Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!oodis01!uplherc!esunix!bpendlet
From: bpendlet@esunix.UUCP (Bob Pendleton)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: SST landing rights in US
Message-ID: <1205@esunix.UUCP>
Date: 24 Jan 89 15:55:59 GMT
References: <601326396.amon@H.GP.CS.CMU.EDU>
Organization: Evans & Sutherland, Salt Lake City, Utah
Lines: 52

From article <601326396.amon@H.GP.CS.CMU.EDU>, by Dale.Amon@H.GP.CS.CMU.EDU:

> Seriously though, it was a bunch of noisy neo-luddites who got them
> banned from all but NY and DC, and I think they even tried to stop them
> there.

I don't usually disagree with you Dale, but you really blew it on this
one. There were three very good environmental reasons not to build
SSTs. I don't know if they are still problems. But they seemed pretty
good reasons in 1970. These were all explained to me by a fairly well
respected ecologist; who just happend to be my father.

1) The effects of sonic booms on the oceans. It was believed that
sonic booms killed plankton. Dead plankton doesn't feed fish, and it
doesn't release oxygen. In fact as it dies and breaks down it absorbs
oxygen. So it was feared that SSTs endangered the basis of the ocean
ecology and might adversely effect the oxygen content of the
atmosphere.

2) SSTs release water vapor at very high altitudes. It was believed
that this water vapor would form permanent, or nearly permanent,
clouds at altitudes where clouds are not normally found. These clouds
would reduce the amount of sun light reaching the ground and cause a
global cooling. It was believed that contrails were already having
this effect.

3) Passenger safety. SSTs fly high enough that passengers are exposed
to cosmic radiation and to radiation from solar storms. 

The U.S. SST designs couldn't come down fast enough to save the
passengers lives in the event of a loss of pressure accident or an
intense solar storm.

The Concorde doesn't fly as high or as fast as the U.S. SST designs were
planning on.

It also became very obvious that having an SST was becoming a national
status symbol with very little economic justification.

Times change. Technology advances. When its time to railroad you
railroad. Maybe now is the time for SSTs. But only if these questions
have been resolved.

Branding people as "neo-luddite" because they put the habitability of
the only planet we have ahead of their desire for neat technological
toys is wrong.

			Bob P.
-- 
              Bob Pendleton, speaking only for myself.
UUCP Address:  decwrl!esunix!bpendlet or utah-cs!esunix!bpendlet

		Reality is what you make of it.