The High Speed Civil Transport (HSCT), a supersonic airliner, was the focus of the High-Speed Research (HSR) Program, a

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...

program to develop the technology needed to design and build a

supersonic transport A supersonic transport (SST) or a supersonic airliner is a civilian supersonic aircraft designed to transport passengers at speeds greater than the speed of sound. To date, the only SSTs to see regular service have been Concorde and the Tupol ...

that would be environmentally acceptable and economically feasible. The aircraft was to be a future supersonic passenger aircraft, baselined to cruise at Mach 2.4, or more than twice the

speed of sound The speed of sound is the distance travelled per unit of time by a sound wave as it propagates through an elastic medium. At , the speed of sound in air is about , or one kilometre in or one mile in . It depends strongly on temperature as w ...

. The project started in 1990 and ended during 1999. The goal was to employ up-to-date technologies. It was intended to cross the

Atlantic The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe an ...

or the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...

in half the time of a non-supersonic aircraft. It was also intended to be fuel efficient, carry 300 passengers, and to allow customers to buy tickets at a price only slightly higher than those of subsonic aircraft. The goal was to provide sufficient technology for an industry-led product launch decision in 2002, and if a product was launched, a maiden flight within 20 years. The program was based on the successes and failures of the British/French

Concorde The Aérospatiale/BAC Concorde () is a retired Franco-British supersonic airliner jointly developed and manufactured by Sud Aviation (later Aérospatiale) and the British Aircraft Corporation (BAC). Studies started in 1954, and France an ...

and the Russian

Tupolev Tu-144 The Tupolev Tu-144 (russian: Tyполев Ту-144; NATO reporting name: Charger) is a Soviet supersonic passenger airliner designed by Tupolev in operation from 1968 to 1999. The Tu-144 was the world's first commercial supersonic transport ai ...

, as well as a previous NASA Supersonic Transport (SST) program from the early 1970s (for the latter, see

Lockheed L-2000 The Lockheed L-2000 was Lockheed Corporation's entry in a government-funded competition to build the United States' first supersonic airliner in the 1960s. The L-2000 lost the contract to the Boeing 2707, but that competing design was ultimat ...

and

Boeing 2707 The Boeing 2707 was an American supersonic passenger airliner project during the 1960s. After winning a competition for a government-funded contract to build an American supersonic airliner, Boeing began development at its facilities in Seattl ...

.) While the Concorde and Tu-144 programs both produced production aircraft, neither was produced in sufficient numbers to pay for their development costs.

References

External links

* * . * . {{Supersonic transport NASA aeronautical programs Supersonic transports Abandoned civil aircraft projects of the United States