Farewell To The Concorde

mstamat writes "BBC has a number of features on the Concorde airplanes, the timeline of their existence and their retirement. Among else, there is a virtual tour of Concorde's cockpit and a few words from journalist Mary Goldring who was opposing Concordes from the start."

Comments

Re:Concorde II

[matthew.thompson]

Concorde's engines are actually the most efficient of their type in the world.

And although you think of all the analogue crap in Concorde it had fly by wire when designed, the bulk of it's instrumentation was digital and the brake design is only now being adopted by other larger aircraft.

Concorde, despite being 26 years old in full service and even older by design, is still leading the way in terms of aircraft design.

Re:Concorde II

[TamMan2000]

2. More efficient turbofan engines instead of the gas-guzzling turbojets on the Concorde.

Ummm...

A low bypass turbofan (read lower efficiency) or a turbojet would do better than a high bypass (modern) engine at those speeds.

You have competing effects that you have to optimize. Fuel spent because engine is inefficient (to varying degrees), and fuel spent overcoming drag. High bypass turbofans, the efficient ones, have HUGE frontal areas, and the induced drag because of this at supersonic speeds severely outweighs the efficiency benefits gained.

From memory the bypass on the 777 varies from about 5-9 (depends on engine manufacturer, and version of aircraft), the only supersonic jet in the world that doesn't need an afterburner to go supersonic is the F-22, it's bypass ratio is under 2 (again from memory). If I had my way, a future supersonic transport would have a low bypass turbofan or turbojet (same as a bypass 1 turbofan) sized such that an augmenter is not needed.

BTW, the Concorde engines aren't guzzlers because they are turbojets, it is because it is augmented for the duration of supersonic flight.

(yes I am an aerospace engineer at a jet engine company...)