Engineering:North American NAC-60

Short description: Proposed supersonic airliner design

North American NAC-60
Side view of a North American NAC-60
Role	Supersonic transport
National origin	United States
Manufacturer	North American Aviation
Status	Canceled in 1967

The North American NAC-60 was the first American supersonic transport (SST) project. The development took place in the 1960s as part of a government-funded design competition to build an American SST as the joint Anglo-French Concorde and the short-serviced Soviet Tupolev Tu-144 were underway. The design, however, due to being slower and smaller than the expectations of the American SST Race, was rejected in favor of the Lockheed and Boeing designs, allowing them to get further study.

Design

In some respects, the NAC-60 was a scaled-up variant of North American's bomber prototype, the B-70 Valkyrie. As with the B-70, the design of the NAC-60 did not include horizontal stabilizers at the tail structure, but did include a set of canards at the nose, to improve directional stability at lower speeds. (The Concorde with which it was intended to compete had a wing designed for both subsonic and supersonic flight and, as a result, did not need canards.) And instead of twin rudders like on the B-70, there was just one rudder. This SST also had a less tapered fuselage and a more compound wing than the B-70's.

Specifications (North American NAC-60)

Data from Flight International

General characteristics

• Crew: up to 4 flight crew
• Capacity: 187 passengers / 35,000 lb (15,876 kg) payload
• Length: 195 ft (59 m)
• Wingspan: 121 ft (37 m)
• Height: 48 ft (15 m)
• Max takeoff weight: 480,000 lb (217,724 kg)
• Powerplant: 4 × afterburning turbojet engines

Performance

• Maximum speed: 1,520 kn (1,750 mph, 2,820 km/h)
• Maximum speed: Mach 2.65
• Range: 3,389 nmi (3,900 mi, 6,276 km)