An Overview of the Demise of NASA’s High Speed Research Program

In February 1998 NASA's High Speed Research Program (HSR) was cancelled without fan fare or press announcement. The principal effect of this announcement was to immediately end the research and development that was in progress on the revised supersonic transport or High Speed Civil Transport (HCST) project. This research was to lead to a prototype supersonic transport that would begin flying by the end of the first decade of the 2 1 Century. The factors for the cancellation of this program were never made clear other than the competing funding of the International Space Station. NASA's budgetary squeeze fiom the rising cost of the Space Station was and continues to have a negative impact on NASA's aeronautics programs. This paper discusses the technical objectives of the HSCT research that were in progress at the time and the potential for breakthroughs in several areas that would have made a nationally funded prototype supersonic transport