Hey guys welcome to my blog here is what we gonna talk about today.
According to Benjamin
Franklin nothing in this world is
certain except death taxes and the
irrepressible advance of human
technology
okay so I made that last one up but you
have to admit it's hard to argue year
after year the phone in your pocket is
pumped with pixels and sharper cameras
your laptop gets a faster processor and
more memory your car gets safer and more
efficient and yet another FIFA game is
released that's an absolute minimum one
percent better than its predecessor then
again perhaps there's a good reason Mr
Franklin chose not to include my
addendum with his famous quote you know
aside from the fact that he died 232
years before I suggested it because it
turns out that technology hasn't always
progressed so predictably
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these two pictures one of these
airplanes is a Cutting Edge machine
introduced to the market in 2018. the
other was designed in the 50s and made
its Maiden flight in 1969 four months
before Neil Armstrong became the first
man to walk on the moon
okay so there's a fair chance you know
which is which Here Concord is arguably
the most iconic aircraft ever built but
just pretend you didn't for a second
if you'd never seen these two planes
before which one would you think was
half a century newer I know which I'd go
for there's something undeniably
futuristic about concord's Alpha wings
and sharply pointed nose but the
differences are more than just whole
deep the Airbus A330 Neo has a maximum
speed of 570 miles per hour and a
cruising altitude of 41 450 feet
Concord on the other hand this ancient
Relic that predates the personal
computer
flew 50 percent higher and more than
twice as fast
if you were to hop on a plane from
London to New York today the trip would
take you around eight hours Concord
could do it in under three
this is a plane that flew so high its
passengers could see the curvature of
the earth and so fast it tore through
the air quicker than a nine millimeter
bullet fired from a handgun so just what
the hell's going on here how could a 60
year old plane possibly surpass a much
more advanced one that's only a few
years old and why did Concord ultimately
get mothballed why 60 years on can I not
fly a commercial craft as fast as the
mighty Concord if you're already
familiar with this story you might think
you know why Concord failed because of
safety concerns following the
high-profile crash of Air France flight
4590 in the year 2000 but it turns out
that's a common misconception prior to
that Infamous incident Concord was
arguably the safest plane in the entire
world without a single fatal accident in
its entire 30 years of service
so if safety wasn't the issue
what was the short answer to that
question is the sticky science of air
resistance Sonic booms Osama Bin Laden
and the internet as for the long answer
well I'll see what I can do
right from its Inception the development
of Concord was a colossal pain in the
ass a joint venture between France and
Britain it was supposed to be an
Airborne technological statement that
would be the Envy of the world but
creating a commercial airplane capable
of cruising at twice the speed of sound
turned out to be far more complicated
than anyone had anticipated a plethora
of technical hurdles stood in the way
and some impressive engineering was
required to leap over them including the
development of concord's distinctive
droop nose to improve pilot visibility
during Landing
the creation of the first carbon-based
brakes ever used in an aircraft to help
handle High Landing speeds and numerous
structural Innovations designed to cope
with the extreme forces that pass
through the plane's frame when
maneuvering at high speed then there is
the fact that Concord flew so fast its
outer surface heated up considerably
during flight through friction with the
surrounding air
despite cruising at 60 000 feet where
typical temperatures are minus 55
degrees Celsius when Concord landed it
was still warm to the touch
innovative solutions were developed to
cool the plane inside and out including
the use of onboard fuel as a heat sink
old hold thousands of different
challenges had to be overcome to get
Concord off the ground and the technical
Wizardry required to do so cost a lot of
money by the time Concord was finally
fit to fly it was one of the most over
budget projects of all time projected to
cost 70 million pounds
it ended up exceeding 2 billion but even
with all that money spent and all those
technical problems abracadabred out of
existence concord's issues were only
just beginning
in the early days of the project the
public were incredibly excited about the
prospect of this new revolutionary form
of air travel but their excitement soon
gave way to dismay when people finally
saw or should I say heard Concord for
the first time
to this day it remains one of the
loudest commercial airplanes ever built
it's colossal cacophony came chiefly
from its four Rolls-Royce after burning
turbojet engines which were loud enough
to Rattle windows and set off car alarms
near runways
that certainly sucked if you lived near
a major airport but it was the other
instrument in concord's infernal
orchestra that really upset people the
infamous sonic boom
as you probably know a sonic boom is
produced when you hold backwards for two
seconds then tap forwards and punch
sorry wrong video as you probably know a
sonic boom is produced when an object
breaks a sound barrier
what you may not know is that the term
itself is actually pretty misleading a
sonic boom isn't a single sound that
only triggers once as the barrier is
broken it's a continuous noise created
by a Shockwave that persists so long as
the plane exceeds the speed of sound
that might sound like semantics but it's
actually a really important distinction
because it means a sonic boom produced
by Concord which could be loud enough to
cause minor structural damage to
buildings and even shatter glass would
be heard by every single person within
30 miles of its entire flight path
by the way if you've ever noticed that
sonic boom sound a lot like thunder
that's because that's exactly what
Thunder is
when lightning strikes it rapidly heats
the surrounding air creating a shock
wave that spreads faster than the speed
of sound which in turn creates a sonic
boom
anyway when the general public first
began to realize that having a bunch of
Concords flying around would make their
Lazy Sunday Afternoon stroll in the park
feel more like a day at the shooting
range there were widespread protests
much like it did at the nose cone of a
Concord about to go supersonic pressure
began to mount
and soon enough countries chose to close
their airspace to supersonic travel
Concord could still fly at subsonic
speeds over land and supersonic speeds
over the ocean
but the Overland speed restrictions
severely limited the potential routes it
could fly faster than a regular plane
on the back of all the hype Concord had
taken over 100 orders through the 1960s
but as they extend to supersonic travel
bands became clear
those orders were canceled at an
alarming rate until only two Airlines
remained Air France and British Airways
and since they were the National
Airlines of the two countries behind the
entire Concord project it's safe to
assume they didn't have much choice in
the matter
in the end just 14 Concords made it into
service
seven for Air France and seven for BA
what was supposed to have been an
exciting New Dawn for air travel was now
beginning to unravel
it's widely believed that Concord was
never profitable but that isn't actually
true Concord did indeed run at a loss
for several years after its launch in
1976. at one point things got so bad the
entire fleet was almost scrapped but
then some clever Economist at ba came up
with a radical idea for how to make more
money
they quadrupled their ticket prices by
the late 1990s a return flight from
London to New York on Concord was about
30 times more expensive than the
cheapest alternative and twice the cost
of flying first class on a subsonic play
but those who could afford it didn't
care Concord was quite simply the most
glamorous way to get around
buy yourself a ticket and there was
every chance you'd end up sitting next
to a politician a prominent CEO a
Hollywood celebrity or a really
hard-working drug dealer for a few
decades during the 80s and 90s anyone
who was anyone was flying Concord
multiple heads of state at least one
Pope Queen Elizabeth II and even the
Olympic torch were all proud members of
the 11 miles high club
by the mid-80s concord's unique brand of
flight-based fomo allowed both Air
France and ba to turn a solid profit and
Concord continued to be a supersonic
success for most of the following two
decades
but sadly the good times were about to
reach an Abrupt end
on the 25th of July in the year 2000 Air
France flight 4590 took off from Charles
de Gaulle Airport in Paris on its way to
JFK International
in New York
the trip was about
3625 miles all told but it's only
managed five
before crashing into a hotel in a
Parisian suburb
both hotel and plain were utterly
obliterated
and all 109 people on board were killed
along with five on the ground
passenger plane crashes are rare so they
tend to make the headlines but when the
most prominent plane on the planet
plummeted to the Earth
it was a global sensation
the entire Concord Fleet well all 14
planes were grounded whilst an
investigation was carried out into the
cause of this crash in the end it was
found that a strip of metal that had
fallen off a different aircraft had
punctured one of concord's tires during
takeoff which in turn caused a big chunk
of debris to smash into the underside of
one of its wings
the impact caused a fuel leak the fuel
ignited and power to the left-hand
engines was lost ultimately bringing the
plane down
The Quirk of Statistics that by some
measures that one single crash turned
Concord from the safest plane in the
world to the most dangerous overnight
before the year 2000 Concord had flown
for more than three decades without a
single fatal accident until now
but the crash wasn't curtains for
Concord safety improvements were made to
the wheels and fuel tanks and they were
soon back in the sky to give you an idea
of just how famous Concord was by this
point
first post-accident test flights were
aired live on TV and crowds gathered at
both the origin and destination airports
on September the 11th 2001 a modified ba
Concord completed its first test flight
with a full complement of passengers on
board
yep it was that September 11th
The crucial test flight landed just
hours before the World Trade Center
terrorist attacks
the two events were obviously unrelated
but the combined effect of the
high-profile crash and the sharp drop in
demand for international travel after 9
11 saw concord's passenger numbers
nosedive
of course it was a rough time for the
airline industry in general not just
Concord and perhaps they might have been
able to weather the storm had things
gone a little differently
but behind closed doors the final nail
was about to be hammered into the
Concord coffin Bear In Mind by this
point Concord was more than 30 years old
it sported an entirely analog cockpit
and relied on a whole host of very
complex very out-of-date systems it was
so complicated that it required an extra
crew member to fly a dedicated flight
engineer a role at modern aircraft at
the time had long since done away with
in 2003 Airbus who by that time had
acquired aerospacelle the French company
that originally manufactured Concord
alongside the British aircraft
Corporation revealed that they would no
longer be making replacement parts for
this ancient aircraft
in other words if Concord was going to
stay in the air it would need to be
rebuilt from the inside out with
passenger numbers falling in the wake of
the double whammy of the famous crash
and the World Trade Center attacks it
was an easy decision to retire the
service altogether
in 2003 that's exactly what happened
okay so that explains why Concord died
but why have no other supersonic planes
ever come to take its place
first of all whilst technology has come
a long way in the 20 odd years since
Concord was retired physics has proven
to be stoppingly unwilling to change
Sonic booms have refused to stop
sonically booming and whilst the likes
of NASA and Lockheed Martin are in the
process of testing supersonic aircraft
capable of dampening the effect there's
no way to eliminate the noise entirely
for that reason Overland commercial
supersonic travel is still banned in
most countries which continues to limit
possible routes and therefore the
commercial incentive just isn't there
and there's another problem as a plane
speed increases so too does drag that's
actually why we started calling it the
sound barrier in the first place
when Pilots first had access to jet
propelled aircraft around the time of
the second world war they experienced
such a dramatic increase in aerodynamic
drag at high speeds that it seemed as
though they were reaching some kind of
genuine speed barrier that couldn't be
crossed
Chuck Yeager proved that to be false on
the 14th of October 1947 when he broke
the sound barrier in the cockpit of the
Bell X1
but the effect of drag at high speed
still poses a problem even today amongst
other things it makes flying at
supersonic speeds seriously inefficient
which would naturally inflate ticket
prices
and in an industry that accounts for 2.5
percent of global CO2 emissions it's an
environmental concern too less
efficiency equals more fuel burn per
passenger mile
and here's a question for you is
supersonic flight even worth it Concord
operated in a time before Humanity was
ruled over by the omnipotent Overlord
that calls itself the internet
if you were a fat cat businessman in the
1980s crossing the Atlantic in three
hours instead of eight meant less time
disconnected from The Real World
closer multi-million dollar deal or two
in the time you saved by flying Concord
and the ticket paid for itself
but thanks to the internet these days
that same fat cat can cross the Atlantic
in the lavishly luxurious first-class
cabin of a regular aircraft without ever
disconnecting from his Virtual Office
Concord was never particularly Fancy on
the inside because there simply wasn't
the space the need for a hyper
streamlined profile kept the internal
Dimensions firmly on the tiny side now
admittedly I don't know many fat cat
businessmen but I'm guessing plenty
would rather spend eight hours feeling
like God himself in Emirates first class
than free feeling like a slightly
squashed Sonic on Concord despite
everything I've said there are still
plans of foot to bring supersonic
flights back from the dead several
different companies are working on
overcoming the many issues associated
with it with boom technology perhaps the
most promising call me old-fashioned but
to my mind it's a bit odd to name your
product after its biggest drawback
American Airlines recently put down a
deposit of 20 of booms planned Overture
supersonic aircraft but as for whether
or not that will actually come to
anything only time will tell as of today
a hyper-expensive Sonic booming jet fuel
guzzling supersonic jet whose ticket
prices can only be afforded by the
world's richest people sounds like a
distant and unlikely dream
then again that's what they said about
Concord
thanks for watching
once again remember to play War Thunder
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