I should love this (places like Duxford or the NASM in DC and the Steven F Udvar-Hazy Annex in Virginia are cathedrals to me): de Havilland Dragon Rapide, Douglas DC-3, Vickers VC-10, Boeing 747 and Concorde. These are the names of progress, these are iconic. Except for Concorde. Nobody (apart from the military) does Mach-2 anymore. BA has an ad campaign which is talking of progress but ultimately admitting it’s best days are behind it. “Skim the edge of Heaven” - if only we still did.
I have heard - I mean felt- four Rolls Royce Olympus turbojets howl at that bitch Gravity quite recently. That was at the Southport Air-Show when XH-558 - the last of the Vulcans - turned up and it made my teeth vibrate. It was that emotional.
We have really made a royal nonesuch out of our greatest dream. And BA’s advertising wonks have made a parody.
Every atom of iron in your blood (or mine) was forged in a supernova. Our desire for what lies above is hardly unnatural. We just want to go home.
What could be more natural than that?
I was fortunate enough to fly on Concorde as a 40th birthday treat to myself. New York to London 3 hours and 19 minutes…
It is shameful that she isn’t still flying…
It is shameful that she isn’t still flying…
Not only is it shameful, it is both despicable cowardice and a deliberate self inflicted wound. Concorde was a wonderful leap forward, but it was effectively still born as it was prevented from flying supersonic across vast swathes of the world by nothing more than the vested self interest of foreign politicians.
Do you imagine that people would put up with the current 12 hours from London to Singapore if the Concorde that still appears on some of the older S$20 bills (from 1979) was still in operation? The original scheduled London->Bahrain->Singapore route took just under 8 hours.
http://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/NDQ0WDc0OQ==/$(KGrHqZ,!iIE5d556eDcBOgvstBGh!~~60_12.JPG
Unfortunately it was killed by the Indian government who objected to it travelling supersonic over India and by that very fact alone killed it.
Politicians the world over a nothing more than a bunch of spineless, nationalistic Luddites - Not invented here (or we’ve not been given our cut), then no way. Technological advance is nothing to these brain dead morons.
BA advert is ironic/tragic given that BA is reliant on one of the oldest fleets of any of the leading carriers. Nearly-dead 744s and ambience-free 777s, nary an A380 nor a 787 order to be seen until mid-decade.
Interesting John G picks the Indian government as Concorde’s assassin - IMO it was primarily the US government that killed it (otherwise, it would have been an amazing transpacific and London-LA aircraft - New York’s just not quite far enough), but this may reflect our relative prejudices about different sorts of NIMBIES. “Both governments”, is probably the fairest take.
It isn’t shameful that Concorde isn’t still flying. No more than I no longer run a Commodore Amiga 500. The real shame is it wasn’t followed-up. The shame is I can’t get on the hypersonic for lunch and back with my co-conspirator Mr Cats in Queensland. The shame is my next excursion is to Poland (I like Poland but…) and not by the methane seas of Titan. Just look at the magnificent bastards that never quite happened. Look at the Valkyrie and the Skylon. Just look at them. Just roll around your tongue like a fine single malt terms like “compression lift” or “wave rider” or “variable-cycle”. And just look at them and then look at a 787. Barman, I’m glad you flew Concorde but puckle my re-cunticulated fucking hogglewash was that ‘plane not meant to be the start and not the end? Last time I flew the Atlantic (Philadelphia to Manchester on an A330) was eight bastarding hours of Robin Williams movies - and a grope beforehand. We are going backwards.
I spent six years of my childhood in Woodford, Cheshire, a house with a garden than backed on to AV Roes (now BAE, now gone). We are talking late 50s early 60s. AV Roes always had Vulcans there, and most days they flew. Thunderous noise if you were behind them when they took off. Security was so good that you could get on to the airfield easily - the metal fence posts were loose all over the place.
Fantastic plane. Part of my childhood. As was the Thief’s Neck over the road, where I had my first pint (Robinson’s Mild {pale - gorgeous then and gorgeous now}) at the age of 14.
I have to turn it off , it makes me angry and a little bit sick to my stomach. Add in the last flight of the space shuttle and it’s very depressing.
“Every atom of iron in your blood (or mine) was forged in a supernova. Our desire for what lies above is hardly unnatural.”
Love the quote. Have filed off the serial numbers and nicked it for a public talk I’m giving about space travel in Science Fiction and advances in astronomical observation.
As you say, maybe we are just stardust that wants to go home.
I flew on Concord once, New york to Heathrow. 3.5 hours. Got my Mach 2 certificate and all that bollox. It was a superb flight!
I’m sorry that the Concorde is gone.
But wasn’t it an anachronism, the product of government (i.e. taxpayer-funded) hubris? It was uneconomic, both to develop and operate. Development costs proved far greater than initially expected and, had it been a private venture, it’s likely it would have been abandoned quite early on. (Surely it’s significant that, around the same time the British and French governments decided to develop Concorde, Boeing started work on the 747?) Doubtless this sounds like a cynical remark, but if it doesn’t pay, it’s not going to happen. (Which also explains why there has been so little progress in space exploration.) Also, once operational, the Concorde was not without its problems. It was very noisy at takeoff and the sonic boom was significant; I remember experiencing it during a family holiday to western Scotland in 1970, when it was undergoing airworthiness tests in the same area.
Like a few others on this blog, and despite what I’ve written above, I regret not flying on the Concorde; but I’m hoping I will get to fly supersonic after all. Lockheed’s Quiet Supersonic Transport (QSST) is likely to be operational by 2016. Designed as a business jet for perhaps 10 people and operating at Mach 1.6 - 1.8, it shouldn’t be too difficult to devise a commercial version holding 25 passengers.
All told, this strikes me as a much more practical and realistic route to commercial supersonic flight. The designers are well aware of the problems, particularly the sonic boom. Also, it’s a relatively small plane from which the lessons will be learned to enable the construction of bigger ones. Consider it a supersonic DC-3, if you like. More to the point, it is being conceived as a profit-making venture. And there’s nothing like profit to incentivise the production of more of whatever it is you want.
As for hypersonic flight (Mach 5.5+), that will come much closer to reality and Virgin Galactic and its competitors become operational and produce a wealth of information on aircraft-like structures travelling through the atmosphere at very high speeds.
The future of aviation is brighter than you might think.
Schrodingers Dog,
Concorde was not loss-making in operation (certainly not after they raised the price after it emerged on the London to New York run no fucker knew the price) and it’s (very considerable) development costs would have amortised much easier if the initial orders had gone through. That would have been 70 airframes. But the Arabs hoicked the price of oil, the Indians and Yanks got all environmental and the whole project was buggered. As to the 747. Was that a commercial development as such? Not exactly. Ever wondered why it has an upper deck? That was to have a big front door. the 747 was the loser in the contest for a USAF heavy lifter. That was won by Lockheed with the C-5. Even the 707 was rolled by the USAF in the form of the KC-135. That made Boeing king of the airliners. They got to market the 707 with several hundred airframes on order from the USAF. That’s a sweet place to be.