Drucella Andersen
Headquarters, Washington, D.C.                                                        
July 7, 1993
(Phone:  202/358-4727)

H. Keith Henry
Langley Research Center, Hampton, Va..
(Phone:  804/864-6120)

RELEASE:  93-124

NASA AWARDS HIGH-SPEED AIR TRANSPORT MATERIALS STUDY CONTRACTS

     NASA has awarded contracts to three U.S. aerospace companies 
to develop materials and materials fabrication technology for a 
future U.S. high-speed civil transport.

     This research could allow the U.S. industry to develop and 
manufacture an airplane that would, as envisioned, fly 300 
passengers across the Atlantic or Pacific at 2.4 times the speed 
of sound -- approximately 1,350 mph.

     At that speed, a flight from Los Angeles to Tokyo would take 
about 4 hours, compared to 10 hours in a modern subsonic 
wide-bodied jet.

     Program planners estimate that production and maintenance of 
a fleet of 500 to 1000 high-speed civil transports could create 
140,000 new jobs and generate $200 billion in sales, keeping 
passenger ticket prices down and assuring U.S. dominance in the 
world commercial transport market.

     Technology for a future high-speed civil transport is being 
worked through NASA's High-Speed Research Program Office, 
Washington, D.C.  Langley Research Center, Hampton, Va., is the 
lead NASA research center.

     A $25.4 million contract was awarded to Boeing Commercial 
Airplane Group, Seattle; a $27.3 million contract was awarded to 
Lockheed Aeronautical Systems Co., Marietta, Ga.; and a $23.9 
million contract went to McDonnell Douglas Aerospace, Long Beach, 
Calif.  These amounts include money for optional materials 
development efforts.

     Work under the 5-year contracts will focus on development and 
testing of promising high temperature materials and fabrication 
techniques and investigation of long-term durability of structural 
components.

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     Materials to be studied include metals such as 
intermediate-temperature aluminum and aluminum-lithium alloys, 
high-temperature titanium alloys, high-temperature polymers and 
composites and even higher temperature metal-matrix composites and 
carbon-carbon composites.

     Mathematical models will be developed that describe materials 
damage onset and progression to predict useful service life.  
Mechanical tests of structural elements will simulate long-term 
flight conditions to verify the mathematical models.
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