrated without a national company acting as a broker. This is the role Ataka intends to play. They started in 1967 with British light aircraft manufacturers – no less than Shorts, Beagle, and Miles. Then in 1971 they stroke a deal with Pan Am (hence, Dassault) to sell Falcon business jets in Japan. So one can see that the SST proposal, as daring as it seemed, didn't happened in a vacuum. Surely enough, Ataka intented to expand in aerospace. But they have zero aerospace expertise by themselves, and the SST is neither a Beagle nor a Falcon 20.
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PART 6 - TURNING POINT
On December 13, 1971 President Nixon, who liked aerospace technology and had been saddened by the SST cancellation, met with French President Georges Pompidou in the Açores. It happened that Pompidou landed in a Concorde prototype, making Nixon's Boeing 707 obsolete -
Spirit of 76' had been JFK aircraft a decade before, and it showed its age. Nixon toured the Anglo-French aircraft - he was secretely incensed and complained again about the SST cancellation.
He reportedly said in a private discussion at the White House, December 17, 1971 «That SST would have made one hell of an Air Force One.» Coincidentally, it was the anniversary of the Wright Brother historical flight, and there Magruder saw an opportunity to bring back the SST. Magruder first went to Gerald Ford, one of the staunch supporter of the SST in the House of Representatives. Ford had managed more or less single-handedly to revive the SST in The House only to have it dies again a weel later in the Senate.
On December 20, 1971 Magruder requested Ford help to lobby Nixon to discuss the matter with Japan Prime Minister Sato in their planned meeting set for January 7, 1972.
January 7, 1972
JOINT STATEMENT FOLLOWING MEETINGS WITH PRIME MINISTER SATO OF JAPAN.
PRIME Minister Sato and President Nixon, meeting in San Clemente on January 6 and 7, 1972 had wide-ranging and productive discussions that reflected the close, friendly relations between Japan and the United States. They covered the general international situation with particular emphasis on Asia including China, as well as bilateral relations between Japan and the United States.
The Prime Minister and the President recognized that in the changing world situation today, there are hopeful trends pointing toward a relaxation of tension, and they emphasized the need for further efforts to encourage such trends so as to promote lasting peace and stability. These efforts would involve close cooperation between the two governments and with other governments. They also recognized that the maintenance of cooperative relations between Japan and the United States is an indispensable factor for peace and stability in Asia, and accordingly they confirmed that the two Governments would continue to consult closely on their respective Asian policies.
The Prime Minister and the President discussed the problems relating to the return of Okinawa as contemplated in the Joint Communiquй of November 21, 1969. They were gratified that the Reversion Agreement signed on June 17, 1971 had received the support of the respective legislatures, and decided to effect the return of Okinawa to Japan on May 15, 1972. The President indicated the intention of the United States Government to confirm upon reversion that the assurances of the United States Government concerning nuclear weapons on Okinawa have been fully carried out. To this the Prime Minister expressed his deep appreciation.
Tied with the return of Okinawa was Japan rocketry. ISAS solid-fuel orbital rockets are not far from an ICBM, which could destabilize Asia. As such, the Japanese government agreed to transfer satellite launches to a licence-build Thor-Agena-D (Thorad) operated by a civilian space agnecy, the NASDA.
Recognizing that the further strengthening of the already close economic ties between Japan and the United States was of vital importance to the overall relations between the two countries as well as to the expansion of the world economy as a whole, the Prime Minister and the President shared the expectation that the international currency realignment of last December would provide a firm basis on which to chart future development of the world economy, and stated their determination to exert renewed efforts, in combination with other countries, towards improved monetary arrangements, expanded world trade and assisting developing countries. In this connection they affirmed the importance of conditions that facilitate the flow of both public assistance and private capital.
The Prime Minister and the President reaffirmed the basic view that Japan and the United States, jointly ascribing to the principles of freedom and democracy, would cooperate closely with each other in all areas such as the political, cultural, economic, scientific and technological fields to achieve the common goals of maintaining and promoting peace and prosperity of the world and the well-being of their countrymen.
They agreed that the two Governments would expand cooperation in the fields of environment, of the peaceful uses of atomic energy and the peaceful exploration and use of outer space. They further agreed that experts of the two countries would examine concrete steps in this regard. Mention was made of Japanese funding of Boeing SuperSonic Transport (SST) project and the creation of a
Supersonic Transpacific Service (STS). “Supersonic Transportation will get Japan and the United States closer from each other, strengthening links between the two nations.” President Nixon said.
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1. New Prime Minister of Japan Kakuei Tanaka and President Nixon met in Hawaii August 31-September 1, 1972 for wide ranging discussions on a number of topics of mutual interest. The talks were held in an atmosphere of warmth and mutual trust reflecting the long history of friendship between Japan and the United States. Both leaders expressed the hope that their meeting would mark the beginning of a new chapter in the course of developing ever closer bonds between the two countries.
The Prime Minister and the President discussed cooperation in space exploration including Japan's goal of launching geo-stationary communications and other applications satellites. The President welcomed Japan's active interest in and study on the launching of a meteorological satellite in support of the global atmospheric research program. Discussion were held over an ambitious aerospace proposal.
The Prime Minister and the President expressed satisfaction with their talks and agreed to continue to maintain close personal contact.
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Between January and August, 1972 President Nixon NTOP staffers led by Magruder drafted an ambitious proposal Nixon would discuss with the new Japanese prime minister.
A pre-serie of three Boeing 2707-300 (plus two prototypes) would be build and an experimental high-speed airline would be set up between Tokyo and Los Angeles. This took into account most severe critics against the SST – that it was too noisy to fly over land. Hence consideration was then given to transpacific flights only.
Early in the discussions Ataka made clear to Magruder that they would only act as a broker to various organizations and corporations in Japan.
Ataka went to discuss with varied aerospace organizations in Japan – the government and MITI; the military; the aircraft manufacturing industry (either the old NAMC or the brand new Civil Transport Development Corporation); and the varied aerospace agencies such as NASDA, ISAS and the NAL.
The military was rapidly excluded, although the 2707-300 performance would made for a very high performance bomber, Japanese constitution forbadde offensive weapons.
It happened that Ataka main lender Sumitomo - one of the largest Japanese
keiretsu – was involved in the Nihon Aircraft Manufacturing Corporation (NAMC) - the manufacturer of Japan's only successful civilian airliner, the YS-11. By the fall of 1972 the American and Japanese governments created a detailed roadmap.
First, both Japanese and U.S governments would get ride of NAMC chronic deficit by selling YS-11 airliners in the U.S.A. Piedmont Airlines was to spearhead that effort, since the company had already bought ten YS-11s and was willing to buy ten more.
Secondly, once NAMCO deficit resorbed, the company would be used as a subcontractor to Boeing SST manufacturing.
Third, a pair of SST prototypes would be build with NASA and NASDA / ISAS/ NAL funding. Indeed Japan more or less had three space agencies instead of one.
The SST prototypes would be flown experimentally over the Pacific on the Tokyo – Honolulu – Los Angeles route.
Fourth, if that experimental service proved its worth, then some more SSTs could be build, perhaps with airlines funding. Boeing and the United States government noted that when the SST had been cancelled in March 1971 there were 115 unfilled orders by 25 airlines. The concept was to try and bait some airlines through the Supersonic Transpacific Service (STS).
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The National Aerospace Laboratory of Japan (NAL) had been established in July 1955. Originally known as the National Aeronautical Laboratory, it assumed its present name with the addition of the Aerospace Division in 1963. Since its establishment, it has pursued research on aircraft, rockets, and other aeronautical transportation systems, as well as peripheral technology. NAL has also endeavored to develop and enhance large-scale test facilities and make them available for use by related organizations, with the aim of improving test technology in these facilities.
The Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS) originated as part of the Institute of Industrial Science of the University of Tokyo, where Hideo Itokawa experimented with miniature solid-fuel rockets in the 1950s. This experimentation eventually led to the development of the Κ (
Kappa) sounding rocket, which was used for observations to determine the International Geophysical Year. By 1960, the Κ-8 rocket had reached an altitude of 200 km. In 1964, the rocket group and the Institute of Aeronautics, along with scientific ballooning team, were merged to form Institute of Space and Aeronautical Science within the University of Tokyo. The rocket evolved into the L (Lambda) series, and, in 1970, L-4S-5 was launched as Japan's first artificial satellite Ōsumi.
But the United States grew worried about ISAS solid-fueled rockets, seeing them as the logical step in the direction of ballistic missiles. ISAS intention had been for Japan to develop a powerful indigenous rocket. First would come the Q-rocket (100 kg to low Earth orbit) and then the N-rocket (100 kg to GEO). The majority view was that Japan should develop its own capacities and follow a path of indigenization.
Here, broader political factors intervened and American pressure took an unexpected direction – they put Okinawa in the balance. An island occupied by U.S troops after a bloody battle in summer 1945, Okinawa might be returned to Japan by 1972 ... only if the country limited ISAS ambitions by creating a different space agency that would launch licence-build, civilian Delta rockets. Hence was born NASDA in 1969 under the Law only for peaceful purposes. Based on the Space Development Program enacted by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), NASDA was responsible for developing satellites and launch vehicles as well as launching and tracking them. Hideo Shima, chief engineer of the original Shinkansen "bullet train" project, served as Chief of NASDA from 1969 to 1977.
That's how Japan ended with three major space organizations,
ISAS and
NAL being supervised by the
Ministry of Education, while NASDA was subject to the directions of the Science and Technology Agency. Acting as a broker to the U.S government Ataka discussed the SST project with all three space agencies, and managed to gain support from all three of them.
As far as the NAL was concerned, Boeing's 2707-300 used a 300 ft long titanium structure and as such, was a forerunner to future reusable spaceplane technology such as the lost space shuttle. Because they used low density hydrogen spaceplanes had to be extremely long, and the 2707 could pioneer such structures.
PART 7 -
Underground titanium -
How Boeing gathered titanium knowledge from the Soviet Union and Lockheed classified SR-71 program.
Late in 1969, Air Force officials stated that they wanted to build the space shuttle orbiter using a conventional aluminum airframe, along with whatever form of thermal protection would be appropriate. In contrast to strong reliance on titanium in hot structures, this preference for aluminum stemmed from an Air Force finding that the aerospace industry faced a shortage of the specialized machine tools needed to fabricate large structural parts from titanium alloy.
Within NASA and its contractors, design studies weighed the relative merits of aluminum and titanium as primary structural materials. The aluminum airframe promised to be lighter in weight, reflecting the fact that aluminum is lighter than titanium. It also would be less costly to build, reflecting the industry's long experience with aluminum. By contrast, titanium structures promised to cost up to three times as much as their aluminum counterparts, and would carry greater risk in development.
Titanium, however, could overcome these disadvantages with its ability to withstand temperatures of 650 °F, compared with 300 degrees for aluminum. This brought a considerable reduction in the weight of the thermal protection, for two reasons. The temperature resistance of titanium would make it possible to build the top areas of the wing and fuselage of this metal alone, without additional thermal protection, for they would be shielded against the extreme temperatures of re-entry by the bottom of the vehicle. In addition to this, a titanium structure could function as a heat sink, absorbing some heat and thereby reducing the thickness and the effectiveness of thermal protection where it would be needed.
Overall, the advantages of titanium promised a complete orbiter, including thermal protection, that would weigh some fifteen percent less than a counterpart built of aluminum. With the titanium orbiter requiring less thermal protection, it also would cost less to refurbish between missions. Though the higher cost and risk of titanium would militate in favor of aluminum once NASA faced the OMB's cost ceiling, the merits of titanium encouraged its use during NASA's design work of 1970 and 1971.
When the shuttle was cancelled in December 1971 the SST become an alternative testbed for large titanium structures for future spaceplanes.
Quite unsurprisingly Boeing and the Japanese struggled with the design an airframe that would have to withstand the heat generated by high-speed flight through the atmosphere. The issue was titanium, a strong and light metal used in jet engines, missiles, aircraft, and spacecraft. Because titanium has a high resistance to heat, the Boeing 2707 SST was going to have a titanium fuselage. This ambitious airplane was to cruise at Mach 2.7 or more at extremely high altitudes far above the regular jet lanes. Despite the coldness of the very thin air at those altitudes, the 2707 would have to contend with supersonic “skin friction” that would heat its hull to many hundreds of degrees Fahrenheit. Titanium was thus an essential ingredient in America’s SST program.
The problem was that this metal is notoriously difficult to work with. While we used it in key places in Boeing jetliners, the company didn’t knew nearly enough about titanium to feel we could manufacture an entire fuselage out of it at an acceptable cost.
The same was true of the British and French, who steered entirely clear of titanium for the Concorde. Instead they gave it a conventional structure, which limited Europe’s SST to a cruise speed of Mach 2.2 or so. Beyond that, skin friction would soften its aluminum hull too much.
In contrast, the Russians knew a great deal about titanium, which is found in abundance there. The Soviet aerospace industry was far ahead of the West in this regard. In fact they actually helped building Lockheed's A-12 family of aircrafts !
It happened that back in 1959 Lockheed American supplier, Titanium Metals Corporation, had only limited reserves of the precious alloy. So the CIA conducted a worldwide search and using third parties and dummy companies, managed to unobtrusively purchase the base metal from one of the world's leading exporters – the Soviet Union ! The CIA titanium ops must have been a mix of John Le Carré and James Ellroy
Underworld USA trilogy.
Lockheed needed an ore called
rutile. It's a very sandy soil and it's only found in very few parts of the world. The Russians never had an inkling of how they were actually contributing to the creation of the airplane being rushed into construction to spy on their homeland.
At the time the Soviet Union was building 3000 tons nuclear attack submarines out of titanium. Those submarines were the Alfa class so popular in Tom Clancy techno-thrillers. The truth was that Alfas were not only horrendously expensives, they were also one-shot weapons, their liquid-metal reactors having a very short lifespan and catastrophic reliability. One CIA analyst was struggling hard with the notion of a submarine titanium hull; no-one believed it was feasible.
Meanwhile in 1967 an odd request arrived at Boeing from the U.S. Department of State. Would a delegation from Boeing be willing to meet with one from the Soviet Union for an open exchange of technical information?
Boeing President Thornton “T” Wilson didn’t know what to make of this request from high levels. It was a ticklish proposition for T Wilson. He might well have politely declined except that here, unexpectedly, was a chance to get some badly needed help with a critical issue challenging our SST program. Accordingly, T Wilson accepted the State Department’s request for a meeting in “neutral territory.”
T Wilson soon learned that this meeting was to be held at a restaurant in Paris. In the early 90's he remembered “For us american from the West coast, meeting Soviet engineers in Paris was quite a culture shock. In fact it was not unlike that Norman Spinrad recent novel,
Russian spring, when the hero, Jerry Reed lands in Paris for the first time.”
In the novel America has turned into an authoritarian, populist and jingoistic state, with NASA civilian space program dead and the Strategic Defense Initiative (rebranded Battlestar America) being brought into service to scare the world. Born in Los Angeles and working for Rockwell, young Jerry Reed goes to a three weeks vacations in Paris, paid by the European Space Agency that in fact wants to hire him. ESA wants Reed's breakthrough civilian space plane which is derived from Battlestar America technology. Reed comply to ESA, passing them the technology. Then a pissed-off US government forbade Reed from returning home forever, or he will be jailed for life.
An heartbroken Reed decides to follow his dream and stay in Paris, were he founds love and a family and a job in aerospace... except that, being an American that “betrayed” his country, he ends loathed, not only by his home country, but also by Europeans and Russians that see him suspiciously, damaging his professional career many times. Spinrad own exile to Paris in 1988 (and his love for this town) is glaring.
Accompanied by State Department officials acting as our hosts, the Boeing team climbed into a fleet of Parisian taxicabs and were soon shooting across broad boulevards. They caught glimpses of Montmartre and the Eiffel Tower bathed in late-evening sunlight as the taxis plunged through narrow, curving streets. The taxis deposited them at the entrance to a restaurant that looked well established and altogether too normal for a face-to-face with the Soviets.
“Entering to savory aromas, we ascended to a private dining room on the second floor and took seats around a large table.”
T. Wilson had decided that he would ask our questions first. Afterward, if and only if we felt the Russians had been fully forthcoming, were he to return the favor and share Boeing’s hard-won knowledge with equal candor. This plan was approved up front by the State Department, which hoped that a mutually beneficial exchange of information might help thaw relations between the two superpowers.
Boeing's Bob Withington peppered the Soviet engineers with questions about titanium, initiating an animated and very enthusiastic exchange of knowledge about titanium and its fabrication. Finally, after at least an hour, he informed T Wilson that all his questions had been fully answered and that he considered the exchange valuable. By now we had finished the main course at our superb restaurant—although I have no memory of what we ate—and out came the vodka and other potables. These flowed pretty freely, which no doubt contributed to a collegial discussion that went on for another hour until finally the Russians were satisfied. The Boeing team stood, more than ready to return to our hotels and get some sleep. They noticed that the Russians carefully rolled up the napkins and tablecloth and took them away with them. A lot of valuable American technological know-how went to Russia courtesy of that French linen.
Meanwhile help was also flowing from Lockheed, through classified channels. Bob Sudderth, who had worked at Lockheed on stability and control for the SR-71, went to work for Boeing on the SST program. He transferred that information in his head.
Up to this point aircraft designers lacked a solution to a complex problem affecting transport aircraft. They could not predict adequately the structural and control problems resulting from landing gear and airframe interactions. Runway irregularities routinely affected tire loads. Surface
roughness, ground contour elevations and slopes, and airplane-to-ground axis orientation all contributed inputs through tire deflections and unsprung mass excitations.
The increased structural flexibility and higher takeoff and landing speeds of proposed Supersonic Transport (SST) designs magnified these problems. Since the YF-12 shared many structural characteristics with SST designs, the Blackbirds assumed a leading role in the landing dynamics research program. The YF-12 team had “developed one of the most complete finite element [NASA] structural analysis (NASTRAN) programs ever assembled for an aircraft, along with a complete static aeroelastic analysis program (FLEXSTAB).”
The FLEXSTAB program, developed by Boeing for the SST, allowed researchers to assess the effect of airframe flexibility on stability and control characteristics of a supersonic aircraft. Perry Polentz of NASA Ames also sought out Curtis to model the YF-12 using FLEXSTAB. Although Curtis encountered some problems adapting the program to the YF-12 wing configuration, the extensive analytical database set the stage for the proposed flight research effort. Jim McKay thought the resulting data would have “direct application to low-aspect-ratio vehicles with close dynamic coupling between major components such as fuselage and wing.”
In 1969 NASA, the military, Lockheed and Boeing developed a partnership to fly the three YF-12 as SST structural testbeds. The partners announced the joint program on 18 July 1969. A NASA team spent the first several months of the project installing instrumentation in the YF-12A. By December, engineers had placed strain gauges and thermocouples in the wing and fuselage to measure dynamic loads and temperatures. Using the YF-12, NASA researchers hoped to establish a technology base for the design of an efficient propulsion system for supersonic cruise aircraft, such as a Supersonic Transport (SST). All three YF-12s performed 298 flights between 11 December 1969 and 7 November 1979.
After the SST spectacular return in 1972 and its first flight in 1975, both YF-12A were used as chase planes. Boeing 2707-300 could cruise at Mach 2.7 for two hours, quite longer than the far smaller YF-12s that could spent barely 20 minutes at Mach 3. But no other aircraft bar the lost XB-70 Valkyrie prototypes could have chased the SST across the sky. The NASA YF-12 research program was ambitious; the aircraft flew an average of once a week unless down for extended maintenance or modification. Program expenses averaged $3.1 million per year just to run the flight tests.
Flight test program oft the three SST prototypes was quite similar to YF-12 decadal service with NASA. Unless grounded for maintenance or modification, the YF-12s flew nearly every week for most of the program's lifespan. The YF-12's ability to sustain a cruise speed of greater than Mach 3 allowed NASA to expand its research capabilities. A large amount of flight research was performed in aerodynamics, propulsion, controls, structures, subsystems and other areas such as the physics of the upper atmosphere, noise tests and measurements, and handling qualities. The YF-12 flight research data was augmented by a series of wind tunnel tests, laboratory experiments, and analyses. As a result, the combined ground/flight research generated vast amounts of information that was later incorporated into the design of other supersonic aircraft. The program yielded over 125 technical reports.
YF-12 flight tests included propulsion studies, investigations of a flight path oscillation known as phugoid, studies of the plane's loads and handling capabilities, and performance tests that involved flights with the ventral fin removed. Other research included the use of attached vanes to investigate airflow and wind gusts, studies of jet wake dispersion, engine stalls, elevation-hold at high Mach speeds, boundary layer noise, and the effect of a boattail design on drag.
In another facet of YF-12 research, NASA and Lockheed engineers investigated Space Shuttle landing dynamics using the YF-12C. Several flights, conducted in April and June 1973, demonstrated Shuttle-type flight characteristics during low lift-to-drag (L/D) approaches. Specifically, the researchers needed data for L/D ratios of two to three, the range predicted for the Space Shuttle orbiter. This necessitated operating the YF-12C in a high-drag configuration, achieved by reducing power to idle, moving the inlet spikes forward, and opening the bypass doors to the restart position. In addition, the pilots needed to transfer fuel to maintain a forward center-of-gravity and to burn off fuel to allow descent at as light a weight as possible (to avoid flying the aircraft at maximum L/D). The descent profile maximized engine negative thrust-inlet drag and also allowed for the lowest possible lift coefficient. Three flights, including 26 approaches, resulted in satisfactory pilot ratings for all handling qualities. The flight crews noticed no tendency toward pilot-induced oscillation and suggested that the YF-12C would serve as an acceptable model for Space Shuttle landing characteristics. A 2707-300 did flew similat tests in 1978 to try and test very large spaceplanes and boosters glided landings. The SST's length of 300 ft matched both flyback boosters or hydrogen-fueled space planes.
PART 8 – In service
After the October 73 oil shock the Japanese government very nearly gave up STS and the project remained on hold... until August 1974 when Ford become president and rescued it. Ford really wanted the first prototypes to fly in time for the bicentenary or at least before the 1976 presidential election (where he was defeated by Jimmy Carter). A die hard core supporter of Boeing's SST, Ford asked if a couple of birds could be outfitted as Air Force One, although the project went nowhere. Boeing and NAMC barely made it in time but on July 4, 1976 the three Boeing 2707 prototypes were at Edwards AFB. One was painted in Air Force One colors, the other had a lavish bicentenial red, blue and white livery, the third had a Pan-Am livery.
Carter and his Vice President Mondale loathed Boeing SST but couldn't get STS cancelled. The second oil shock, however, proved fatal and the program died.
Judgements of the STS project were very severe – a Japanese official once called it the most expensive gift from Japan to the United States ever. Bill Magruder noted that it was as if the US had hired a Japanese development contractor to build the aircraft, only that the contractor used its own money. Indeed the terms of the U.S – Japanese Agreement and the subsequent evolution of the project clearly reflected the very uneven balance of power between the partners with the odds stacked heavily in favour of the USA. Before his untimely death in 1977 Magruder went as far as hinting that the STS had been Nixon's poisoned chalice to the Japanese aircraft industry, a revenge of the textile war America was losing badly.
At the time the Japanese hoped to develop the Y-X, an aircraft not unlike the Airbus A300, that is, a 250 passenger twin jet that would fill the gap between the wide-bodies and narrow bodies. Neither Douglas nor Boeing had in-between DC-9 and DC-10, 727 -737 and 747. There was a gap Airbus rushed in, and maybe the Japanese could have achieved similar success.
As of 1972 when the STS agreement come into being, NAMCO had been burdened by the unbalanced YS-11 propeller-driven airliner program.
So the Japanese government planned the establishment of a so-called Civil Transport Development Corporation with responsibility for the YX project - as successor to NAMC. NAMC was to disapear sooner rather than later, but the STS requested their experience and the company was rescued. Hence the Japanese civilian aerospace industry become split in two factions.
A case could be made that Nixon tactics were a carbon copy of what had been done to the Japanese rocket program. Back in 1966 ISAS solid-fuel rockets could have become ICBMs, a very undesirable political development threatening Southern-Asia stability. Putting Okinawa into the balance, Nixon had Japan cutting ISAS and creating NASDA, the new space agency building Delta rocket under a licence. That's how the U.S.A got control over Japan rocket program.
There also unfounded rumours that military may have flown 2707s out of Kadena, Okinawa as “super dupper SR-71s” for ELINT and SIGINT missions near the Chinese and Soviet borders. Flying at Mach 2.7 they were slower than SR-71s but still fast enough to escape interception by Mig-25s.
The first 2707-300 flew in 1975, at a time when Concorde was finding a niche on trans-atlantic flights, where noise was less an issue. The 2707 found a similar niche over the Pacific, drastically cutting flight time between Japan and America.
Late 1976 operation PACIFIC SKY had all three 2707-300s carrying 250 passengers each flying the Los Angeles – Tokyo transpacific routes with stops in either Anchorage or Honolulu. PACIFIC SKY led to a limited Supersonic Transpacific Service established in 1977, with the hope of extending flight operations to the Atlantic, where the 2707-300 very high cruise speed allowed three rotations every day, against Concorde two.
After the 1979 oil shock the Supersonic Transpacific Service (STS) was disbanded and the question arose of what to do with the three aircrafts build. NASA inherited of the two prototypes (the third aircraft bing kept for spares) and found many uses for them in the 80's and beyond.
One flight test program had the droop-nose fixed in the upward position to test a remote vision system. Indeed the droop nose (common to SST, Concorde and Tu-144) was a complex and heavy system and as such the next generation SST would have to do without it, saving 10 000 pounds or more. Then visibility from the cockpit would be so poor, cameras would have to be used.
Another role for the SST was testbed of many different jet and rocket engines. Such was the size of the SST, a large payload could be stuck below the fuselage, either a rocket or a test engine pod.
While Boeing SST was slower than either XB-70 or SR-71, it established record flight duration in high supersonic flight, beating Concorde and the Valkyrie. It could spent two hours and a half at Mach 2.7, covering 4500 miles in a single flight.
