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(More customer reviews)High Speed Dreams is a book about the history of the technology R&D efforts and politics of America's heretofore abortive attempts to produce a supersonic transport. While this is certainly not a subject that will whiz it to the top of the New York Times Bestseller list, High Speed Dreams is nonetheless an excellent and unique work of history especially for aerospace industry workers and aircraft enthusiasts in general.
Starting with America's response to the Anglo-French Concorde effort it tells the continuous history of NASA led SST R&D up until the end of the High Speed Research program in 1999. During this period there were two major and one more minor attempts to develop an SST.
The first, the American program to develop a competitor to the Concorde, was an unmitigated disaster. In the early 1960's neither the market to support an SST nor the technology to develop one existed. (Witness the sad saga of the Concorde.) This didn't deter the FAA and the politicians in general from setting a completely unrealistic set of requirements on the American aerospace contractors to develop an aircraft; requirements with the sole goal of upstaging the Concorde. These requirements were politically driven and set before comprehensive economic and technology feasibility studies (the normal place to define requirements) were completed. As such they had no real economic or technical foundation and were impossible to meet. To add insult to injury the politicians then set a ridiculous schedule so that any resulting aircraft would reach the market more or less concurrent with the Concorde. In spite of this the aerospace contractors responded with some highly innovative ideas and tried very, very hard to meet the requirements. Unfortunately though the compressed schedule the politicians had allowed resulted in the most promising technology ideas, which were also the most revolutionary and required the longest time to develop, being dropped. In the case of Curtiss-Wright's SST engine proposal, which was widely believed to be one of the best engine proposals ever put forward, not only was the concept denied funding but the loss put the company out of business. While struggling with impossible requirements the SST soon became the symbolic target of environmentalists who launched a concerted campaign against it. The program soon unravelled and was abandoned. Although the resulting Boeing 2707-300 design could not meet its requirements, the nation missed an excellent opportunity to build a low cost prototype to extend the knowledge of supersonic transports through an X-plane type flight research program, one that could help plant the seed for a future supersonic blossoming.
After the cancellation of America's answer to Concorde NASA and the aerospace industry continued to investigate technologies that could overcome the problems that clipped the 2707's wings, and with a relatively large deal of success. The results of this research eventually led to a second attempt to actually produce an American SST in the late '80's to late '90's under the HSCT / HSR (High Speed Civil Transport / High Speed Research) programs. By this time there was significant potential for a transpacific SST market, and it seemed possible that the technologies existed to produce one economically. HSR produced a large amount of excellent SST configuration and technology research, but ultimately failed to produce an aircraft, again. The environmental requlations, particularly takeoff noise restrictions, had become too stringent during the course of HSR for any of its design technologies to yield an FAA certifiable SST. The "too short" schedule of HSR again prevented the most promising technologies from being researched. NASA also is far less capable of turning research results into flying aircraft (their spacecraft record is quite different) than the Air Force, since NASA traditionally won't pay for concept demonstration and validation, the most expensive but also the most necessary part of R&D.
The author does an excellent job of recording all the technological challenges, R&D progress -with its successes and failures-, and the politics of SST development. This book is certainly the most comprehensive work of its kind, and has more than enough explanation of the big picture as well as delving into the details to keep your interest. Although the history of SSTs is generally a dark cloud there is some significant silver lining in this cloud. Reading the book left me with a general appreciation for the hard work and ingenuity of the aerospace contractors, and a sense of how sorely politicians without significant technical background can ruin a project.
As a history book the author does a good job of handling the bias he brings to it, which is apparent as you read but kept to such a minimum that it generally doesn't detract from the book overall. For example he on occasion refers to aerospace enthusiasts as ideologues but never to environmentalists as such. Republicans are often cited as conservative or right wing or strident and are usually anti-this or anti-that, whereas Democracts are just Democrats. He constrains his bias until it comes out freely in the conclusion section, which is where authors have free reign to say what they feel, and it's no surprise that he's a liberal environmentalist. Oh well. There are also some not terribly convincing attacks on "free markets" vs. the European statist system throughout, but the author is also correct that Aerospace has never been as free a market as most other industries.
After reading this book I feel that there is a chance for a relatively "free market" development of an SST eventually, with the help of the Air Force. IF airline travel continues to grow, especially long range travel such as New York to Singapore (currently an 18 hour flight!), a lucrative market for a commercial SST may develop. IF private attempts to produce a supersonic business jet are successful, as several companies are attempting now, then private capital for larger SST's may suddenly appear as will a horde of operational data on which supersonic technologies work and which don't for commercial use. IF the Air Force proceeds with its LRSA (Long Range Strike Aircraft) and QSP (Quiet Supersonic Platform) research, currently residing in DARPA, to the flight demonstration phase - or even eventual operational status- then the technologies necessary to finally produce an economic and environmentally "friendly" large SST airliner could become validated and available. If all these stars align, which is not all that implausible, we could see an SST perhaps in 20 or 30 years. Sorry about it taking so long, but flying supersonically is indeed rocket science.
Given the fact that HSR could've produced an economical SST that was as quiet on takeoff as a 747-400 (and "failed" because it could NOT produce one quieter) the author's environmental argument against SSTs in his conclusion is philosophical and, in my opinion, unconvincing. It's basically "energy consumption is bad, supersonic flight will always consume more energy than subsonic flight, therefore SST bad." In my opinion energy is the foundation for higher standards of living, and getting to Singapore from New York in eight hours versus eighteen isn't an outdated concept of progress.
Despite the fact I disagree with the author's view on the desirability of an SST this book is incredibly informative, highly interesting, was a fun read, and about 99% fair. All in all an impressive achievement and if this book looks even slightly interesting to you then I highly recommend you go ahead and buy it! (The author probably deserves to get on the NYT bestseller list after so thoroughly research a topic he wasn't in favor of!)
Click Here to see more reviews about: High-Speed Dreams: NASA and the Technopolitics of Supersonic Transportation, 1945--1999 (New Series in NASA History)
InHigh-Speed Dreams, Erik M. Conway constructs an insightful history that focuses primarily on the political and commercial factors responsible for the rise and fall of American supersonic transport research programs. Conway charts commercial supersonic research efforts through the changing relationships between international and domestic politicians, military/NASA contractors, private investors, and environmentalists. He documents post-World War II efforts at the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics and the Defense Department to generate supersonic flight technologies, the attempts to commercialize these technologies by Britain and the United States during the 1950s and 1960s, environmental campaigns against SST technology in the 1970s, and subsequent attempts to revitalize supersonic technology at the end of the century. High-Speed Dreams is a sophisticated study of politics, economics, nationalism, and the global pursuit of progress. Historians, along with participants in current aerospace research programs, will gain valuable perspective on the interaction of politics and technology.
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