Protest Blossoms as Sonic Booms

Six months ago, a Harvard physicist named William Shurcliff organized a few friends into the Citizens' League Against the Sonic Boom. The group's members--all nine of them--had the unlikely goal of stopping the development and production of the most mammoth project in commercial aviation history, the multi-billion dollar supersonic transport.

Shurcliff, although absolutely convinced of the value of his cause, was new to public relations and unsure of his group's image. A scientist standing in the way of apparent progress? He was cautious in dealing with the press, and spent long evenings preparing press releases after a day's work at the Cambridge Electron Accelerator, where he is Senior Research Associate.

The press has been kind to Shurcliff and the Citizens' League. In fact, in those six months, a national advertising campaign and overwhelmingly favorable publicity have brought the League a membership of 1250 people from 39 states and has made what then seemed an almost ludicrous goal look remotely attainable.

The League's basic objection to the supersonic transport (SST), and the one it emphasizes most, is the sonic boom. A sonic boom is the shock wave created by an object flying faster than the speed of sound. The sharp explosive sound is pushed along in front of the object for as long as the supersonic flight lasts. At 1800 miles per hour, or about two and one-half times the speed of sound, the SST would leave behind a 50-mile-wide "bang zone," affecting perhaps five million people on a single flight across the U.S.

The boom itself is an extremely loud noise. Shurcliff describes it as making every house along the boom path seem "next door to a jet airport"--only worse. The sound of an arriving jet (all commercial jets fly below the speed of sound) builds up gradually, so at the peak of the noise there is no element of surprise. But a sonic boom provides no warning, and Shurcliff thinks that it is the boom's startling effect, even more than the noise itself, which makes it intolerable.

Artificial Booms

That is his main point of attack on the government-sponsored studies which the National Aeronautics and Space Administration uses to prove that people can in fact adjust to the sonic boom. The study which NASA quotes most often, by Bolt, Beranek and Newman, had subjects pushing buttons to activate an artificial boom-creating device. Although the artificial boom was as loud as a real one, the volunteers knew the boom would occur within five seconds after they pushed the button. Even among the fully-prepared subjects, almost half showed a marked increase in heart-beat as a result of the boom. NASA has never admitted to Shurcliff that the experiment's lack of surprise and the heartbeat findings might invalidate the conclusion that people can adapt to the noise.

People living near military bases, where planes such as the SR-71 fly at supersonic speeds, often hear sonic booms, but few Boston area residents had ever heard one until the afternoon of August 18. "Sonic Boom Leaves Hub Trail of Terror," the Record-American headlined its story--no overstatement, according to other papers, because "scores of people" claimed to have been "knocked off their feet" by the boom, which was caused by a small military plane. Shurcliff doubts those particular claims, but booms invariably shatter windows, sometimes seriously undermine the foundations of buildings, and have even been responsible for deaths--three people in France died this summer when a boom caused their barn to collapse. Shurcliff estimates that the shockwaves from a fleet of 150 SST's flying across the U.S. alone would do one million dollars' worth of property damage a day.

He calls the boom "sonic pollution," and his conclusion is pollution is not progress. "We all believe in progress," he says of his group, "but some things just aren't progress." One of this month's press releases concludes, "Aviation should be the servant of man, not his scourge."

But if League members base their major argument against the SST on its noise, their success may well depend on another argument--economics.

Tangled History

The SST project has a tangled history, but three facts are most significant. First, it is overwhelmingly expensive; development costs alone, before production is scheduled to begin in 1974, are estimated at 4.5 billion dollars or more, more than twice the cost of the development of the atomic bomb. Each plane will sell for 40 million dollars.

Second, the federal government has underwritten a large part of this cost--and therefore a large part of the risk if the project fails--while Boeing, the company to which the government awarded the contract, stands to make a large profit if the SST succeeds.

Third, and most important to the League's purposes, the government apparently undertook the project in the interest of national prestige without considering how many people will be using the plane--and under what conditions--by the time it is operational. The government originally decided to build the SST in the early '60's as a direct response to British-French plans for the supersonic Concorde. The Concorde was viewed as an important challenge to American technological superiority, so important that solutions to basic questions about the SST were deferred so that no time would be lost in catching up. But the problem is that the more money and manpower that are invested in the project--and even at this stage that amounts to quite a bit--the harder it becomes to answer those questions in the negative.

Shurcliff thinks the SST will be obsolete before it is built. The Concorde will be flying by 1971, probably four years before the SST, and its headstart may cut into the SST's market. (Three hundred of the 40 million dollar SST's must be sold to airlines before the project can pass the break-even point). Also, another plane will be in the air by 1971, a conventionally-designed, subsonic "jumbo jet." This jet will carry upwards of 500 passengers (against 280 for the SST) at 700 miles per hour without a sonic boom; its proven design will be safer; its large capacity will reduce airport congestion; and its fares will be cheaper--perhaps half those of the SST, which may be as much as 25 per cent higher than current jet fares.

Competition from the jumbo jet aside, Shurcliff doubts that many passengers would want to pay the extra fare for a three-hour saving on a transatlantic flight. Improving the ground access to airports would accomplish the same time saving at much less cost, he feels. Oother investigators agree that consumer demand will be considerably less than current predictions. B. K. Lundbergh, a Swedish scientists, published a report last month on the problem of "dead time," the fact that the short flight time will make night flights to Europe extremely unpopular, since passengers would no longer be able to plan on getting a night's sleep during the crossing.

Shurcliff first read of the SST in a scientific article by Lundberg about four years ago. Lundberg listed several of the SST's defects. "I was so amazed I practically memorized the article," Shurcliff remembers, and began writing letters to find out more about the SST.

"The more I read, the more horrified I got," he recalls. "Somebody obviously had to form a group to oppose this thing, and I was hoping and praying someone else would do it. All I wanted to do was to give money and join." But it was not that easy, and Shurcliff feels his life has changed "terrifically" since he and his deputy director John T. Edsall, professor of Biological Chemistry, held the League's first meeting in March. From March until June, he spent about five hours every night writing letters to Congressmen and FAA officials and preparing news releases, which he sent to a selected list of 180 newspapers, 40 radio and television stations, and 30 "key individuals." He wrote to the mayors of cities which would be most directly affected by the SST, and mailed out application blanks which invite prospective members, "Do join this League! No dues."

The letter writing and advertising paid off, at least in volume, and by mid-summer Shurcliff had to hire two part-time secretaries. He has appeared on television and been written up in countless national publications; a clipping service sends him almost 20 clippings a day from newspapers and magazines, 95 per cent favorable.

Although he claims not to enjoy all the publicity, Shurcliff has developed a sure public relations touch. When Transportation Secretary Alan Boyd announced that transcontinental SST's might fly subsonic over the populated eastern half of the country and then supersonic from Chicago to Califor- nia, Shurcliff immediately wrote to western political leaders pointing out how little the SST's proponents seemed to care for the west's peace and quiet.

Obviously, grass roots organizational success, although impressive, will never be enough. The fact that the League hears regularly from a Chicago woman every time a military plane's boom damages her house means little; the SST's fate lies with Congress. The House recently voted SST appropriations for another year, and that bill is now in the Senate. Shurcliff is the first to admit that the chances of killing off the SST this fall in Congress look very slight. Only six Senators have expressed definite support for the League. And Shurcliff thinks many people have been confused by the Federal Aviation Agency, which continues to hedge on whether it would permit SST flights over land. Shurcliff himself considers that question purely academic. He is sure that even if the FAA starts with a policy of allowing supersonic flights only over the ocean, once the SST is operational the profit motive -- the more planes flying the more routes, the more money--will take over.

In the long run, though, he is optimistic. The Concorde project is in financial trouble, and there is a chance that either Britain or France will pull out, providing a reasonable excuse for the U.S. to drop its own version. And there is the boom itself. "More and more people are getting fed up with it," Shurcliff comments, referring to boom tests being conducted over selected cities. He has received only four letters in favor of sonic booms--one from a man who wrote that the loud noise "made him proud to be an American." League members are urged to write their Congressmen and local newspapers, and Shurcliff feels that "the tide will run more strongly in our favor." The problem is that the longer it takes for the tide to turn, the smaller the chances are that this particular tide will turn at all