For all its promise of a three-hour flight between New York and Paris, the supersonic transport seems not to have broken the worry barrier yet. Governments worry about the high cost of developing it, which ranges from $13.5 million per plane for the British-French job to $40 million for a U.S. design that has not yet been settled on. Airframe makers worry about technical problems —from keeping fuel cool to developing new alloys. Among the most worried of all, as it turned out last week, are the world's airlines, which have already ordered 45 Concordes and 91 of the...
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