I was in the lounge at LHR once when the BA Concorde took off - and yes, it was orders of magnitude louder than any other non-military plane I have ever been close to. It rattled all the windows in the terminal and that was from the runway which was a decent distance away.
It must have been 2001 or 2002 (after the AF crash) because the other thing I noticed was that they had a vehicle go out in front of it, and it did a pass down the runway before take off (presumably to look for any debris, like that which caused the Paris crash).
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Or no food at all if you are a vegetarian (or any other special meal needer) and flying with United.
“They didn’t load any special meals for the flight” and then off. No apology, concern for people having no food for 16 hours, offer of alternative.
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That’s the truth. I walked through the Concorde on display at the Seattle Museum of Flight and holy shit was it narrow. It was clearly not designed with comfort in mind.
Depends on what you consider a failure. In terms of concept, technology, and safety it was a huge success. It was a failure in the sense that it didn’t do anything to advance the idea of supersonic passenger travel and wasn’t particularly profitable to run.
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…which is where the simple “it’s physics!” critique gets a bit more complicated.
Higher speed allows for a higher flight ceiling (because you can get more lift from a given wing area if the air molecules are hitting it more frequently and with greater force). At higher altitudes, the air is thinner, reducing drag (but also cutting lift back down again).
Push that far enough, and you get into Silbervogel-style suborbital skimmers. Push it a bit further, and you get Skylon-style spaceplanes.
Probably never going to be practically economical, but not totally unreasonable.
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Spot on!
ICBMs actually clear the atmosphere in their trajectory. ( that’d be like a Skylon, right?)
I’m pretty sure the Concorde went to 60,000 ft for this very reason: thinner air ==> less fuel penalty.
While it is possible to engineer around the simplistic physics I mention, those physics will always force the vehicle into a tight corner of the design space.
Which suggests the future of long-range supersonic transport might be something like an optimized SpaceX Falcon. Elon claims he can get his launch cost down to $500,000 per launch. With a six person Dragon capsule, that means you can get to any other spaceport on earth in less than 90 minutes for $100,000.
Is there a market for that? and what does the TSA screening look like?
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Ha! try a Military flight from the US to South Africa. My longest military flight was 39 hours. Of course we stopped for fuel, but nobody was allowed off. Some flights, we were allowed off, but we had to stand in a square painted on the runway. The best thing about hitting O-4 rank was to be allowed into the terminal.
Yes, I know that we are getting close to a “Four Yorkshiremen” sort of conversation.
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I was fortunate enough to fly on Air France’s Concorde (and it’s Concorde, not the Concorde) from JFK to CDG. It was a business trip and Air France gave you one way on Concorde as an upgrade.
It was the best flight I ever had. I don’t really like flying, it makes me nervous and turbulence scares me. A 60,000 feet, the air was so thin there is no turbulence. Like being in a train. Looking out the window you can indeed see the curvature of the Earth and the stars in a black sky. I wish I had a camera with me.
It was small inside, like a large private plane. Fancy leather seats. In the lavatory I had to stoop since the ceiling was low. They had a large digital display at the front on the cabin that showed you the current mach speed of the plane. When it blew past 1.5, that was a trip. When we got to Paris, you could put your hand on the inside of the fuselage and it was warm.
I still have the menu. There were cocktails and then a meal with champagne and cognac afterwards. For a 4-hour flight, no less.
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The problem with the SpaceX style designs compared to spaceplanes is that the lack of aerodynamic lift requires a much higher TWR; you have to lift on your engines instead of your wings, which means TWR must be >1 the whole way. This pretty much limits you to using inefficient oxidising rocketry for the entire process.
Wings allow you to take a longer time on the runup, which lets you get away with using more efficient air-breathing jets for the initial stages. The downside is that once you boost for space, those wings are nothing but dead weight…
Aero engineering is always about balancing trade-offs. Faster lets you go higher, but requires bigger engines and a tougher airframe. Smaller wings reduce weight and drag if you hold AoA and strength constant…but less lift means you need a larger AoA for level flight (increasing drag) and increases wing loading (requiring more strength, which usually implies more weight).
Anything you do to reduce one problem usually has the side-effect of making a different problem worse.
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This is why my startup is all about passenger ICBM travel. Speed and style.
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Is it really a failure if it is in service for more than 40 years as the only aircraft in it’s class?
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They are really tiny on the inside. One of them is at the Flight Museum here in Seattle and you can walk through the passenger area.
As stated at the end of the video the seats are narrow and I had to duck my head walking down the aisle and I am only 5’11".
Still would be cool to get up that high and go mach 2.
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All Nippon Airways from JFK to Tokyo is 14 hours of not the worst flight I have been on. Decent meals for airline food, free TVs in the seat with a bunch of movies, TV shows and video games. Unlimited beverages. The seats are uncomfortable, but walking around is not impossible.
But holy shit, the jet lag on the return leg is a killer.
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I had a flight from Sydney to Colorado (actually three flights, with a six-hour layover in LA).
Got on the plane in Sydney, said hello to the person next to me. They asked what I did for a living; I told them I was a scientist.
Then they started talking about the “scientific basis” of psychic powers…
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I have no fear of flying, and I’m generally not claustrophobic, but 4 hours from SeaTac to LAX is plenty long enough for me. If I’m flying much longer than that I better be allowed to smoke weed or drink.
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Oh, you’re not a fan of the whole, “leave Wednesday morning, sit for an eternity, arrive Wednesday morning” thing? 
I agree. It’s brutal.
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There’s your problem right there.
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It was for the manufacturers, as they basically had to give them away to British Airways and Air France.
A ride in a bullet train is the closest I’ll ever come to that experience… But I tell you what, that’s pretty damn groovy. At 300 clicks, there’s fresh scenery out the window every 10-15 seconds, and you can see the horizon move.
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