
The Revival of Concorde - cryptoz
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/luxury/travel/83904/concorde-flights-planned-to-resume-and-aircraft-proposed-for-display-in-london.html?curator=MediaREDEF
======
idlewords
For anyone with a few hours to spare geeking out about Concorde, I recommend
this thread:

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

It starts off slow with a technical question, but gradually pulls in some of
the plane's designers (and even a flight attendant) discussing every aspect of
the plane's design and operation. One of the most amazing aviation threads on
the Internet.

~~~
yitchelle
It was fascinating to see the prototype drawings on the wing designs on this
thread, plus many other design aspects of the Concorde. Thanks for sharing.

------
johngalt
The Concorde is one of those early implementations that is just big enough to
barely work, yet never really succeeds, while also sucking all the air out of
the room for any other ideas. The aviation fan side of me would love to see
the Concorde fly again but my gut says that trying to resurrect the Concorde
will only delay any chance of regular supersonic flights in the future.

~~~
idlewords
There's nothing about Concorde that ruined it for anyone else. The problems
that killed SST programs—high fuel costs and noise—remain unsolved. The plane
was a pretty remarkable piece of engineering given the physical constraints.

~~~
qq66
One more thing that shut down the Concorde was the post-9/11 increase in
security procedures at airports, greatly diminshing the relative advantage of
supersonic flights. If getting on the plane takes an extra (unpleasant) 45
minutes on each end, then the percentage time savings from supersonic flight
is reduced.

~~~
hn9780470248775
Are post-9/11 security times really longer? Security screening actually seems
pretty efficient (i.e. quick) to me. Even before 9/11 we had baggage x-ray and
passenger metal detection. These measures were introduced in December 1972.

~~~
miah_
Yes. I have to opt-out every time I fly now which adds ~20-30 minutes to my
visit to security.

~~~
hughes
Opt-out of what?

~~~
diyorgasms
Presumably the millimeter wave body scanners, which are both invasive and
relatively unstudied in its health effects.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Apparently millimeter wave radiation can be ionizing under the right
circumstances. That's sort of terrifying.

[http://arxiv.org/abs/0910.5294](http://arxiv.org/abs/0910.5294)

~~~
oakwhiz
The paper you referred to doesn't make any claims with regards to ionization -
the effects considered are mainly having to do with the molecular dynamics
behaviors of DNA.

------
sandworm101
With the increased number of ultra-rich these days, Concorde or another SST is
probably more viable then ever. It's certainly less ridiculous than talk of
suborbital rocket planes.

The kid in me wants to see Concorde fly as an aircraft, but the working adult
would see it as yet another toy for the very rich, undeserving of any special
consideration from my ilk. When I see a ferrari drive by I think "cool car"
but I certainly would be against any and all tax breaks or special treatment
to keep it on the road. Mounting a Concorde on a special platform in the
middle of the London Tames seems like a cheap tourist trap.

~~~
gaius
_The kid in me wants to see Concorde fly as an aircraft, but the working adult
would see it as yet another toy for the very rich, undeserving of any special
consideration from my ilk._

Did you ever hear the term "jet set" used to describe the glamorous social
elite, well that term comes from the days when international air travel was
the exclusive preserve of the super rich. Nowadays you can jump on a plane for
less than the cost of a meal at the airport (+ taxes of course). Small-minded
attitudes like yours would have kept us living in caves because people in mud
huts were the "undeserving rich".

~~~
superuser2
As far as international air travel, I've never seen a flight from the US to
Europe for less than $1,000. That's a damn expensive airport meal.

Short-haul commuter flights are a different thing entirely.

~~~
gaadd33
Really? I routinely travel to US to Europe for between $600 and $800. Still
not an airport meal but not that insane.

------
dankohn1
I flew Concorde right after it came back into service in late 2001, right
after the crash. Highlights were feeling the heat on the windows and seeing
the curvature of the Earth. Downsides were tight seats, and the fact that it
didn't save that much time vs. a conventional jet. But, it was amazing, and I
still wear my Concorde cufflinks. It still seems complete uneconomic.

------
PhasmaFelis
It's really weird to see a frequent fliers' club come together and open their
wallets with the sort of dollar values normally seen at, say, alumni events
for a major university, or perhaps a charity fundraiser for an ongoing natural
disaster.

Then again, when one reads things like "A particularly extravagant excursion
was a one-day visit to the pyramids in Cairo in 1982; priced at £780, it was
marketed as the most expensive day trip in the world," and ponders the sort of
mindset where "most expensive in the world" is considered a marketing point,
F. Scott Fitzgerald does come to mind: "Let me tell you about the very rich.
They are different from you and me."

------
VeejayRampay
The French and the English built the Concorde in the late 60's and the French
also built the HST known as "TGV" in the early 70's, a train that to this day
(with newer iterations) holds speed records for a conventional train (proof
that the initial design was excellent). After all this, people still like to
joke about how the French are "not good engineers".

~~~
maus42
Well, usually people who are saying that are thinking about the everyday
results of French engineering, like the electronics of Renaults and Citroens.

------
userbinator
Interesting trivia: the maximum external dimension of the Concorde's fuselage
is 3.32m, whereas the overall diameter of the GE90-115B, the engine used on
some 777s, is 3.429m. It's a very narrow plane.

~~~
privong
For another point of reference, the max cabin width of a Boeing 737 is 3.53m
and the fuselage width is 3.76m[0].

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737#Specifications](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737#Specifications)

~~~
brc
So you could fit a Concorde fuselage inside a 737? wow.

------
grecy
"To see the future, go to a museum and look at the Concord" \- Jeremy Clarkson

------
bambax
> _the club is aiming to purchase a Concorde currently stationed near Orly
> Airport in Paris_

Here it is on Street View:
[https://www.google.fr/maps/@48.715764,2.3727748,3a,75y,274.5...](https://www.google.fr/maps/@48.715764,2.3727748,3a,75y,274.58h,85.91t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s1mVqhC-
jLCt-tdB-SaKOQA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656)

and here's a picture I took of it a year ago:
[http://imgur.com/UtD294i](http://imgur.com/UtD294i)

It doesn't appear to be in great shape.

------
billiam
A sign of our imminent extinction, no doubt. Let's double down on JP-4! Party
like its 1989, or til the seas are flooding the runway!

------
cstross
Supersonic commercial passenger travel is almost certainly dead for the
foreseeable future. (Small supersonic bizjets are another issue entirely.)
Here's why:

To start with, Concorde was a high-maintenance airframe, more like a military
aircraft than an airliner. Each airliner averaged about a day of maintenance
in the hangar per two hours of flight, so made one return trans-Atlantic
crossing per week. It also burned roughly 100 tons of fuel shipping 100
passengers between NYC and London in 3h30m, compared to a 747 burning the same
amount of fuel to ship 450 passengers between London and San Francisco; about
5-10x the fuel burn per passenger-mile.

But the reason it eventually tanked in the market ...

Suppose you're flying London-NYC, post-9/11\. You can queue up for security
checks 2 hours before you take your seat, then either fly on a regular
subsonic airliner or Concorde. After your flight you spend 1 hour getting
through immigration and customs at JFK. Total time on security/queueing: about
3 hours. Total time in flight: 3h30m or 7h. So Concorde only cuts your _end-
to-end_ travel time from 10h to 6h30m.

Note that a Concorde seat is a cramped, narrow coach-class seat. Okay, there's
first-class food and drink and a buffet in the departure lounge: but it's
still coach-class leg-room. Meanwhile, a first class seat on a 747 gets you a
lie-flat bed along with your posh nosh ...

But if you have the money to fly Concorde, you have the money to pay for a
seat on a private bizjet or a charter service like Netjets. It's still
subsonic, but you by-pass the _entire_ check-
in/security/boarding/immigration/customs mess. Just drive through a gate and
up to your bizjet, board it, and it takes off _when you 're ready for it_, not
vice versa. And on arrival, an immigration officer comes out to meet you and
stamp your passport (if you pay extra -- part of the service). Travel time:
7h.

The takeaway is that the super-rich/first class jet-set passengers deserted
Concorde because they could get the same travel time for the same money on
private business jets, without being treated like cattle by the TSA.

Even if you could wave a magic wand and streamline the queueing/bureacracy for
Concorde passengers, there remains the fact that if you re-started services
tomorrow they'd only be able to manage one flight in each direction per day
(if they had a fleet of six hulls magically preserved and ready to fly).
Whereas the bizjet is ready to fly whenever the passenger wants it.

Upshot: mass supersonic jet travel is dead for the time being. A market _may_
exist for supersonic bizjets (and indeed Aerion claim to be bringing a Mach
1.5 bizjet to market within the next 5 years -- but someone or other has been
saying some variation on this theme since about 1990). The only way we'll see
supersonic passenger airliners the size of or larger than Concorde again is if
we get a propulsion technology breakthrough that makes it feasible to run a
scheduled daily-or-more-frequent service across distances that make it
desirable -- LAX to Tokyo or Beijing, London to Sydney, and so on. Nuclear,
anyone?

------
swehner
Something called global warming? What I understood, this is quite a wasteful
machine.

~~~
andreasvc
All manner of transportation and industry is contributing to global warming.
Unfortunately, that is typically not an important factor in these kinds of
decisions.

