🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1205@esunix.UUCP> bpendlet@esunix.UUCP (Bob Pendleton) writes:
>From article <601326396.amon@H.GP.CS.CMU.EDU>, by Dale.Amon@H.GP.CS.CMU.EDU:
>> Seriously though, it was a bunch of noisy neo-luddites who got them
>> banned from all but NY and DC, ...

>I don't usually disagree with you Dale, but you really blew it on this
>one. There were three very good environmental reasons not to build SSTs.
 ...
>1) The effects of sonic booms on the oceans. It was believed that
>sonic booms killed plankton.

This is the first I've ever heard this one.  It makes no sense at
all to me; why wouldn't thunder have the same effect?  Why would
plankton have such sensitive ears?

>2) SSTs release water vapor at very high altitudes.

I think I remember this, and the ozone question, being mentioned
at the time as arguments against the SST.

>3) Passenger safety. SSTs fly high enough that passengers are exposed
>to cosmic radiation and to radiation from solar storms. 
 ...
>The U.S. SST designs couldn't come down fast enough to save the
>passengers lives in the event of a loss of pressure accident or an
>intense solar storm.

This is not significantly more true for an SST than for an ordinary
passenger liner.  It's still below the Van Allen belts, which
are the main protection from solar flare radiation.  Cosmonauts in
LEO don't worry about solar flares, either, though the Apollo
astronauts sure did!
-- 
Mike Van Pelt                       When the fog came in on little cat feet
Video 7                             last night, it left these little muddy
...ames!vsi1!v7fs1!mvp              paw prints on the hood of my car.