ELWOOD QUESADA, the first Federal Aviation Administrator, was excited at the end of his conversation with Dwight Eisenhower. The first reporter to find out why was TIME'S Jerry Hannifin. "I've just seen the President," Quesada told him, "and he's approved the commercial Mach 2!"

That was "in 1959. The product of that decision was the SST project now rejected by the Congress. Hannifin, still TIME'S Washington-based aviation correspondent, had followed the program closely from its birth to its death and was in a perfect position to report on Washington developments for this week's cover story and related articles on the SST. He has firsthand familiarity with more than the politics and economics of the issue. Flying is Hannifin's hobby as well as his journalistic specialty. He has piloted a variety of military and civilian aircraft, from fighters to jetliners, and has himself flown at Mach 2 (twice the speed of sound).

From the West Coast, Los Angeles Bureau Chief Don Neff covered the impact of the SST decision on the ailing aerospace industry. He has followed the field since 1965, when he did the reporting for a cover story on a Mariner space shot. Of the aerospace business, Neff says: "I feel as if I saw the best of it, the challenge and the drama, and now the sadness of it."

Correspondent John Tompkins, whose regular beat is business news, surveyed the reactions of financiers and industry executives in New York. Like Hannifin and Neff, Tompkins is no stranger to technology. In 1966, he published a book, Weapons of World War HI, in which he discussed the supersonic prospects of the '70s.

These reports and others filed by our correspondents, along with those produced by a team of reporter-researchers, went to Writers William Doerner and James Grant. Says Business Editor Marshall Loeb, who saw the SST mock-up at Boeing's Seattle plant last year: "It's hard to look at it and think that it won't fly. You see skilled technicians, and you wonder what will happen to them. You begin to understand their side of the issue."

The Nation section, meanwhile, contributed two stories: one discussing the SST decision in the context of American history and the contemporary national mood, the other explaining why the Senators voted as they did. These four Business and Nation stories, we felt, would give a full explanation of one of the most complex and far-reaching of national decisions.

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