High on SST

AFTER A MARGINALLY encouraging start, John Volpe seems headed for his first major blunder as Secretary of Transportation. Volpe announced this weekend that he would soon decide whether the government should continue its drive to build a supersonic transport (SST). In doing so, Volpe left broad hints that he is eager to send another $300 million of federal money down the SST drain.

Even if Volpe had tried to make a strong case for the SST, his stand would be flimsy. The arguments about the increased speed and efficiency of the supersonic planes sounded convincing three or four years ago; but since then, scientists have compiled a steadily-growing mound of evidence to suggest that those advantages are illusory.

The special presidential panel that has been invetigating the SST for several months has uncovered new sources of opposition. Many airlines have become skittish about the mammoth financial outlay it would take to buy new fleets of SSTs, and several airline executives have told the presidential board they hope the SST is scrapped. Budget-conscious government officials are also having second thoughts about the $1 billion they are spending in chunks to get the first SST prototypes in the air. And all these fiscal arguments ignore a more basic objection: the right of Americans to live in their already-polluted cities without the additional woe of needless sonic booms.

Unfortunately, Volpe precluded any rational argument about the SSTs' merit by the terms in which he stated his case. America need to build a big, bumbling jet, he said, because the Russians and the French are building them. "The United States cannot afford to be a third-rate power in this kind of project." In pragmatic economic terms, the international-competition analysis suggests that the U.S. should quit the SST race. Since the French and Russians are at least two years ahead of the American SST pace, the tardy U.S. model would probably find few buyers in the international market.

But Volpe seems to ignore even that economic reality. He appears to think that the jingoist argument of "keeping up with the Russians" is reason enough to sink more money into an ill-planned project. It isn't. Instead of artificially prolonging the SSTs' life, Volpe should mercifully kill it.