Around the World in 120 Minutes

By Barbara Rudolph

When President Reagan in his State of the Union address last week talked of a hypersonic jet that could fly from Washington to Tokyo in two hours, skeptics might have thought he was merely dreaming. In fact, the Pentagon and U.S. aerospace companies have been working for several years toward making that vision a reality. The proposed plane, already dubbed the Orient Express, would soar through the atmosphere into space and back, flying at up to 25 times the speed of sound. Though few experts think that the Orient Express will be ready ! for takeoff before the end of this century, Reagan showed off a model of the space plane on a visit last week to Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Annandale, Va.

Other nations have ambitious plans of their own to develop new superfast commercial jets. Only a day after the State of the Union address, the British government announced that it would provide research money for a space plane called HOTOL, an acronym for horizontal takeoff and landing. It would be designed to fly at about the same speed as the proposed Orient Express. France's state-owned aircraft company, Aerospatiale, has more modest plans to build a second generation of the Concorde, the only supersonic commercial jet now in service. The so-called Son of Concorde would fly at 2.2 times the speed of sound, or about 9% faster than its predecessor. More important, the new Concorde would carry 200 passengers, double the capacity of the original.

Building an Orient Express will be one of the most daunting challenges that the U.S. aerospace industry has faced since it helped put astronauts on the moon. Lockheed, Boeing and Rockwell have all been working on the conceptual designs for a space plane. At the moment, says one industry consultant, "it's just a gleam in everyone's eye." But what a gleam: the plane would take off on a conventional runway and fly into orbit like a rocket. It could launch satellites, much as the space shuttle has done, or it could simply whisk U.S. passengers from coast to coast in twelve minutes. Such staggering speed would only be possible with a new kind of engine that could function both in the atmosphere and in space.

The most immediate impetus for the development of the jet is military: the space plane could carry Star Wars nuclear defense weapons into orbit. It is also designed to compete with NASA's space shuttle, lifting payloads into orbit for less than $100 a pound. That would be a bargain compared with the shuttle's fee of $2,000 a pound.

Eventually the Orient Express could conceivably become a commercially viable jetliner. Government planners think the plane could boost travel and commerce between the U.S. and the Pacific Rim countries, hence the name Orient Express. But aerospace-industry executives are divided on the odds of commercial success. One engineer at McDonnell Douglas is almost contemptuous of the idea. "This is Tom Swift stuff," he says, referring to the adventurous hero of a series of children's books. Ben Rich, president of $ Lockheed's advanced aeronautics subsidiary, is much more optimistic. Says he: "Routine hypersonic flights between nations will be a reality by the end of this century." No one knows how much it would cost to fly on the Orient Express, but some Wall Street aviation experts speculate that a one-way ticket from New York to London might carry a price tag of between $3,000 and $4,000. A seat on the Concorde now costs $2,500 on that route.

Even the skeptics at aerospace firms want their companies to share in the research and development contracts that will be doled out by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Pentagon, the agencies that will finance the Orient Express. Within the next five years alone, the Government could spend as much as $600 million on space-plane research. Boeing, Lockheed and McDonnell Douglas are among the top contenders to build the hypersonic plane, since they have been the leading U.S. manufacturers of commercial jets. Rockwell is another strong candidate because it built the space shuttle. General Electric and the Pratt & Whitney division of United Technologies will compete to develop the plane's engine. To get the spacecraft into orbit might take as much as $20 billion. Says Laurence Lytton, who follows the aerospace industry for the Drexel Burnham Lambert investment firm: "The only way this is going to fly is if the Government picks up the tab."

Britain's HOTOL is being designed by British Aerospace, and the government will provide $4 million over the next two years for research. Rolls-Royce is working on the engines, which will have to be as revolutionary as the ones envisioned for the Orient Express. Says Trevor Nash, a company spokesman: "We are moving from the drawing board. The next step is to prove that it will work."

When the research is complete, British Aerospace will try to obtain as much as $7 billion in development funds from the European Space Agency. The jet could then be airborne in the late 1990s. Initially, it would be used to launch satellites, but it could eventually transport up to 70 passengers.

The Son of Concorde may have the strongest hopes of becoming commercially viable, with its 200-passenger capacity. But it cannot be built until Aerospatiale finds partners to help pay for development costs, which could total $4 billion.

The economics of the original Concorde will be a sobering reminder of the financial risks of developing supersonic transports. Britain and France, which jointly built the Concorde and started commercial flights in 1976, have not come close to recovering their $4.3 billion in start-up costs. Revenues from the Concorde did not even cover operating costs until 1983. Aerospace manufacturers also recall that in 1971 U.S. funding for supersonic-jet research was abruptly cut off by Congress. The development of hypersonic transports may have important military applications, but the planes' commercial benefits are still very much in doubt.

With reporting by Thomas McCarroll/New York and Bruce van Voorst/Washington