
DATE: Sunday, August 17, 1997               TAG: 9708160573

SECTION: BUSINESS                PAGE: D1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY AKWELI PARKER, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: HAMPTON                           LENGTH:  193 lines

SO FAR, SO GOOD FOR SUPERSONIC JETLINER THE HIGH-SPEED CIVIL TRANSPORT

When Wallace Sawyer and Alan Wilhite took off for work in NASA Langley Research Center's Boeing 737 last fall, it was no ordinary business trip.

The director and deputy director of the Langley-based High Speed Research program were checking out the flying laboratory's ``windowless cockpit,'' one of many exotic new technologies that could be used on the first U.S.-made supersonic jetliner - if such a plane ever gets off the drawing board.

NASA considers development of a new supersonic plane its top aeronautic goal over the next few decades. It's earmarked $1.9 billion for research through 2002, another $890 million if the project is still on track after that.

So far, so good, said director Sawyer recently. To date, researchers have encountered no ``show stoppers'' in their quest to dampen the plane's environmental impact. Noise and pollution studies have shown that a clean, quiet supersonic can be built with a few more advances in technology.

Concerns about noise and pollution shot down the first U.S. attempt at a supersonic jetliner in 1971.

As lead center for the project, which first got funding from Congress in 1990, Langley is playing a key role in what could be the most significant breakthrough in civil aviation since the introduction of jetliners.

At NASA-Langley alone, about 300 are at work in the High Speed Research program; hundreds more work at the agency's Ames, Lewis and Goddard research centers at Moffett Field, Calif., Cleveland, Ohio, and Greenbelt, Md. Also involved are teams from industry partners Boeing, GE, Pratt & Whitney and others.

Tall and wiry with a boyish face, the 55-year-old Sawyer is chummy and quick to crack a joke.

But when it comes to the High Speed Civil Transport, he assumes the no-nonsense demeanor of a corporate exec - spouting market study results, trend analyses and balance-of-trade projections.

``The Asian market is booming,'' he says, adding that unlike the money-losing Concorde, an HSCT would rake in the dough on dashes between the West Coast and the economically promising Pacific Rim.

The plane would hustle up to 300 passengers overseas - but probably not over populated land - at nearly 2 1/2 times the speed of sound. It would chop travel times by at least half.

So who will be able to afford a ride?

Ordinary customers ``wanting to go faster and not paying a lot,'' says Sawyer. A ticket could be yours for about a 20 percent premium over subsonic fares, according to NASA.

By contrast, a round-trip ticket between New York and London costs $8,500 on the Concorde - eight to 10 times the cost of the subsonic trip.

Unlike past air and space initiatives, spurred by national pride or fear of the Red Menace, today's motivation for a U.S.-made supersonic passenger jet is green.

The United States leads the world in aircraft exports and aerospace technology, but other countries are steadily eroding that advantage.

To fulfill its mandate as a high-tech economic development engine, NASA wants to facilitate ``revolutionary technology leaps'' like the HSCT to guarantee U.S. competitiveness in the global marketplace.

If the popularity of air travel increases as expected, the market for overseas travel between 2005 and 2025 might reach $685 billion, according to industry estimates.

Proponents of the HSCT would like the United States to have a big piece of that. Sitting still on supersonic research, they say, would be like throwing money to the Europeans and Japanese - who are studying next-generation supersonic jets of their own.

Besides the airfares, building a fleet of 500 to 1,000 HSCTs could mean 140,000 new jobs, mostly in the California and Washington state areas.

But it's going to take awhile - perhaps more than a decade - before there's even a flying prototype. There are no plans to build an HSCT just yet: For now it's merely a ``focus program'' examining the the environmental, technical and business feasibility of such a plane. The program's goal is to cultivate or invent the ``enabling technologies'' to make the HSCT a reality.

THE DEVIL'S IN THE DECIBELS

Phase 1 of the program, completed last year, sought to find out if the dream plane could punch through the technological barriers that kept its predecessor earth-bound.

``The noise was a big problem,'' says Cornelius ``Neil'' Driver, president of Eagle Aeronautics in Newport News and a NASA retiree.

Eagle Aeronautics has worked with NASA on dusting off old but still valid reports and tapes on supersonic boom, putting the data into more manageable electronic form for NASA's current crop of aircraft designers.

With their screaming engines and sonic booms, supersonic transports have attracted many detractors, who cite noise, property damage and harm to people and animals as reasons not to build an SST.

To this day, the Anglo-French Concorde SST is the only supersonic jetliner operational - and the loudest commercial airplane in service.

Of late, residential surveys and sonic boom tests have led HSCT researchers to believe that supersonic flight over land just isn't in the cards.

``Environmental complaints have gotten so severe that there are some people saying they won't accept any boom,'' says Driver, ``whether you could make it sound like the rumble of thunder or what.''

At subsonic speeds, the plane will have to make no more noise than the ordinary jet fleet - which makes far less ruckus than it used to but is under federal mandate to get even quieter.

The Natural Resources Defense Council has cited studies linking continuous exposure to aircraft noise with hypertension, cardiovascular and gastrointestinal problems.

Concerns also abound over oxides of nitrogen, a byproduct of burning that fouls the air.

Scientists believe that the rarified reaches where supersonic planes fly are particularly vulnerable to pollutants.

``The Department of Transportation's own studies show that a fleet of 30 Concordes would deplete the protective ozone layer in the atmosphere sufficiently to cause 1,200 new cases of skin cancer in the U.S.,'' warned an Environmental Defense Fund newsletter in 1975.

With the first U.S. effort's 1960s-vintage technology, the pursuit of a low-emissions, low-noise supersonic plane seemed truly quixotic.

More than 20 years later though, Phase 1 of the modern-day program found that a clean, relatively quiet plane could be built. That is, if engineers could get full-sized components to behave like smaller-scale models have in the lab - the on-going mission for Phase II of the program.

PARTNERS IN CLIMB

As part of NASA's new way of doing business, companies such as Boeing and recent acquisition McDonnell Douglas are working hand-in-hand with the agency on the project.

``We're doing an exemplary job of cooperation between NASA and industry,'' says Malcolm MacKinnon, Boeing's HSCT project manager, ``a lot better than it has been in the past.''

Sawyer did not put a price tag on what an HSCT might cost, but experts have estimated it might take $15 billion to develop and $200 million per aircraft to build. A Boeing 747, by contrast, goes for about $160 million.

``We're not at the stage where we're out doing sales campaigns, but we've been getting input from the airlines on turnaround time, passenger comfort, what they would think some of the requirements would be,'' says MacKinnon.

Still, concedes NASA Langley's Wilhite, the airlines are too busy ``just trying to keep their heads above water,'' to get excited about a plane that may be in service in 15 years.

But he adds that skepticism and high costs also marked the introduction of jets into civilian service decades ago.

``There were premium charges to fly on jets,'' says Wilhite.

IT'S THE AIRPLANE, STUPID

Although the HSCT's final configuration will see some tinkering, NASA and its industry partners seem to have settled on the basic shape: a needle-like nose; a double-delta, ``cranked-arrow'' wing; four cylindrical or box-shaped engines beneath the wings; and a needle-like tail.

Like every other airliner, the plane is a compilation of compromises. For instance, high lift wings mean the plane can take off with less oomph (hence less noise) from the engines; but those wings are a drawback when it's time to hustle at Mach 2-plus speeds.

And one little item taken for granted on most airplanes - the front windscreen - probably won't make it on board the HSCT.

Both the Concorde and the former Soviet Union's Tu-144 have one, but at a cost. Like airborne aristocrats, they land with their noses high, blocking the pilots' forward view.

Solution: They use a mechanically drooping nose to give the pilot better visibility when landing. But the complex system adds thousands of pounds to the plane's weight. And in flight, weight is costly. So the HSCT will scrap the droop-nose in favor of a system much like the windowless cockpit tested at Langley.

Using this ``external vision system,'' nose-mounted cameras and computerized graphics will serve as an artificial ``front window,'' supplementing the pilots' view out of conventional side windows.

The program is studying other leading-edge technologies, but those ideas will ultimately be evaluated by how they affect performance and cost.

Explains Sawyer, ``We have this thing in the program called, `It's the Airplane, Stupid.'''

Such penny pinching in the design process is supposed to filter down to the ticket window, keeping fares within reach of ordinary folks.

According to Boeing and airline research, the flying public will accept the plane ride's slightly elevated price where frugality gives way to an aching fanny.

``What we've found is that five hours is when the wallets start to loosen up,'' Sawyer says of the program's market research on Pacific Rim flyers.

Still, for all the market studies, simulators and wind tunnel tests, there may be one technological puzzle of flight even the country's best and brightest propellor-heads cannot solve, predicts a NASA Langley employee: ``The food will be the same.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff graphic

JOHN EARLE, The Virginian-Pilot

Projected market share for overseas routes

Graphic

COMPARISON:

HSCT

Passengers: 300

Cruising speed: Mach 2.4 (1,560 mph)

Service altitude: 50,000 ft.

Range: 6,300 mi.

Operational date: 2010-2015 (estimate)

CONCORDE

Passengers: 100+