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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."
Hopefully there is a concorde II with the following improvements:
1. A glass cockpit instead of the analog crap in the old concorde
2. More efficient turbofan engines instead of the gas-guzzling turbojets on the Concorde.
3. A more roomy cabin
The retirement of the Concorde is a rare example of technological regression. If our children ask us why airplanes don't fly faster, we can tell them we used to have supersonic commercial jets, but now we don't.
This isn't necessarily bad since the Concordes lost money throughout their existence.
What are some other example of technology regression, I wonder?
Well, here's something that's pretty cool to want to ride on. The SS United States. It is going to be refitted and put back into service. If you don't know about this ship, it's the fastest ocean liner ever.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
The burning Concorde was not the reason for ending the service. They just took the opportunity. BA and Air France were contemplating for nearly a decade on grounding that elegant dinosaur.
But - without the Concorde the Airbus Consortium - and today Airbus Industries would never have come to the market. We would have no alternative to Boeing nowadays.
All people coming to Germany who are interested in Aircraft History should take a day at "Technik Museum" in Sinsheim near Speyer.
CU
The TU-144 was a direct copy of the Concorde, made from stolen plans of the UK/FR aeroplane. Unfortunately (for the Russians) the plans they stole had been "doctored" by the British to not work - hence the crash. That's why they had to add canards to the Tupolev.
Troc
Troc's dubious podcast and blog: http://www.trocnet.net
Concorde passes over my house regularly, and it will be greatly missed after Friday. Hopefully the path taken for one of the three incoming concordes will be this way so I can bid it farewall.
It's a huge pity that I never managed to fly on it as it's possible I'll now ever get to move faster than the speed of sound (relative to the earth!).
It's pretty rare that any industry manages to combine such technical feats with such beauty (the only other airplane I can think of that managed it was the blackbird), and it will be a huge loss to the skies.
For the records, public safety worries were the least of it's problems. It's rarely, if ever been a profitable plane to fly for the two airlines, and as soon as Air France had an excuse they wanted to ground it.
Documentary on BBC 2 last night..
40 of their frequent flyers where killed in the WTC. Not only that, those 40 also authorised Concorde flights for their company's staff, so in that single day they lost a huge number of customers.
It was one of my dreams to fly on Concorde, but by the time I had the cash to allow me a special trip I had a family to support, so my priorities are now elsewhere.
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This may interest some of you:
The Russian Tu-144 "Charger" was actually the first SST. It first flew in 1968 about a year before the Concorde. In its later revisions it had a longer range than Concorde and was more fuel economic. However, for various reasons, the Soviets never really used the Tupolev 144. Its interesting to also note that NASA picked this aircraft over Concorde for various tests done in the late '90s.
They didn't agree, the original drawings were in French and English, measurements in centimeters and inches. :)
The yank plane was shot down by environmentalists, then America did everything to stop Concorde because you can't have better tech coming out of other countries.
I believe that several companies are working on morphing wing designs which eliminate the sonic boom altogether, which was one of the nails in the coffin of the Concorde. According to this article Boeing might have a super sonic plane in service around 2008. Couple the new wing design with high effeciency engines and you'll have an environmentally (noise and pollution wise) and cost-effective means of breaking the sound barrier.
slashdot, news for crazed liberal socialist zealots
Before that is was part of a failed, aerospace-themed tourist attraction in Kissimmee, FL.
The parts you mentioned ended up in another (more interesting) junkyard that was privately created by an eccentric ex-engineer near the southern gate of the space center (state road 3).
He died before his dream of a museum or some such could be realized, and the contents of the yard were up for public auction. It was amazing. There were a complete set of flight legs for a lunar module among tons and tons of other items (atlas centuar rocket and trailer anybody?)
The SST prototype parts (possibly the same one in the link above) were bought by a scrap metal dealer. As a nice flourish, the dealer returned to a later auction (it took a few to clear out all the stuff) with some of the bits cast into aluminium ingots with the Boeing SST logo painted on them.
"One problem with it is that early on in its career, it was determined that supersonic travel over populated land could shatter windows, upset livestock and generally annoy people."
As someone who has lived in Concorde's flightpath (about 5 miles from the end of the runway) I can confidently assure you that - while certainly noticeable - Concorde is significantly less annoying than a) some twat on a Harley b) an unladen 38 tonne truck or c) some boy racer exploring the rev limiter on his BMW 325. Loud, but nothing special if you live in an urban environment. Bear in mind that a successor to Concorde WAS designed which was quieter, more efficient, longer ranging and had a greater payload.
Really sad to see it go - technical considerations aside it just LOOKED so graceful in flight. It was just an awe inspiring sight to see it every time.
That was classic intercourse!
When the Concorde killed all of those people, you have to ask yourself who can afford a six thousand dollar ticket?
Rich... very, very rich people. Their families can hire very, very, very expensive lawyers to make a corporation pay very, very, dearly for their mistake. Think of the lawyers for the families that they can afford. Add that to the cost of running a supersonic, high-end aviation service. It just isn't possible anymore.
Yeah, if one of the regular world dies in a plane crash, we can probably get a class action settlement for burial expenses and some change from the airline. You can bet your sweet tail that when a group of people that wealthy die in a plane crash, that there will be an entire nation of lawyers after your corporation. The Concorde was getting expensive. I guarantee after all of the rich people died it got outrageously expensive to operate.
" The Americans realized it before it was built."
Is that why both Boeing and Lockheed Martin built prototypes, then? The Boeing SST jet was an engineering fiasco - that's why the Americans never built one. The LM 'plane was, by all accounts, a very elegant design. Very much like Concorde, in fact...
That was classic intercourse!
making it only useful for transoceanic flights
And it didn't have the range for trans-Pacific, where the time saving would actually be worthwhile. You onlysave 3 hours trans-Atlantic; the biggest savings are probably the express speed check-in.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
I was fortunate enough to fly Concorde twice in July and it was the best flight I have ever done. Yes the cabin is small and it is lounder than your average jet! but the service is second to none and 'jumping time zones' is something different that the old 747 cannot beat. The only gripe is no in-flight entertainment (though the food is good and the wine list better than nearly all the resturants I have eaten in) but at least now laptops can give decent in-flight entertainment anyway.
As well as Concorde government subsidies have bought us things like the Apollo programme, the Channel Tunnel, the trans-continental rail[way|road] in the US, the Internet, the world-wide-web, the first digital programmable computers, and the first inter-continental telegraph cables.
These are not only fantastic technological achievements, but have made people's lives better (with the exception of the trans-continental railway vis-a-vis the Indians).
I'd rather the UK spent its money on projects like the Chunnel and Concorde than subsidiing EU farmers or fighting American wars.