Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/09/24/supersonic-a-glorious-new-art.html
β¦
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The air museum in Seattle has one. I was surprised at how small the interior space is.
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Itβs pretty shocking to be sure. Definitely not the kind of luxury I would have expected from such an expensive flight. Very narrow and cramped seats.
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All things Concorde, weird.
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Sorry to be picky, but itβs βConcordeβ, not βthe Concordeβ. The designers made a big deal of that distinction.
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Tell it to the model of the Concorde I made out of legos.
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The photoβs not mine, but I grew up with one of these mixed in the cupboard with our Corelle and Burger King collectibles 
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I remember hearing Rush Limbaugh chiming in just after the crash of Air France Flight 4590 in 2000 (though for the life of me I canβt for the life of me remember why I was listening to his show). His takeaway from the tragedy was βyeah, I flew on the Concorde once and itβs not really as luxurious as people make it out to be.β
Thanks, I just went on a huge dive down a rabbithole about the crash of 4590 in Paris.
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The tangible luxury was time saved. Concorde was aimed at people who charge very large amounts of money per hour and who werenβt making it stuck on a 707 as it toiled for seven hours over the Atlantic.
The intangible luxury was that you could cough up Β£5k for a ticket (a number plucked out of thin air by BOAC) which put you in a different league to regular first class travellers.
Concorde was the last gasp of true glamour in aviation. It was also impossibly beautiful and why have I just ordered this book?
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For your daily dose of the Concorde stuff.
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A better title could have been Supersonique: The Concorde Years (1976-2003)
Or just, you knowβ¦ Concorde: Complete βBβ Sides.
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That silverware set looked like the sort of design that so preciously valued appearance of use that I dislike it. That spoon looks borderline unusable. That bottleopener though, I LOVE it.
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The aircraft is a thing of beauty. Itβs interior is a thing of claustrophobia, even just walking through it.
I was on hand the day The Museum of Flight at Boeing Field received its Concorde. The aircraft is apparently heavier than it appears; the first tug they brought in to pull it close to the museum had too light a towbar, which broke under the weight of the plane. It took a good 45 minutes, as I remember, to get a new towbar and pull the poor aircraft into place. It was winter, everyone was cold, and no one really cared.
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https://www.pprune.org/tech-log/423988-concorde-question.html
A magical beast.
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That bottleopener deserve a fanclub by itself.
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Which reminds me, I really need to find some post-millennials to talk to about technological progress:
βWhen I was a kid, technology was primitive. Reinstalling an operating system on my Mac took over 5 minutes, the worldβs biggest spaceships could only take at most 7 people at a time to orbit and back, and the worldβs fastest passenger plane took almost three hours to get from London to New York.β
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Brainspore and MikeR make good points in reply, but also β¦ people were on average thinner back then, I suspect.
And I love that Concorde-shaped bottle opener. Want!
Thereβs one selling on eBay right now. Iβd buy it but I already have a drawer full of bottle openers that I donβt use.
