The Golden Goose

With its drooping needle nose, its gracefully arched fuselage and towering tail, the craft seemed like a great caged goose. Standing on one of its flaring delta wings--large enough for 100 parked autos--four technicians looked as tiny as crickets. The whole craft was only 27 ft. shorter than a football field. Gleaming white against the backdrop of a gloomy hangar at Burbank, Calif., the behemoth was shown off for the first time this week by Lockheed Aircraft Corp. It is a $1,000,000 full-scale mockup of the Lockheed 2000, the plane that the company hopes will become the nation's first supersonic passenger transport.

Even in plywood, it is a dazzling entry in the race for the richest prize in aviation history, $25 billion in plane-building business over the next 30 years. The 2000 is designed to cruise at 65,000 ft., whisk up to 266 travelers at the 1,800-m.p.h. speed of a rifle bullet. It would fly across the U.S. in 2 hr. 10 min. or from New York to Paris in 2 hr. 45 min.* The design draws on Lockheed's extensive experience with supersonic military planes, and engineers have added two safety-boosting innovations. The hinged nose dips 15DEG during takeoffs and landings so that pilots can see better. So-called "double-delta" wings--thinly tapered in front and broader at the rear--prevent stalling at low speeds, give extra stability in the treacherous turbulence of travel at Mach 2.7.

Bigger Competitor. Lockheed's rival in the competition is Boeing Co., which has not won a major military plane or missile award since 1958. Boeing is betting on a swing-wing model whose wings tuck back at high speed and open out for landings. Called the Boeing SST 733, it could achieve the same speed and stratospheric altitude as Lockheed's 2000. Boeing is building a mockup, plans to display it around September. The plane has just undergone major modifications, making it heavier (300 tons v. Lockheed's 250 tons), longer (298 ft. v. 273 ft.) and more capacious (300 passengers, six abreast instead of five).

The changes not only improved the plane's payload, but also cured defects in its design. Tests showed that exhaust from Boeing's wing-mounted engines would buffet and overheat the tail. Designers moved the engines to the underside of an enlarged tail. That, in turn, enabled them to increase the area of the pivoting wing so that the plane could take off and land more slowly and silently. With that, said Boeing SST Engineering Director H. W. Withington last week, "Lockheed no longer has us beaten, as it thought it did last year." Replied Lockheed President Daniel J. Haughton: "The race will be close."

Three-Year Handicap. Lockheed could still increase the size of its SST entry to match Boeing's, but it would have to hurry. Both companies must submit their final designs to the Government by Sept. 6, as must General Electric and the Pratt & Whitney division of United Aircraft Corp., which are battling for the $6 billion worth of jet-engine business. The airlines and the Federal Aviation Agency hope to pick two winners by January, award a contract to build a prototype followed by production models that will fly commercially by 1974.

The U.S. has no time to lose if it wants to capture the majority of the 800-plane world market for supersonic transports. The Anglo-French Concorde is moving on schedule toward a target of commercial service by 1971, and Russia's TU-144 may beat the Concorde by several months. The later-starting American SST will offer several advantages over the European models. It will be one-third larger, carry nearly twice as many passengers and, thanks to its heat-resistant titanium skin, fly faster. The Concorde is limited to 1,450 m.p.h. by its aluminum body, but it will be cheaper: only $15 million or $16 million compared with $30 million for the U.S. supersonic plane. (Today's big passenger jets cost about $7,000,000).

Payoff. Washington so far has picked up 75%, or $175 million, of SST development costs, and the bill may well soar to $4 billion. The Government intends not only to recoup its money but also to repay the losing firms' investment through still unspecified production royalties. Boeing has poured in $30 million of its own, has 2,400 Seattle technicians at work on the project. Lockheed has invested nearly $31 million in ten years of research and facilities for 1,900 engineers and other experts. In the engine competition, G.E. has spent $20 million, United Aircraft about $15 million.

Staggering as those stakes are, the payoff promises to be well worth the effort. By FAA estimates, the SST could create at least 50,000 jobs for the prime contractors and their suppliers in 46 states, add $10 billion over 20 years to the nation's dollar-earning exports --of which the aircraft industry is already a major source.

-Compared with current fastest flights of 4 hr. 55 min. and 6 hr. 55 min. respectively.

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