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Concorde to be Grounded
Goonie writes "This BBC article reports that Concorde flights are to come to an end in October. It may be a noisy and costly anachronism, but it's sad to see the end of perhaps the coolest commercial plane ever to fly." The financial wires carried a story the other day showing how much jet fuel demand has dropped recently.
Damn. Considering it came out in 1977, and nothing has come out to replace it yet.
Shame.
Unlike the 737 and 747, which have been continuously upgraded, it's essentially unchanged. Almost as outdated as the 707.
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I live in Bristol in the UK which is considered the home of concorde at the airport called Filton.
There is nothing better than watching concorde coming home on those special occasions when it is taken off normal flying patterns, they close the road and it flies right over your head, amazing.
The only thing that comes close is being sat in my garden watching filton airport as the spitfire fly's around doing stunts that would put modern planes to shame..
sigh..
nostalgia-tastic
Kingdom of Loathing (www.kingdomofloathing.com) Addicted is me
This mumbo jumbo was never going to fly from the beginning.(pardon the pun)
... err like some people.
Concorde (sunk-cost) fallacy
Now, it's unfortunte that the Hollywood stars are going to have to go down a level and fly first-class like the rest of
Analytic & algebraic topology of locally Euclidean meterization of infinitely differentiable Riemmanian manifold
for a replacement. Developing Concord took two government backed companies 13 years (1963-1976?) to develop and put into service.
The process nearly bankrupt both companies and were heavilly bailed out by their respective governments (UK and France). As such I can't see a replacement happening for a long long time. There will have to be some serious incentive (money) for a replacement to be comissioned - until then its a case of what we have will do...
.
"Things that you own end up owning you" - Tyler Durden (via Diogenes of Sinope).
If we stopped spending billions on the a failing airline industry and moved that money to more reliable transportation like high speed rail we could move more people faster. I would love to see a terrorist crash a train into the world train centers.
Concorde has had its day, Most vital comms can be done over the web/videoconferencing negating the need for fast travel to and from the USA. Most people are interested in cheap flights nowadays, which means packing as many bums on seats as possible. Thats why the 747s of this world are still going and the 100 seat concorde is being scrapped. :(
Still a shame tho.
Concorde has certainly had a long and illustrious history, especially considering the way it was looking as a complete failure when they were first built and marketed... until they upgraded it from general air travel to exclusive/expensive air travel.
I remember a couple of years ago there were special offers advertised in the national papers where you could phone the BA hotlines and get tickets for about £10 !!! A lot of people didn't bother because they could believe it, whereas those who did became pleasantly surprised (until everyone else caught on, but they'd sold out by then).
I wonder what the future will be for supersonic air travel, it seems most of the new Boeing/Airbus planes try and cram more people on them... funnily enough I flew to the US 4 months ago on one of Virgins new A600 Airbuses and they take off like a bloody rocket! They also had personal entertainment systems in each seat with video on demand, except in our compartment the media stations kept crashing (it was nice to see a Mandrake Linux reboot rather than an M$ bodge job) so they only worked for about an hour in the entire flight.
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
It's truly sad that the industry cannot come up with a better supersonic (or even near-Mach) commercial aircraft. Instead, they seem to be obsessed with cranking out either bigger, more luxurious craft, or sardine cans like the 757 where as many people are crammed in as possible without enough overhead space for your carry-on. To me, the best flight is the one I can get off as soon as possible. If I wanted to take my time and enjoy the trip, I'd take the train. Coupling these slow air barges with the ever lengthening delays and poor customer service is the reason why the big carriers are losing business to Southwest. Southwest has the best rates and they don't pretend to coddle you, or offer more comfortable seats and preferential treatment for outrageous prices.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
I personally never liked the design of the concord, but found that it fills a very large, very important niche. Long distance flights can takes many many hours to complete, and supersonic flight is the only way to improve the situation. I certainly hope one of the major commerical airline manufactures come up with a replacement. I certainly think they could come up with something far better, and more economical, with 30 years advancement in technology.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Unfortunately after the last concorde disaster I don't think people's confidence was quite restored in it. Coupled with the other problem that the general public have become wary of flying after 9/11 and the current Iraq situation, Concorde was bound to suffer as a consequence.
Summation 2
Check with any of the big airlines - for example, Continental just finished retiring its prop planes at Continental Express because they weren't fuel-efficient. Flying is all about lower costs these days, not glamour. After all, do you think unions at United and other airlines would even consider pay cuts otherwise?
What's your damage, Heather?
I won't argue the 'cheaper' bit but, IIRC, Concorde does ~ mach 2.0. How is 0.95 almost as fast?! That's what a 747 does!
Concorde really was a status symbol for it's 30 years, just like sailing on the QE2 used to be also.
But with a few accidents, a lack of cache and the fact that it has *always* been a money looser, it's an environmental mess, and BA and AirFrance not wanting to get dragged deeper into debt, the time to retire them has come.
The fabulously wealthy who could easily plunk down the $15k per ticket are now buying or renting Gulfstreams. It's more a thing for tourists and the CEO's.
Still, it's a beautiful plane. Still remember looking out at the AirFrance Concordes at JFK airport with the view of lower Manhattan behind them across the river (now when you see both like that, it's more poignant that exhilerating).
On the lighter side, on the UK show "Absolutely Fabulous" when Edina is ticked off that there is only 1 class of service on Concorde, "I'll pay extra for that curtain!"
Even at those rates Air France still lost money on flights because of the expense. They (British Air and Air France) kept them going as a matter of pride. The aircraft is hideously inefficient by today's standards - it's also a death trap. Statistically, it took one wreck to send it from the top of the safety list to the bottom.
Now yes, there maybe some coolness lost to the Concorde, but come on... The grand stairway alone makes it all up for me... Finally, a plane suitable for tall people (under 6'6" need not apply :P)
I'm a little tea pot.
It was costing £££ to keep it running, after ~1985 it was uneconomical. Was kept in service as a status symbol for BA and Britain.
:)
Odd how nothing can match it after 26 years still but then could say the same for the Harrier.
If something takes it's place it would certainly have to be 'big'
A blog I run for the wealth
yeah, those trains are hella good for crossing the atlantic with
slashdot, news for crazed liberal socialist zealots
A 747 does mach 0.78, just like all of the commercial jets available today (B737, all Airbus, etc.).
&& aemula C. ab stirpe interiit
The idea is to take a handful of 990's (enough for daily JFK-Heathrow service), fit them with 4-across leather seats like what Midwest Express does with a DC-9, and run a Concorde-style first-class service with every amenity (free booze and gourmet food). These planes are Mach .95 capable (Whitcomb area-ruled fuselage, "shock pods" on the back of the wings), but since the speed of sound slows down in thinner air, I would fly them at around 20-25,000 feet, pedal-to-the-metal. Yes, this would burn fuel, but a whole lot less than Concorde, and while a 747 would make the trip in 6 hours, Concorde in 3, I think my service could turn in something like 4 hours and 45 minutes. Anyway, it was just an idea.
The aerospace industry has been dominated by various governments for half a century. We have gone from numerous companies developing practical air travel down to Boeing and Airbus dominating a stagnant market. And, I am told, Boeing doesn't seem to be that healthy.
What's the next thing to stop? Space travel? Possibly. NASA hasn't succeeded in developing a successor to the shuttle. Two attempts (NASP and X-33) have been failures. Young people are starting to avoid the industry -- it has a bad reputation. Dishonesty, abuse and failure seem to be its hallmarks today.
The computer industry has done better. There's still room for innovation and development. Although, one wonders how long that will last with Microsoft dominance.
Change is possible, though. Challenges to Microsoft (think Linux today) aren't going to go away. And these challengers are racking up real successes.
Change is also possible in the more established aerospace industry as well. Three decades ago the U.S. military was in rough shape. People -- both inside and outside the military -- recognized that. Various reforms were implemented -- not the least ending the draft (conscription to Slashdot's readers outside the U.S.). Today the U.S. military, while far from perfect, is a much healthier institution.
"Beer is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy." -- B. Franklin
For crossing the Atlantic, you need a levitating train like they're building in Japan and Germany.
Everybody kept saying there will be no supersonic passenger plane in the near future. But do you want to know why?
It's because people do not put their precious money where their mougth is. How many times have you heard people say "I'll pay double if you can get me there in half the time!!". Well? Nope. Instead they say "What's the cheapest air fare?".
Funny how people then complain bitterly about the lousy service and the crammed conditions on the planes nowadays.
Moral of the story: Put your money where your mougth is.
The Acella train can do 150 MPH (for a short stretch between NY and Boston), but the point-to-point speed averages only 70 MPH, and car travel is "almost as fast" (you could probably average 60 MPH if you ate in the car and held it in).
This may sound very trollish on slashdot, but...
- Isn't flying in general, especially by a concorde extremly fuel-consuming?!
- As I remember my early physics courses, friction is roughly proportional to the square of speed, isn't it? And then calculate the energy/kilometer traveled...
- Isn't that another reason why flying should only be used for transcontinental travels?
perhaps the coolest commercial plane ever to fly
I would take issue with that. Certainly a cool aircraft - but the coolest ever? Its only special quality was being safe enough for passengers. When it was built, there were already military aircraft bigger and faster, and there have been many aircraft since better in many ways.
It was, fundamentaly, a mistake to build the thing. Once it was built and the development money spent, it was not necessarily a mistake to keep flying it. But it was a mistake in the first place. And not only one that could be foreseen, but one that was foreseen, by many people. But it was forced through at the height of dirigiste socialism in the UK and (more so) France.
I cannot call something that was a fantastic waste of money that could have been (a) spent on something worthwhile, or (b) not taxed in the first place (choose according to political taste) "cool".
The fact is that building Concorde destroyed the Eurpoean commercial aircraft manufacturers. Before Concorde, there was competition between Europe and the US, after it was between Boeing and McDonnel Douglas (and Lockheed, a bit). It took 30 years (and even more public money) to the European industry to get back off the floor with Airbus.
So some regrets at its passing, but not deep grief, from me at least.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
The mothballing of Concorde represents an relatively unusual situation. In terms of flight time Concorde represents the most advanced way to travel. No aircraft built since, not even military, can sustain a mach 2 flight speed for over 3 hours. Yet this aircraft is to be decommissioned. Can anyone think of a parallel situation in the computing field?. Where an outdated technology is made redundant, yet whose performance has not be exceeded.
-- "Can't sleep, clowns will eat me!"
You leave out oh so much on the AVR, and haven't even addressed the ATMega's which are the new generation mc's.
Also, what about cost? I bought 10 AT902313S-PC's for $2 a piece, and can program them very cheaply, and I can get a circuit up and running with very little power and extra circuitry.
Also, PWM is very easy. CodeVision C Compiler makes it extremely easy to write. PicBasic has no place in the embedded community. It should be called PicBaby. It requires a memory module to house all the bloated code.
Sales of Atmel microcontrollers have grown faster than any other microontroller!
Well, it's only almost perfect...
Scramjets are in their early stages, but the potential is absolutely amazing. London to Sydney in less than five hours. Probably London to New York in less than one. Cheap LEO... *takes sedative to calm down* OK we are still 10-20 years off, but it is defiantly one to watch.
It's faster in the way that a Pentium-III 0.95 GHz is faster than a Pentium-IV 2.0 GHz.
That Humanity is moving backwards. It seems that the only tangible technological advances we've witnessed over this past decade have been military.
The main thing I noticed in flight was that the curvature of the earth was much more visible due to the much higher cruise altitude. Also, it was a very smooth flight. No turbulence whatsoever.
Concorde is all first class essentially, and the fittings reflected this. Gray leather seats, 2 x 2 arrangement. The bulkhead was lower than in a conventional aircraft.
I was on British Airways. There were 6 cabin crew for only 100 max passengers. The service in the air was impeccable (you get treated like royalty), and they even welcomed visitors to the cockpit. (Not sure if they'd do that today though, since everyone's paranoid about terrorism.)
No movie inflight, but there were sterophonic headsets for music. Also, each passenger received a gift, (on this flight it was a 1994 date planner.) The seats are not at all wide; however. the armrests fold flat if there's no one next to you.
But as I said, en flight, you can see the curvature of the Earth. I was amazed.
Like skydiving, flying on the Concorde is something you don't have to do a second time...but once was fantastic.
I know it's expensive and inefficient, but we're going to lose a real treasure when the Concorde stops flying.
The closest I've been to a Concorde is in Le Bourget aviation museum, where they have a more and more derelict Concord. :/
I don't think I'd ever have been able to afford a Concorde journey, but still no more truly fast commercial flights with Concorde gone
It's a tight vision to consider the UK as being the home of the Concorde: Concorde has been created as a cooperating project between France and the UK. It's been a difficult achievement but it was also the biggest recent proof that English people and French people can actually understand each others and do something valuable together (they would certainly benefit from doing the same thing for building Europe in the political area...).
But the first Concorde to fly was in Toulouse, France, with a French pilot which became famous for that. He took off the plane without any issue, did a loop, and grounded sooner than expected because of a heat problem.
There are two interesting things to notice about Concorde, in addition to the fact that it certainly is the most beautiful plane ever built: 1) the cooling system is using the plane's fuel! 2) the onboard computers are really really old design, with tubes instead of transistors!
A Concorde pilot also said that piloting a Concorde was exactly the same feeling as piloting a jet-fighter, that he could do exactly the same things with this plane, with hundreds passengers in the plane!
I'm sad to hear that the Concorde will stop to fly, especially without a similar plane to replace it.
There are great pictures of Concorde on:
http://benoit.rajau.free.fr/concorde.html
I would suggest that the design and the economics of flying the thing go hand in hand. It has a very small passenger complement, requires extra-long runways and loads of fuel.
A newer design might have solved some of these problems. The Sonic Cruiser, which now looks like it won't ever be built, seated more than twice as many people.
Concorde: Im not quite dead sir
I've been watching Foxnews and they told me how simple this world is :
France = bad
UK = good
The concord is a french and british invention, so it's hard to decide if it's good or bad.
Help !
ATrollWhoNeedsHelp.
Hmm, it may be sensible from a commercial point of view.
But it is another dream lost.
Why is it, that one flying dream after another is put into museums without a proper "flying dream" replacement. The next dream gone, will probably be the space shuttle.
Next they will make private aviation a crime. And then all sensations of the actual "flying" feeling will be made unavailable. Oh yeah, I know: people dont look up to the sky anymore nowadays. They are afraid of it. Except, when the things in the sky are wearing Air Force markings of the country you are currently living in.
Flying? They want to be transported, not flown.
Concorde gone? Most dont care.
Just continue your miserable lifes without dreams.
Have you ever really gone flying?
Next you factor in the time it takes to travel. It would seem that more and more the time to prepare and wait for the flight plus waiting on the plane, and the plane waiting on various taxyways you begin to approach or surpass the actual flight time with the exception of intercontinental flights (or coast to coast in the US). Now we see that some are recommending that you arrive at the airport 3 hours before a flight. Hmmm, I think I will drive. Take the bus? Well I suppose I could except those are notorious for being uncomfortable... but cheap rules that out so horray for bus travel. Some say, take the train. Haha, what a joke Amtrak is. They just can't seem to figure out that if you must pay the same or more than a flight but yet be more restricted on location and take MUCH longer then I am doubting many will view that as worthwhile. Trains have been in operation how long now?
"it's also a death trap. Statistically, it took one wreck to send it from the top of the safety list to the bottom."
Which just goes to show that you shouldn't trust small sample sizes (i.e. many fewer flights and passengers than other aircraft) when declaring the Concord a 'death trap'. Just like any thoughtful person wouldn't avoid a small town that happens to have an astronomical murder rate due to one killing...
I've seen the Concorde from the beach at Sandy Hook, NJ many times when I was a kid, but never up close. Mom won a trip once from NYC to London, out on the Concorde, back on the QE2. Boy, was that a trip.
:) Such is life.
I've even been to and through Charles de Gaulle 10 times since September last year, but never got to see it. Knowing how amazing CDG's terminal 2F is, I've always wondered what the Concorde's concourse looks like! I guess nothing could be so severe that I need to get to a server in Paris within about 5 hours door-to-desk.
Intelligent Life on Earth
A story here about the Russian Concorde.
I've got a fever and the only prescription is more COBOL.
When it was built, there were already military aircraft bigger and faster, and there have been many aircraft since better in many ways.
I seem to recall (so I may be wrong) that the amazing thing with Concorde was that it could sustain mach 2.2 whereas other aircraft often could only do that sort of speed for a very much shorter burst.
Reportedly, and sorry I can't find the story, the Whitehouse believes that the airline assistance that Congress approved is excessive. One source noted that with the money Congress approved, the government could buy several of the troubled airlines at current stock prices.
This is so sad, it is the end of an era. One of the things I always wanted to do was to fly in the Concorde, however the one time that I called to enquire about tickets, I was informed that one round-trip ticket is a whopping $10,000. It was slightly outside my price range of $10.
This is why I became a computer scientist, i.e. to make money quick and then...
You do realise you'd have to build the *infrastructure* to support that, don't you? Building such a power-hungry infrastructure on pillars that are kilometres tall (the Atlantic isn't shallow) isn't even close to feasible. What you're suggesting sounds more like a hovercraft, but those are *slow*.
Is it just me, or does this sound like the collapse of civilisation?
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
If we're gonna do that, why not build vacuum tunnels under the atlantic as well?
And they've cut off its access from its girlfriend, the Airbus A380 (that's okay, she's huuuuge anyway). In response, the Concorde was quoted as saying "Screw them. Freakin nazi parents run this aviation industry. That's okay, I have a PS2 in my room anyway."
Karma: pi (Mostly due to circular reasoning in posts).
I normally wouldn't respond to a troll, but I happen to like Atmel AVRs.
*fragile - easily destroyed by ESD
*Poorly supported.
Bullshit. I've seen 1-inch static-induced sparks hit an AVR pin without causing damage. People in Cornell's EE 476 (Microcontrollers) class hook the things up in reverse by accident on a regular basis. Yes, the proto board the CPU is sitting in will melt and you probably won't be able to use it again, but the AVR itself will be fine.
And the AVR is very well supported. There are no less than 3 excellent C compilers for it (including GCC), and plenty of other online resources.
As to clockspeed - It's the MHz Myth again. IIRC PICs execute one instruction every 4 clock cycles, the AVR is 1 instruction/clock cycle. So a 10 MHz AVR can execute as many instructions per second as a 40 MHz PIC. There are AVRs up to 16 MHz.
a small town that happens to have an astronomical murder rate
Which town? I'm avoiding that place...
Now where did I put that fork? The damn toast is stuck in the toaster again.
That's a great price! They're usually a lot more ($6k for a round trip isn't bad at all). Heck, might be worth trying to score a seat on one of these last flights.
I would love to see a terrorist crash a train into the world train centers.
Oh, no! I foresee a Jerry Bruckheimer movie comming.
And allthough many people don't like the French these days, I still don't want to see a train crashing into the world train centers. (Paris and Berlin?)
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
Please, someone with an aeronautics and space background respond. Would it be worthwile, and possible at all, to use the Concorde as a first stage for the Orbital Sciences Pegasus rocket (or some similar toy)?
My first guess is that something must prevent it, otherwise they would have gotten an old Tu-144 (nicknamed "Concordski") or even a mothballed SR-71. But what?
As an aside, yes, it was truly loud. I worked near Oxford for a while, and the only plane you could hear starting from Heathrow was Concorde. Once at around 1100 so you could start salivating for lunch, and once later in the evening, telling you that it's about time to get home...
And now, to the "interesting factoids of Concorde" section (shamelessly looted from BA's Tribute to Concorde site):
- The Concorde has logged more supersonic hours than all military aircraft together.
- The most flying passenger is an oil executive, logging up to 70 (seven-oh) trips in one year (trips as in, return trips).
- Here should be a third factoid for symmetry, but I cannot remember it...
Actually, they sell cheap tickets now as a tribute - one leg Concorde, one leg monkey, for "only" 1999£!
Hurricane Application Group, Dept of Meteorology Control, Ministry of Proactive Defense
Do all our dreams have to focus on big metal thingies that soar up in the sky? It's not like Captain Kirk is explaining how poverty was eliminated on earth in the 21st (?) century. Many of you are romanticizing air travel. There are some people whose dreams consist of three squares a day and a bath.
Personally, I don't think air travel is all that. As someone who for a while took a few trips to Asia each year, I can say that being able to get there in 14 hours devalued the experience. I would have preferred a week on an ocean liner.
And business travel pre-9/11 was totally out of control. It's wasteful and a distraction in many cases.
"anachronism"?! What?! If the Concorde is an anachonism in the sense it is old-fashioned, it is none-the-less among the most futuristic of its kind, something in the league of a 30 year old Lamborghini Countach.
Concorde came out in 1976 ... and the last one made was (I think) 1979, due to lack of demand for it ...
so it's a surprise that it lasted this long
Humm... Having worked at Pratt&Whitney for a few years, I can challenge that claim.
Turboprop plane are MUCH more economical to operate. Their only drawback is lower cruise speed but they are still very suitable for short flights (up to 500 km) where having a larger and faster plane would not only be unnecessary but way more costly.
No, in fact, the real reason why prop planes are retired is because "people don't like them". Sure, they look old but many of them were manufactured yesterday and many more are on the assembly lines. Just ask anyone at Bombardier, Embraer or ATR. As for cabin noise issues, yes they are slight noisier than turbofans but... Does it really matter on a 1 hour flight?
Just my 1.2 cents (2 cents, canadian)
Things must have improved since the late 60's in terms of aerodynamics, CAD, engine power etc etc. There are few military jets built these days that can't achieve supersonic flight, and the latest can cruise above Mach 1 without afterburners.
So the technology must be there, so why is it so hard to make it commercial?
Maybe this is an opportunity. There are people who will pay for the convenience of fast travel, and in the 21st century we must be able to make something more efficient, quieter and more viable. Hell its been 40years since concorde was designed, someone tell me we've made progress since then.
Then again 30 years ago people were still walking on the moon.
Maybe we've all lost our spirit of adventure?
It sounds french, therefore it is french, therefore it is bad. Just like french fries.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
What have you been smoking?
The regional jets are faster and perhaps have fewer engine parts to deal with But more fuel efficient they are not.
Planes like the CRJ and the RJ45 are two of the most efficient airplanes flying, but dont come close on fuel efficiency to something like a Dash-8 or Saab 340.
How do you suppose we build railway lines over the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans?
Stick Men
Russian coppied version was faster than Concorde:
Tu-144 aircraft
and also here some not far past details about this thing:
Tu 144 in nasa
After saving for almost 5 years to be able to afford a Concord trip from NY to London they are going to ground it!!!
Damn it!!!
All those Mountain Dews I didn;t drink.... for nothing
Maybe it should be renamed for history purpouses - freedom plane ! Burn a Bush!
Back in the mid/late 1960's I flew from Laguardia (LGA) to Sarasota Florida (SRQ) quite often, if I remember tickets were around $200, round trip.
A quick check today shows ticket prices around $250.
If you throw inflation into the mix, that $200 in 1969 would be equal to about $1000 today.
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
Read in the WSJ.. that OPEC is worried about oil prices plummetting because of overspeculation of the war and increased oil output..
Not to mention, Venezuelan oil workers are back at work.. so their production will potentially add to the oversupply..
So I'm sure we'll be seeing fuel/oil/gas/heat/etc.. demands go up in no time
"The ones who dont do anything are always the ones who try to pull you down" -- Henry Rollins
It is was also called the X-30. Development was public for several years and then disappeared. Perhaps still going strong in the Black Ops arena? A Google search for NASP on reveals NASPWEB, the National Association of School Psychologist. (An interesting cover)?
Sidebar
What many people may have forgotten was that the State of the Union address was originally scheduled for the evening of January 28, 1986. It was postponed after the Challenger Space Shuttle exploded during liftoff that morning. No "smoking gun" was ever found that the White House pressured NASA into a launch.
Challenger was originally suppose to launch the previous day, January 27, and should have been in orbit when Raegan gave his talk the next day. However the handle on the shuttle access hatch could not be detached. It had corroded in place. It had to be drilled off! After that, I figured it would be a week to replace the hatch.
A cold front moved through Florida that night. As I drove to work the next morning in subfreezing weather, I was surprised when I heard the count down was in progress. At the time, I had been in Florida for six year and that was the coldest morning ever. I never expected them to attempt a launch.
Bad concord, Go to your room
I believe that Concorde is *still* the only aircraft that can fly supersonic across the Atlantic without refuelling.
Just a shame it didn't have the range to fly across the Pacific. Imagine the opportunities for Japan-LAX flights over the last 20-30 years and to Australia too.
The Su-37. The Mpegs may not load in Safari. Granted it's no passenger liner, but wow can this plane manoeuvre http://www.rusarms.com/?linkid=1607&catid=255
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
One of the interesting things I took from the astrohysics class I took for an elective in University was the prof commented on a problem with planes like the concorde. To get the speed they need, they need to go at a high altitude. One of the problems with burning fuel at that altitude is you are polluting in the upper atmosphere - affecting ozone and it's production.
Not a big amount, but it's certainly there.
..don't panic
I was doing some reseach on Werhner Von Braun, the man who made it possible to fly to the moon, and ran across something interesting.
The Concorde was an attempted by the french for space travel. Though it didn't go to space, the government refused to dump the project, as it did cost a pretty err.. penny? They offered the design to several countries and UK took interest.
For the past decades it served as a high class air travel system. Overkill, if someone actually read up on what these things can do. This is only a part of the concorde story. There's a whole other realm to what it did to the aviation industry in Europe and the US.
Check out the design, it's just amazing, from the flight system to the passenger arrangement to the balancing.
Hey, will that one be able to travel through time too??
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
Two years ago, I was bumped from a cancelled BA business class trip onto a Concorde flight from New York to London. This was just after the Paris crash, when I guess they had to bump people onto the Concorde just to have some warm bodies aboard.
At first I couldn't believe my luck, and was phoning everyone I knew from the Concorde lounge ("Hey, guess where I am...?") but once on the plane, it was a thoroughly unpleasant experience. It was almost empty, but it was still unbearably cramped. If it had been full, it would have felt claustrophobic in the extreme. By the time we were an hour into the trip, my wife and I were both agreeing that even if we were rolling in stupid cash, we'd never, ever fly it again. Give me first or business class any time. Hell, coach would have been more comfortable.
And apart watching an LED display tick up to Mach 2, there is no particular experience of "speed"; you just feel like you're in a cramped, uncomfortable airplane, flying a little higher than normal.
The food and tchotchkes were nice, though.
While I think you're partially correct about the economy being a limiting factor for the airlines, one must also consider that many are put off by the extreme paranoia exhibited by airport security since the 9/11/01 terrorist attacks.
I flew over Christmas, and got frisked no less than three times. They asked me to open my belt, searched my shoes, looked through my bag, ect. After this treatment, I'm not sure I want to fly ever again. I guess we're learning that complete security comes at a terrible price.
Sadly, it isn't a superior technology. It's noisy, uneconomic and not very safe.
And, actually, we are seeing something similar in other fields. For a long time we had no speed limits, then a mixture of road deaths, increasing traffic, and the 70s fuel crisis brought them in just about everywhere. Now we expect cars to be comfortable, safe, economical (even SUVs are actually more economical than midsize cars of 30 years ago) and to provide us with in-vehicle entertainment that we can hear above engine noise. Most of the journeys I do are now slower than they were 10 years ago, but actually less stressful. That's progress.
Also, improved network technology has made many journeys less urgent. Twenty years ago it took me 3 days just to set up an international telephone call in Mexico. Ten years ago in Brazil I had to dial an international number an average of 200 times to get through. When Concord was designed, a 2 hour phone call from London to NY probably cost as much as a round air trip. Fax machines were a joke. And a portable telephone occupied the entire car trunk.
Now, you could videoconference several people all day for less than the cost of a round trip between the UK and the US.
So I'd say, Concord has actually been wiped out by progress. It's just that, as usual, progress came from a different direction from what people expected.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
... is not necessarily all *that* fuel consuming at all. Fuel burn to get from point A to point B depends a great deal on the aircraft. For instance I own a single engine Piper PA28. It has a maximum gross weight of 2150 lbs. The engine produces 150hp at sea level. On long cross-country flights I generally fly 7500' or 8500' MSL and burn about 8 gallons per hour at an typical average ground speed of 120mph (statute mph) depending on headwinds or tailwinds. At that altitude and power setting the engine is really only producing about 100hp. That works out to be about 15 miles per gallon, just about the same as a typical pickup truck or SUV.
Not too bad at all when you consider I'm flinging a ton of stuff eight thousand feet thru the air well in excess of a hundred miles per hour.
And it's certainly a heck of a lot more fun than driving on the highway too.
...I remember exactly the days when James told me we could travell to the new world (U.S.) via the speed of sound. "Cool!", i said and laid back in my 1000$ chair holding a glass with wine (i can't remember the year) in my hand...
To whoever moderated this post about air travel off-topic: I have meta-moderated you as unfair. I think in a discussion about an unprofitable method of travel going out of business, that comparative discussions of other modes of travel are completely relevant. You are a fucking moron.
..with it they managed to kill more Germans than in both world wars combined.
Excuse me, but how do I run my car on jet fuel?
I think I can help make up for the market glut on this product.
Then they will probably go up for auction! Now that is what I call a personal plane!
Comming soon to a featured E-Bay! auction near you.
Anybody remember the Tupolev TU-144? Came out much the same sort of time (i.e. sometime in the early 14th century, when I was a kid :-) ) There weren't many commercial flights, but I remember thinking that given the similarities between the two aircraft, it was kind of sad that the Russians never really got it together.
Damn. Considering it came out in 1977, and nothing has come out to replace it yet.
Same thing with the SR-71 (RS-71 until our president botched it on the announcement of its existence.) If the military isn't using its supersonic spyplanes, the civilians probably dont have a pressing need for them either. I know i would rather take a leisurely ship across the pond than a plane...
then again there are paranoid folk speculating there is a secret replacement in existence to the SR-71 so you never know
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Prop planes are very very picky about what fuel they will run on. Prop plane fuel is much more expensive than the kerosene that jets will run on, and also prop planes require a lot more maintenence on their engines than jet aircraft. They may not guzzle more gas, but what they do drink isa lot more expensive.
But I would take a flight in a Sopwith Camel (or certainly a Gypsy Moth) over a flight on Concorde any day. British Airways plastic food vs. a real aviation experience, anyone? OK, I was born in 1963, (even the most arithmetically challenged should be able to work out my age from that) and when I was a kid I thought Concorde was pretty cool, but now I think the slow-boat would be much more fun.
Certain British politicians were hopping over to NY on an almost daily basis during the lead-up to the Iraq crisis. They certainly used and needed Concorde with speeches in the Commons in the morning and then speeches in the UN later in the day.
Other Concorde Frequent Flyers include deal-makers from banking and industry. It has certainly helped the City and New York to remain close.
See my journal, I write things there
Yeah, but its quanti-sonic architecture makes it do more work per mach-cycle, making mach .95 seem more like mach 2.2
$ make love
make: don't know how to make love. Stop
Actually, the 747 typically cruises at Mach 0.85. It is in fact quite a bit faster than other subsonic aircraft in service, most of which have been optimized for economy rather than speed.
Even if they didn't, the cost of AvGas is about 50% higher than that of kerosene. A jet will burn more than 50% more fuel than a reasonably efficient turboprop over most distances.
The reasons for the transition to RJ's are, in order of importance:
While the Condorde is indeed an attractive plane, in terms of beauty, I don't think it can hold a candle to the SR-71 Blackbird. And, of course, the Blackbird was (or is, if the redesignated ones in NASA's fleet still fly) much faster...
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Well, there is that bit of water there, which traditionally has mattered a great deal -- those on the island of Britain could pretty much ignore what was going on in the rest of Europe. And visually, well, just look at it -- it's not connected, so even though Spain is separated from France by mountains, you can't deny they're on the same landmass. Is it rational? Well, no, not really, in this day and age, since that bit of water really isn't a barrier any more. In more recent times, I'd lay it down to traditional tribalism more than any other factor -- they want to distinguish, they speak a different language, the water's right there, so they do. Recent events have shown that British leadership seems to think its interests are distinct from those on "the continent," although you can now see evidence that Blair, anyhow, realizes that the area of overlap is still considerable.
You could say the same about the River Clyde, too, I think, most of the Welsh I know are proud to not be English, though of course they haven't had a direct say in who calls the shots since about a hundred years after the last successful cross-channel invasion. Similarly, note that Ireland is not part of the UK ...
Off the top of my head, it doesn't seem to me that people consider Scandinavia "Europe", at least not Europe ''proper''. But then I doubt the Norwegians care as much to distinguish themselves from Europeans as do the Brits.
Don't get me started on the "America" issue, I've pontificated enough based on vaguely felt impressions as it is =)
"Oh, I hope he doesn't give us halyatchkies," said Heinrich.
I have news for you. If we are ever going to make transportation advances, we need fuels with greater energy to weight ratios. If you can think of any fuel that acheives the same amount of energy to the amount of mass used (fuel only, not counting the actual engine) that's also production ready, i'd like to hear it.
People thinking that fallout will land in their yards have stifled innovation of nuclear propulsion (esp. in manned space travel) for a long time. I'm not saying you/they don't have a good arguement, but if we are to move forward as a society we need to at least try.
Yeah we'll probably fuck up somewhere, and we tend to learn only from our mistakes. But like any experimental advance we need to trust that we will try to learn from our mistakes, control the damage, (and yes, it will be greater damage than we may have ever seen as a people) and keep moving on.
Additionally, as we advance, we will have things of even higher enegry-to-mass ratios than nuclear power. You think these will be safer to work with? They have more energy contained in them. As such, they'll be that much more dangerous!
The only thing that can protect us from this danger, really, is distance. And to move out to greater distances takes greater energy. So if we don't use our high energy tools at hand, we'll stagnate as a society and never be able to truly distance ourselves from whatever we impose on ourselves anyway.
(Sorry, this is kinda scatterbrained... hope it makes sense)
- Sig
Concorde still represents a pinnacle in civil aviation design in terms of speed.
Let me repeat... Still a Pinnacle. A top acheivement. There are no incredible leaps in technology since its inception with which to top it. Only some incremetal improovements that might be made.
More efficient engines could be produced but the cost of development versus the improovemnt would not be very economical.
Flight control systems could be updated to modern electronics. might Eliminate a few hundred, perhaps even a few thousand pounds. But its about like the difference between a 30 year old power steering system and a new one. Not much end user difference. Perhaps easier to maintain... more likely the biggest change there would be in reducing easing the pilots workload with modern display systems and computerized system monitoring.
The materials breakthroughs which made the design possible in the first place have only incrementally advanced. Mostly in the area of fabrication, not in terms of strength and thermal tollerences or most importantly in terms of cost which is the biggest issue.
All in all you could could perhaps make a more efficient Concorde. But in terms of pure performance you couldn't really make a better Concorde.
As I said, its design is still a Pinnacle of civil aviation design. Its also noteable in the military realm where supersonic designs have proliferated. Very few Military designs could keep up with a Concorde. The B-1 and Badger being the only two obvious designs currently in service that could keep up with it over the same range. There is also the XB-70 Valkarie mach 3 capable Bomber design that was never adopted which contributed a great deal of knowldege to Concordes Design, and of course the Retired A-12, and SR-71 Blackbird designs which still know no peer in the annals of aviation design.
We have reffined the knowledge pioneered in the late 50's and 60's which make planes like the Concorde, SR-71/A-12, XB-70 and B-1 possible but we have not made any new breathroughs that allow us to go beyond them as yet. We also have never acheived any kind of economy of scale with regards to their production either. I don't belive combining the total production numebrs of all the above listed long range multiple Mach capable designs would reach half the number of Boeing 747's produced.
As much economic sense retiring the Concorde makes... I still hate to see it go. Its one example of a big budget white elephant program I wouldn't mind having my tax dollars go towards. Of course living in the states I have never had my tax dollars go towards this particular white elephant. However, it is at least its something beautiful and tangible which theoretically anyone can get to have "hands on experience" with unlike so many other programs. Its hard to put a price tag on symbols and the Concorde has been a symbolic acheivment since its inception. Its retirment without a replacement is symbolic as well, one which represents something I don't much care to ponder.
I don't ask you to be me. I only ask you not expect me to be you.
Yeah, but then they wouldn't be helping out their private sector airline-owning buddies with mad $$$.
With in industry with headlines like
I doubt they have any intentions on investing a dime on R & D, for a new supersonic plane
I just flew the Concorde last month, and it was a pleasant, very fast flight. It is quite amazing at how quickly it shoots straight up as well as when it is time to land, you land, no waiting. I had a feeling that its days were numbered. Even though we had an uneventful flight, there had just been too many recent incidents, not to mention the plane was pretty much empty. In any case, I was happy that I could participate in a small slice of history.
is how can I get my hands on one of those babies? Park it in a vacant lot and turn it into a supersonic mobile home.
So, let me get this straight. I've seen a lot of posts about how no other plane can compare in speed, about how mach .95 is paltry compared to 2.2 (which, if you go strictly by numbers, it is), but I have a serious question:
If you are travelling ACROSS THE ATLANTIC OCEAN, don't you sort of EXPECT the flight to take a while? Sure theConcord was great, but how many people actually have the $ to fly on it? I'm not crying over this because it has no relevance or bearing on my life at all, nor does it on most other slashdotter's lives. So now the ultra-wealthy will have to settle for a longer flight and deal with the semi-wealthy taking up their precious airspace. Boo freaking hoo.
...because it's completely impractical.
The SR-71 "only" flies at Mach 3, and there's one guy in it wearing a pressure suit who could bake a cake in his lap if the cooling system suddenly failed.
That anyone thinks we could build a plane that could travel 8 times faster than the SR-71, with a cabin full of people in street clothes, is laughable. Even if it was technically possible to build a plane that could fly that fast, the only people who could afford to fly on it would be anyone who has recently seen their name on the Forbes "Richest People" list.
This plane would have to be the safest ever built-- and I mean a level of safety that would make flying on a 747 seem as safe as juggling running chainsaws by comparison.
That level of safety costs money. That level of safety also costs weight-- more safety features means fewer passengers and/or lower fuel capacity. Fewer passengers means a higher per ticket cost. And let's not even talk about the costs of insuring a plane designed to carry untrained people into LEO, through re-entry, and down to a safe landing. The insurance costs would also be passed right on to the passengers. And for all that, there are still way too many things that could go catastrophically wrong and result in Passenger McNuggets raining down over the landing pattern.
We're better off throwing all the research money into teleportation-- it seems much more achievable than NASP.
~Philly
I remember being a kid and being let out of school to watch the first one come into Dullus Int. in Virginia. My school was right in the flight path and the pilots brought her in low and slow to show her off, it was quite a sight. We then got to drive out to the airport and look at her on the tarmack, bent nose and all, I will miss those planes. -Seraphim
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
Here is a bit of history to understand why SST never took off in the US.
At the time the Concorde SST was introduced, Boeing lobbied for (and got) legislation that practically forbad SST flights over the US. This was meant to give Boeing time to introduce their own SST. Unfortunately, their SST project was cancelled, and this stupid legislation is still in place.
Anyone who ever took a "red-eye" night flight from California to the East Coast would kill for halving the duration of that painful flight. But repelling that law would require greasing too many palms.
And of course, without that piece of the market, the future of SST is questionable.
If you think legal mingling in the IT industry is bad (DMCA comes to mind), rest assured it's nothing compared to the stomach-churning lobbying that routinely takes place in the aerospace and air transportation industries.
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
You do realise you'd have to build the *infrastructure* to support that, don't you? Building such a power-hungry infrastructure on pillars that are kilometres tall (the Atlantic isn't shallow) isn't even close to feasible. What you're suggesting sounds more like a hovercraft, but those are *slow*.
I think the previous poster is talking about maglev trains. Magnetic levitation. There are already several test tracks around the world, including one in japan around 20 miles long. It's not nearly as expensive as it sounds. Maglev trains would travel around the speed of commercial airliners, quite a bit faster than the TGV trains in France. Although I can't see how you could build one across the Atlantic.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
Virgin Atlantic founder Richard Branson said on Thursday his airline was interested in buying British Airways' doomed Concorde fleet, but would offer just £1 (1.5, $1.6).
Here's the article.
I read a story once: on April 18th, 1981, Bouygues (a French construction group) received a 343 373 480 dollars cheque (as a payment to a huge contract in Ryiad, Saudi Arabia) at 10:30 AM in Paris, France. But in order not to lose the day's interests, the cheque had to get to the Morgan Bank in N.Y.C., before 10 AM (NYC time).
Bouygues sent 2 persons carrying the cheque with the Concorde, to New York City. The plane took off at 11 AM (Paris local time), and landed at 8:25 AM (New York local time). The cheque was deposited the bank in New York minutes later (around 9 am), therefore allowing Bouygues to deposit the cheque roughly one hour "before" it was delivered to them. With a 16% (!) interest rate, this "extra time" allowed Bouygues to earn 160000 US dollars.
Hello! I'm a disaster waiting to happen!
Article here...
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005
How is a train - on rails - a competitor for Concorde - primary routes being London or Paris to New York? You know, across the Atlantic? Water?
Sheesh.
You are the moron.
Then again, also in the minority is almost every human being who ever existed pre-1900. Note we're talking about planes, not flight.
Thanks anyway, by the way, I already live somewhere really exciting and cool...Cleveland.
"Everywhere there is a love of man-made things that are large and complicated and fun." LOL. That sounds like something from a Japanese tee-shirt.
Virgin Atlantic has offered to buy the Concord fleet...for one pound british sterling ($1.6). Shoot, I'll give 'em $10. Do I hear $20?
... since they don't fly the Harrier. I believe you're thinking of the USMC.
Sean
Also, the XB-70 only crashed because an F-104 chase place got caught in it's wake turbulance and collided with the Valkyrie, snapping off one of it's vertical stabilizers, and damaging the other one. The resulting crash was blamed on the F-104 pilot. Now, I happen to think that the B-1 is the most beautiful airplane ever built.
This is a real pity. I'm going to try and get myself on it before it's canned. I live along the flightpath from Heathrow for planes to the Americas, so at 11:05 and 19:05 I see concorde thundering overhead to New York. The only plane in it's league for beauty is the Blackbird, and seeing it pass overhead is enthralling even after 5 years living around here.
Of course, it's noisy as hell. Amazing considering that you can't HEAR any regular jets this far out!
You have to wonder why the technophiles sacrificed comfort like that. Airplanes in general are cramped and rickety contraptions vaulted into the sky. You breath that horrible recycled air and polute the skys with noise and smog. If current flying trends continue, it is estimated that a comercial aircraft a day will crash in five years if the world does things as well as it is done in the US. So people risk their very hides and those of innocents on the ground just to save a little of their time? It does not save any time for the legions of people who must refine the fuel and maintain the aircraft. Good riddance.
If this argument sounds convincing, kick yourself. Similar arguments can be made for ships and so on through sail power all the way back to riding a floating log or riding a horse. That each of these methods is actually more dangerous than the modern method that replaced it is just fine for the technophobes because they think there are too many people as it is. We would all be better off, these morons would have it, if we were serfs tied to the ground turning clods of shit instead of expoiting the resources before us. The most amazing advococy of such stuff I've seen lately is LE Modesitt Jr's "Adiamante", where he gleefully imagines a future with much in common with nightmare vision of S.M. STirling's "Drakon". This kind of thinking is humoursly parodied in Neiven's "Fallen Angels", but too much has occured since then to make that book funny anymore.
The concord exists and failed due to government regulations. It was built and maintained at tremedous expense to the people who's governments sposored it. Yet it's mear existance was enough to block a private entry. US aircraft regulations are no less looney and make qualifying new aircraft parts, much less whole vehicles, something only a giant like Lockheed-Martin or Boing could ever hope to accomplish. The demand for faster, more convient transportation is always around and will always be met if and only if we let it happen.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
With the Paris crash, Concorde went from having a perfect safety record to being four times more dangerous than any other passenger aircraft.
Although I can't see how you could build one across the Atlantic.
Precisely. That was what I was getting at, though I guess not clearly enough. Maglev trains require a huge infrastructure. Most designs travel in enormous, power-hungry basins (that's a crude description) that would be far too cumbersome for such a long network. Here's an article that goes in to a nice degree of detail about how Maglevs work.
This doesn't address the additional detail that as soon as you put a train across the Atlantic then ships won't be able to travel from one side to the other, since Maglev trains couldn't possibly operate with cantilever bridges. The possibilities for accidental damage and destruction by ships are endless.
"Then again, also in the minority is almost every human being who ever existed pre-1900."
WTF is this stupid argument? If say 98% of people now had a computer and used it for email, and I told someone they were in the minority for not using email then you'd think it reasonable that they drag up their dead ancestors from days before computers to make themselves look part of a larger group?
Planes are here now in the present (where we live) and the majority think they are cool.
"Thanks anyway, by the way, I already live somewhere really exciting and cool...Cleveland."
The point of long-distance travel is to go to see far-away cool and exciting places. Everyone gets blase about the place where they live, no matter how cool it is.
"That sounds like something from a Japanese tee-shirt."
I was aware of that when I was writing it, but it doesn't detract from the truth of the statement.
graspee
All Airbus planes starting from the A320, and the newest Boeings, starting from B777, have a computerized flight control system. This means that the pilot does not actually control the active surfaces, but sends orders to a computer that moves the surfaces.
The computer checks that the pilot does not order something unreasonable that would have the plane go down. It also implements instant reactions for certain emergency situations.
With such a computerized flight system, accidents such as the one you relate just cannot happen. The pilot *cannot* (or is severely discouraged) from doing something like that.
Along with the demise of tall buildings, space shuttles, freedom of speech, and the US economy, the end of supersonic air travel brings our score to
Free world: 0
U.B.W.H.Laiden the Ist: 1,000,000,000,000 New hall of fame inductee!
If people like your parents would fly Concorde more often, they wouldn't be shutting it down. Simple supply and demand. The market for Concorde tickets is pretty much restricted to people whose time is worth about a thousand dollars an hour (that's what it takes to justify the price differential between Concorde and standard business class).
If there were lots of people whose time was worth $1000 per hour, and who needed to travel overseas regularly, there would be a market for supersonic airliners. Since there is no market for supersonic airliners, we conclude that there are not so many business travelers in the $1000/hour class.
Anyone smart enough to be worth that kind of money is probably smart enough to understand that you can't get any useful information about the statistical risk of flying Concorde from one crash, so I don't think risk is a big issue unless Concorde serves a lot of stupid rich vacationers.
The bottom line, then, is that there just aren't a lot of people whose time is worth enough to justify Concorde's speed.
Well there is the BA609. Tiltrotor, like the Osprey.
No, this isn't going to come out as a conspiracy theory - the Society for Snail-Paced Skies is not in control. But it sure seems that way, sometimes.
What this is is more a feeling of frustration. It's apparently more important to feed the tax-cut machine than it is to maintain a high level of mobility. Remember, Rome only survived for as long as it did because its roads were the best at the time, and not always equalled today.
Without efficient very high-speed transport, we'll probably not see any major effects, but we will likely not see the kind ok economic growth we could have, either.
If average speeds go down, though, then we're in trouble. We need to be able to shift people around quickly, en-mass, and the less equipt we are to do that, the more deterioration we'll see. (This is why those countries/US States with mass transit are popular AND successful AND profitable. It's also why those countries/US States that don't have good mass transit are failing, bankrupt and dying.)
As data capacities increase, so the need to be able to pipe people between locations will increase. If the world is truly to dig itself out of this current economic quagmire, we need to forget about oil. We need to take Concorde's design, refine it for today's needs, using today's materials and technology, and we need mass, affordable supersonic transport on a global scale.
It won't happen, of course, and the current "Age of Enlightenment" will burn itself out within a century as a result. The fuel of society is movement. If you want to run society at a white-hot pace, you've gotta supply that fuel. It's not happening.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I believe the noise factor of the supersonic Concorde played a huge part in the failure of it. I believe too many people complained of the sonic boom it would create over rural areas so the routes were limited to trans-atlantic flights.
I didn't say it was a competitor in all fields, you stupid fuck.
I said it was on-topic to discuss other forms of mass-transit.
Sheesh.
Again, I must point out who is, indeed, the moron.
Some perks of Concorde flight that I've heard of:
-complimentary caviar and wine
-windows are warm to the touch during supersonic flight
-sit next to celebrities
First they ignored us, because we were seen as insignificant.
Then they ridiculed us because they saw us as a threat.
Then they copied us as we overtook them.
Thank you. I don't mind being modded down for expressing an unpopular opinion but a 0?? Why because everyone somehow thought I was suggesting a train router over/under/through the Atlantic? When did I ever say that?
Of course you couldn't use a train accross the atlantic. Hell I tried to drive it once and didn't make more than 20 feet. Naw. For crossing the atlantic we should use dirigibles!
What do I have to look forward to now? I'm spending years of my life going to school to make the bling bling, and now they tell me I won't be able to ride the sonic boom x2 for possibly decades? How shitty!
It only makes sense if you volunteer to be the person living under the fuckups. And I sincerely doubt you would go through with it.
If I was the USAF, I'd be considering figuring out how to refit a 747 as the world's biggest bomber. It would seem to fit their current needs better than the B1-B.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
"It take 9 months to bear a child, no matter how many women you assign to the job."
but you can get a wider selection of babies if you do this.
-pyrrho
Why does everybody want go somewhere anyway? No matter where I go. I am in my head being me, gawd knows the virtual miles I travel on the 'net tho'. Would'nt mind trying zero 'g's for a few millenia just to contradict myself
It's called an elephant's trunk whereas it is in fact, an elephant's nose, a nose by any other name would smell as sweet
Actual data? On /.? You do realise that you're breaking a very strong tradition, don't you? (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Concorde also flys (flew) twice weekly to Barbados, West Indies. Says alot about the status of the island.
One might argue that the Concorde's biggest design flaw was not having enough range for trans Pacific routes.
Actually, if we really want to move forward as a society, shouldn't we try to make bombers obsolete in the first place?
Hurricane Application Group, Dept of Meteorology Control, Ministry of Proactive Defense
In the future, the main impetus may not come from the space pioneers of the 1960s, but space travel will steadily grow. China will have a huge space program for reasons of prestige if nothing else. While not yet true, there will be valid commercial applications. I expect Japan, with its lead in new materials (based on nanotechnology) will eventually become involved.
Actually, turboprops can use pretty much any type of fuel that's available... For a short period of time (say at most 200 hours total, out of an operating time of 6000 hours between overhauls). So, it may use Kerosene-A, Jet-A, JP4, JP6, Avgas and... even Diesel fuel if that was the only thing available and you needed to leave at all cost! (actually, the cost for this action would be a rapid clogging of the fuel injectors in say, less than a hundred hours of use, stil enough for an emergency use!).
As you mention, passenger perception is the number one factor, not fuel efficiency!
I'm not sure about the crew training factor you're talking about but it makes sense as props tend to induce torque effects that may be harder to compensate.
As for the last point, on very short routes, as I've mentionned earlier, travel time is not much shorter on woth turbofan powered planes:
As an example, for a 250 km flight (Montreal-Quebec city):
The flight itself takes about 40 minutes on a Dash-8.
That's about 10 minutes climbing, 20 minutes on cruise and a 10 minutes descent.
The same flight with an RJ takes the same time.
For longer flights, up to say about 500km, the difference in cruising speed does not really matter:
Dash-8 300: 530km/h -> 500km in 56 minutes.
RJ-65: 789km/h -> 500 km in 38 minutes.
Whohoo... a whopping 18 minutes difference... Who cares when this save 5 hours of driving? And this gets even more insignificant when you factor in the time it takes to register your luggage and claim it at the end of the trip.
All in all, you'd be out of the airport in about 1:20hr...
Note: I'm not factoring in the climb and descent but it still give a good idea of the non-necessity of higher speed on such short routes.
Please... Do your homework before expressing such misinformed opinions!
Dash-8 -300: Fuel capacity: 3202L Range: 1389km
That's 2.3 L/km
Dash-8 -100: Fuel capacity: 3202L Range: 1285km
That's 2.47 L/km
Canadair RJ-65: Fuel capacity: 8082L Range: 1574km
That's 5.13 L/km
All three planes have the same passenger capacity: 50.
So, which one is the most economical?
The prop planes of course!
Which one is the fastest?
The turbofan of course.
Does speed really matter on short flights?
No.
You decide which is most efficient...
And another thing: my point was that people were getting their shorts all twisted about the loss of the Concorde, when to the majority of people it doesn't mean a thing. It's not turning their world upside down.
I won't deny that people love using planes to get places.
The biggest lesson to be learned from frequent travels to far-away places is that, as was stated in Buckaroo Banzai,, "wherever you go, there you are." Most places are DIFFERENT and our minds interprets that as "cool and exciting." But people have had very fulfilling and wonderful lives without the constant mind rush of flying to another country every month.
There is, in my mind, a real colonial aspect to poking around in other "exotic" countries. Most people in the world can't afford an international plane ticket and if they could, wouldn't have the money for a vacation once they get to wherever they were going.
Once you've seen American tourists clamoring to get into the Beijing McDonalds because they haven't had their precious Big Mac for two weeks, you get very jaded about the value of travel.
Actually you have it wrong,
/ q0 112.shtml
Mach 1 at sea level = 761.2mph
Mach 1 at 15,000 ft = 720.9mph
Mach 1 at 20,000 ft = 707.0mph
http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/atmosphere
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
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