
Concorde ‘B’ - robin_reala
https://www.heritageconcorde.com/concorde-b
======
JanSolo
Concorde was a fantastic technological achievement; It's beautiful and
revolutionary. My heart really wants it to be successful.

However, my head tells me that no amount of tweaking or tuning will change the
fundamental problem with Concorde. The root problem with this aircraft is that
people prefer cheaper flights over faster flights.

The real success that we can take from the Concorde program was that some of
the technology found its way into the A300 program and its derivative, the
A320.

Cheap, reliable aircraft are what people want. Fast, expensive ones are cool,
but not really economic.

~~~
elidourado
Disclosure: I'm at Boom, which is building a Mach-2.2 airliner.
[https://boomsupersonic.com/](https://boomsupersonic.com/)

I think it all depends on how much cost savings for how much speed. In today's
dollars, a round-trip ticket on Concorde from New York to London was $20,000,
or 4x today's business class price. For that, you got a tiny seat in a cramped
cabin.

What we're targeting at Boom is an improvement over business class. We're
making it profitable for airlines to operate the plane at today's business
class fares. We're getting you there in half the time. And instead of a
cramped two-and-two cabin arrangement, it's a one-and-one configuration (every
seat is a window AND an aisle). The seats are similar to today's domestic
first class seats, only designed for productivity.

So the choice a business traveler could soon face is: Would you like to get
from New York to London in 7 hours in a lay-flat bed, or in 3h15m in a
comfortable, productive environment? Price is the same either way. We think
most people will pick the supersonic flight.

It should be noted also that the premium cabin market today is much larger
than it was a few decades ago.

And finally, premium-cabin economics are only the first step. We think there's
a roadmap to making supersonic flight _cheaper_ than subsonic flight is today.
It will take a few decades, but that is absolutely the path that Boom is on.

~~~
ghostly_s
Uh-huh. You're delivering seat prices 1/4 of Concorde _and_ halving passenger
capacity. So that's about an order-of-magnitude cost reduction through the
power of...magic, I guess?

~~~
Apes
Not sure why all these people are saying it totally makes sense that
technology can provide a magic 10x improvement in efficiency.

If you want to go the same distance for 1/10th the cost, you need to use
1/10th the fuel, have 1/10th the maintenance overhead, and have 1/10th the
staffing cost all at the same time.

You can't go over 100% efficiency in any area, so to see 1/10th the cost you
would need the entire aircraft industry in the 1970s to be operating at under
10% efficiency, a low bar I am highly skeptical of.

It's not like Aeronautics engineers or the Airline industries were gorillas
banging rocks together with no understanding of what they were doing, and I
find it hard to believe there is enough room for a 10x increase in efficiency
from the 1970s even with a perfectly efficient aircraft and airline behind it.

But hey, if you really believe it's possible, invest in Boom because they must
have designed a cold fusion reactor running on tap water to power their jet
and everyone who invests will probably become a trillionaire overnight once
they reveal it.

~~~
keymone
In 50s cars were 15mpg in average. Today’s top tier mpg cars are over 120mpg.
Order of magnitude. They are also safer, quieter, faster, cheaper in
maintenance, etc.

Technology does enable 10x improvements over half a century sometimes.

~~~
brandmeyer
You just compared fleet average in one time period to an extreme outlier in
another time period.

In reality, fleet average fuel economy has been nearly flat for four decades,
with the biggest periods of movement being driven by brief excursions in the
price of crude oil. Those efficiency excursions were in turn driven not by
technological improvement, but by changes in the makeup of the vehicle fleets
themselves (lighter cars, smaller engines).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_average_fuel_economy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_average_fuel_economy)

~~~
keymone
and here we're comparing "average" of supersonic flight half a century ago to
a potential future outlier. i don't think i'm being outrageously unreasonable
here.

~~~
opencl
The Concorde is not "average", it is the most fuel efficient supersonic
aircraft to date by a huge margin. Yes it's kind of old but I think you are
dramatically overestimating how much aircraft turbojet engines have improved
in the past 40 years.

~~~
gsnedders
While Concorde was efficient at supersonic cruise, it was ridiculously
inefficient getting there (and this was one of the main arguments for the
proposed Concorde B).

Also note most aircraft capable of supersonic cruise nowadays don't use
turbojets, they use low-bypass turbofans (mostly around 0.3:1).

------
zwieback
I have a hard time imagining SST making any sense given that we spend hours
stuck in traffic, then stuck in the TSA line, customs, stuck in traffic again.
The gain of a few hours from NY to London or Paris doesn't seem enough. If you
could extend the range to where you can do really long-haul flights maybe it
would be interesting to a tiny elite.

~~~
tetrep
There's a wealth of public transit options that will reliably get you from
Manhattan to JFK in about an hour.

I haven't waited in a security line at an airport for more than 30 minutes in
years. When lines get long they drop the security theater and start letting
people through very quickly. I imagine people who are willing to pay for SST
would also pay the troll toll and spend comparatively very little time in
security lines.

For context, I fly (usually coast to coast) about a dozen or more times a
year.

~~~
jacquesm
> When lines get long they drop the security theater and start letting people
> through very quickly.

Which airports? US domestic flights? Because internationally I've never seen
this happen.

~~~
londons_explore
Any airport which _doesn 't_ fly to the USA.

Generally, security rules are made and enforced by USA authorities. Any
airport which doesn't fly to the USA only needs to follow local rules of the
country they are in, which while typically are as strict as the USA rules, are
typically not enforced.

Some airports for example only xray one in 10 bags at peak times, or none at
all if the machines broken.

Source: Personal experience only, but I've been to a lot of airports.

------
rwmj
Isn't this what Boom (a YC company, I think) are essentially doing?
[https://boomsupersonic.com/](https://boomsupersonic.com/)

~~~
matthewmcg
Yes--there's a great discussion of their strategy on this podcast:
[http://www.airplanegeeks.com/2017/08/02/463-boom-
supersonic/](http://www.airplanegeeks.com/2017/08/02/463-boom-supersonic/)

------
VeejayRampay
TGV, Concorde, Leclerc tank, Rafale, it's almost like the cliché of the French
not being good engineers is inaccurate.

Yes I'm French, yes I'm salty.

~~~
inglor
Uh, there was never such a cliché? I've never heard anyone say French people
were bad engineers.

------
ksec
Is there any reason why people don't buy Concorde for Private jet? Surely
there are lot more people who can afford this compare to what was 20 years
ago. And those who buy private jet are likely to care about the much shorter
trip.

Or is it Concorde, due to its thrust and speed aren't / can't be as
comfortable ?

~~~
dasmoth
I believe Airbus have let the type certificate lapse. Nobody is allowed to fly
them...

~~~
gsnedders
And, AFAIK, they didn't like making spare parts for it because by the end they
were frequently having to manufacture one-off parts.

------
_ph_
It is really sad that this design wasn't built. The Concorde was a great
design, but obviously, you don't hit perfection on the first attempt. The
Concorde "B" shows, that as with any design, it is important to have enough
iterations to get real efficiency. The Shuttle was a great design for the late
70ies. If it had at least a significant design iteration every 5-10 years, it
could have been a bigger success. Similarly if the Concorde hat gotten 2-3
design iterations over its life, it could have been very successfull. SpaceX
is successful, because they are not trying to fly the initial F9 - it is said
that they actually didn't built the exact same rocket twice, but always added
small improvements.

~~~
semessier
Concorde was iterated 3 times, each carrying substantial modifications. From
flying prototype to a preproduction version to the production version.

~~~
_ph_
I was explicitly talking about iterations after the production version. As the
linked article shows, there were significant updates possible relative to the
production version.

------
EamonnMR
None of this to address the major problem that plagued and ultimately ended
its run though, the exploding tires and subsequent damage.

~~~
mshook
It wasn't really the issue. Yes, that was a major problem but the real issue
was the plane was old.

The newest model had been built in 78 (G-BOAF, Aircrat 216). Think about it,
how many airlines back in 2000 were flying planes that were between 22 and 25
years old? Not that many. Just looking right now, AF and BA are around 12 to
13 years for their average fleet age.

Yes, the airframe was aging slowly because high temperatures while flying
would prevent humidity from building up but the maintenance on this aircrat
was expensive as hell compared to more recent aircrafts.

And it was a downward sliding slope. Anything was costlier on this thing
because pretty much everything had to be custom built compared to other
planes.

And in the end, it stopped flying not only because AF and BA decided to retire
their Concorde fleet but above all because Airbus retired the aircraft
certificate of airworthiness.

Is it political? Economical? Honestly, probably both. Airbus probably didn't
want to get dragged in the mud again if anything else were to happen.

~~~
gsnedders
> The newest model had been built in 78 (G-BOAF, Aircrat 216). Think about it,
> how many airlines back in 2000 were flying planes that were between 22 and
> 25 years old? Not that many. Just looking right now, AF and BA are around 12
> to 13 years for their average fleet age.

By way of comparison, the last BA 747-100 flight was late 1999, on G-AWNO,
which had been delivered to BOAC in 1973. The last 747-200 flight was not much
later (2001, G-BDXO), despite being a far, far newer airframe (delivered
1987).

~~~
mshook
Right (I upvoted you actually) but by another way of comparison, it appears BA
itself ended up having 19 747-100 altogether.

Which is 5 more than the _whole_ Concorde fleet.

167 747-100 were built says wiki...
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_747#Model_summary](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_747#Model_summary)

Think about economy of scales for parts, training, maintenance, ...

~~~
gsnedders
Also worth noting that BA got rid of all of their aircraft that had flight
engineers relatively close together around that time (Concorde was the last to
go).

------
ggm
Future engine economics would have been interesting, as well as digital design
models once there was a market for Concorde B+, C and so on. Current engines
for commercial jets are bypass fan designs. If the same efficiency gains had
been achieved for the type of engine in a concorde... (who knows? maybe
military jets are now significantly more efficient)

------
lowken10
My 10-year-old son is obsessed with Concorde. I'm going to send him this
article.

~~~
russb
Send him the link below if you really want to blow his mind. 100 pages of
discussion between pilots, designers, aerodynamicists, FAs, etc.

CliveL was my favorite.

[https://www.pprune.org/tech-log/423988-concorde-
question.htm...](https://www.pprune.org/tech-log/423988-concorde-
question.html)

~~~
throwaway_sst
Or he might like this, reorganised for his reading pleasure:
[https://paulross.github.io/pprune-
concorde/docs/index.html](https://paulross.github.io/pprune-
concorde/docs/index.html)

------
andr
An interesting aspect in the demise of the Concorde has nothing to do with the
Concorde, but how other long haul airplanes changed with time. By the late
90s, you had lay-flat business class seats, in flight entertainment, and even
fancier service in first class. The Concorde, on the other hand, was a small
plane (2 by 2, single aisle), and while it cost more than first class, seats
were similar to premium economy today (38" seat pitch). As you had to pay much
more for a crappier seat, it is rumored that as much as half the passengers on
each flight were just free upgrades and award flights.

------
aj7
With an impractical or uneconomic product, the best version, often a mini tour
de force, comes out just before cancellation.

------
Theodores
It would be nice to make one of these much like a resto mod car or how one
might make a space invaders game cabinet with a Raspberry Pi on board. Imagine
if you could 3D print the thing, slap in the dashboard from an A340 and the
engines from some retired Eurofighter Typhoons.

~~~
defterGoose
This guy gets aeronautical engineering.

