Six months ago, a Harvard physicist named William Shurcliff organized a few friends into the Citizens' League Against the Sonic Boom. The group's members--all nine of them--had the unlikely goal of stopping the development and production of the most mammoth project in commercial aviation history, the multi-billion dollar supersonic transport.

Shurcliff, although absolutely convinced of the value of his cause, was new to public relations and unsure of his group's image. A scientist standing in the way of apparent progress? He was cautious in dealing with the press, and spent long evenings preparing press releases after a day's work at the Cambridge Electron Accelerator, where he is Senior Research Associate.

The press has been kind to Shurcliff and the Citizens' League. In fact, in those six months, a national advertising campaign and overwhelmingly favorable publicity have brought the League a membership of 1250 people from 39 states and has made what then seemed an almost ludicrous goal look remotely attainable.

The League's basic objection to the supersonic transport (SST), and the one it emphasizes most, is the sonic boom. A sonic boom is the shock wave created by an object flying faster than the speed of sound. The sharp explosive sound is pushed along in front of the object for as long as the supersonic flight lasts. At 1800 miles per hour, or about two and one-half times the speed of sound, the SST would leave behind a 50-mile-wide "bang zone," affecting perhaps five million people on a single flight across the U.S.

The boom itself is an extremely loud noise. Shurcliff describes it as making every house along the boom path seem "next door to a jet airport"--only worse. The sound of an arriving jet (all commercial jets fly below the speed of sound) builds up gradually, so at the peak of the noise there is no element of surprise. But a sonic boom provides no warning, and Shurcliff thinks that it is the boom's startling effect, even more than the noise itself, which makes it intolerable.

Artificial Booms

That is his main point of attack on the government-sponsored studies which the National Aeronautics and Space Administration uses to prove that people can in fact adjust to the sonic boom. The study which NASA quotes most often, by Bolt, Beranek and Newman, had subjects pushing buttons to activate an artificial boom-creating device. Although the artificial boom was as loud as a real one, the volunteers knew the boom would occur within five seconds after they pushed the button. Even among the fully-prepared subjects, almost half showed a marked increase in heart-beat as a result of the boom. NASA has never admitted to Shurcliff that the experiment's lack of surprise and the heartbeat findings might invalidate the conclusion that people can adapt to the noise.

People living near military bases, where planes such as the SR-71 fly at supersonic speeds, often hear sonic booms, but few Boston area residents had ever heard one until the afternoon of August 18. "Sonic Boom Leaves Hub Trail of Terror," the Record-American headlined its story--no overstatement, according to other papers, because "scores of people" claimed to have been "knocked off their feet" by the boom, which was caused by a small military plane. Shurcliff doubts those particular claims, but booms invariably shatter windows, sometimes seriously undermine the foundations of buildings, and have even been responsible for deaths--three people in France died this summer when a boom caused their barn to collapse. Shurcliff estimates that the shockwaves from a fleet of 150 SST's flying across the U.S. alone would do one million dollars' worth of property damage a day.

He calls the boom "sonic pollution," and his conclusion is pollution is not progress. "We all believe in progress," he says of his group, "but some things just aren't progress." One of this month's press releases concludes, "Aviation should be the servant of man, not his scourge."

But if League members base their major argument against the SST on its noise, their success may well depend on another argument--economics.

Tangled History

The SST project has a tangled history, but three facts are most significant. First, it is overwhelmingly expensive; development costs alone, before production is scheduled to begin in 1974, are estimated at 4.5 billion dollars or more, more than twice the cost of the development of the atomic bomb. Each plane will sell for 40 million dollars.

Second, the federal government has underwritten a large part of this cost--and therefore a large part of the risk if the project fails--while Boeing, the company to which the government awarded the contract, stands to make a large profit if the SST succeeds.

Third, and most important to the League's purposes, the government apparently undertook the project in the interest of national prestige without considering how many people will be using the plane--and under what conditions--by the time it is operational. The government originally decided to build the SST in the early '60's as a direct response to British-French plans for the supersonic Concorde. The Concorde was viewed as an important challenge to American technological superiority, so important that solutions to basic questions about the SST were deferred so that no time would be lost in catching up. But the problem is that the more money and manpower that are invested in the project--and even at this stage that amounts to quite a bit--the harder it becomes to answer those questions in the negative.

Shurcliff thinks the SST will be obsolete before it is built. The Concorde will be flying by 1971, probably four years before the SST, and its headstart may cut into the SST's market. (Three hundred of the 40 million dollar SST's must be sold to airlines before the project can pass the break-even point). Also, another plane will be in the air by 1971, a conventionally-designed, subsonic "jumbo jet." This jet will carry upwards of 500 passengers (against 280 for the SST) at 700 miles per hour without a sonic boom; its proven design will be safer; its large capacity will reduce airport congestion; and its fares will be cheaper--perhaps half those of the SST, which may be as much as 25 per cent higher than current jet fares.