The Flying Scissors

In killing the Nixon Administration's plans to build a supersonic jet transport last year. Congress was influenced by some persuasive arguments against the plane: it would be extremely costly (an estimated $1.5 billion for development of two prototypes), create window-shattering sonic booms all across the countryside, and possibly even leave enough carbon dioxide in the upper layers of the atmosphere to change the earth's climate. Now Robert T. Jones of NASA'S Ames Research Center, near San Francisco, has suggested a radical new SST design that he claims would overcome most of these objections. It would also be one of the oddest looking planes ever to take to the air.

Jones, a pioneer in the development of swept-wing aircraft, proposes building an SST with a single elliptical-shaped wing that would pivot on the fuselage. During takeoff, the wing would be set at right angles to the fuselage to provide maximum lift. But as the plane approached supersonic speed, the wing would be pivoted by about 45 DEG to reduce drag, making the craft resemble a flying pair of scissors.

This bizarre "antisymmetrical" configuration, Jones contends, is superior to the familiar swing-wing design of, say, the Air Force F-l I I or the Navy F14, or the fixed-wing design of the British-French Concorde. Although drag is decreased when the wings of these aircraft are angled back, he says, another aerodynamic factor comes increasingly into play. At supersonic speeds, the swept back wings create noticeable pressure on each other; Jones likens the interference effect to that created when two motorboats speed alongside each other and waves from the bow of one boat slam into the hull of the other. When the wing is pivoted in the Jones design, however, such interference is reduced, just as when one of the boats pulls ahead of the other. Moreover, the aircraft's efficiency is further improved by simultaneously rotating the tail plane to the same oblique position. To those who are troubled by the asymmetry of his design, Jones has a ready answer: nature has "given man an instinctive feeling for bilateral symmetry," but it "does not provide us with a guide for supersonic flight; there are no supersonic birds."

Jones is convinced that his antisymmetric "bird" would fly well at supersonic speeds (as high as Mach 1.5 or approximately 1,000 m.p.h.), and would do so at considerably lower cost than other SSTs. On takeoffs, with its wing at right angles to the fuselage, he says, the plane would require only one-fourth the power of the Russian TU-144 or the Concorde, both of which have fixed delta wings. Thus it could operate with conventional, relatively quiet turbofan jets, sharply reducing noise on landings and takeoffs. It would also prevent pollution of the stratosphere by burning less fuel and by flying at lower jet altitudes (40,000 ft. v. 65.000 ft. for the originally proposed U.S. SST). Finally, unlike other SSTs. it could fly economically at Mach 1.2. At that speed, it would create no sonic boom (under normal atmospheric conditions) and could fly over populated land without causing discomfort and damage below.

Jones and others have been quietly pondering the antisymmetrical wing for more than two decades, but he hesitated to push for it any sooner. "It was too weird for its time." he explains. Now he feels the time has come. He has already successfully tested small models of the plane in wind tunnels at Ames and sent other models aloft on radio controlled subsonic flights. Building a full-scale prototype would be costly and would undoubtedly involve difficult engineering problems, but NASA apparently shares Jones' enthusiasm for the plane. It recently awarded a contract for studies of the antisymmetric design to Boeing, the frustrated contractor for the vetoed American SST.

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