Technology Before Time Was Ready To Accept Its Existence

Concorde - One of a kind and sadly put to eternal rest now in the annals of aerospace history. The first of its new kind of passenger aircraft came into service through a joint venture between British Aircraft Corporation (BAC) and Aerospatiale (formally 'Sud Aviation.')

A truly Anglo-French undertaking with its maiden flight having taken place on 2nd March 1969 from Toulouse, France, and lasted for approximately 27 minutes flight time.

The craft themselves had a maximum cruising motion of over TWICE the speed of sound (1350mph) and could carry 100 passengers and 3 flight crew, with the ability to travel 4,143 miles in range. It was powered by four Rolls-Royce/SNECMA Olympus 593 engines - joint build by Rolls-Royce & Safran Aircraft Engines (hence, SNECMA.)

In context to this French maiden flight, the initial British-built prototype was conducted the month later on 9th April of the same year; flying from a testing runway in Bristol then landing within a shorter time of just 22 minutes further afield in Gloucestershire.

Both joint venture flights only ever achieved speeds averaging slightly below 300mph (or 480kph) with the first-ever 'supersonic' speed flight successfully completed on 1st October 1969 - achieving a 9-minute flight of Mach 1.5 (a staggering 1,125mph.)

'Mach speed,' - relates to a craft when it moves faster than the speed of sound.

With the flights of Concorde becoming a common fixture, came also the 'Sonic Boom,' (no it is nothing to do with that cuddly little hedgehog) but this sound was a more rather a deafening explosive noise caused by the shock wave created from an aircraft when it achieves a travel speed which is faster than the speed of sound.

Which approximates to:

-- Normal & Dry conditions with a temperature of 68F (or 20C) equates to:

768 mph / 667 knots / 1,125 ft per sec. /343 m per sec. / 1,235 kmh

See her Toulouse test flight below:

Courtesy YouTube video archives (accessed by author dated 06.07/2021)

The very first commercial flights took place on 21st January 1976 by British Airways, from London Heathrow to Bahrain (Persian Gulf) and by Air France from Paris to Rio (Brazil) the same day.

???? ????

Yes, it's that lightbulb moment...

Have you noticed how mankind put humans on the Moon over six years BEFORE we had the ability to build and fly Concorde...

Coincidentally and quite ironically, the Concorde design, build, and testing flights were carried out only a few months before the historic Apollo 11 manned landing on the surface of the Moon which successfully took place on 20th July of that same year... (shown below)

Courtesy YouTube video archives (accessed by author dated 06.07/2021)

The Costing Debate

The British Government held grave concerns regarding the commercial viability of the Concorde project as a whole. Cabinet papers released under the '30-year rule,' warned the project was a disaster waiting to happen and would end up costing the United Kingdom upwards of £900m.

Concorde's future was further dampened by its abundant use of fuel. The project was launched in the midst of the fuel crisis, so as a result, Concorde was unable to enter & compete with the far more lucrative 'Trans-Pacific' flight market simply because of its reliance on small fuel tanks and heavy aviation fuel consumption.

Safety Concerns Wrapping it Up

The flight project's image received a further major blow when on 25th July 2000, one of its fleet of aircraft crashed near Paris (France) killing 113 people (109 passengers, and 4 people on the ground.) Following on from a huge cash injection of £17m being spent on safety improvements, Concorde returned to active commercial service, just months later in November 2001.

In a joint ventured decision by its designers British Airways & Air France, the Concorde era was finally brought to a close, as a result of repair & maintenance costs, coupled with a falling passenger revenue.

-- Concorde's final commercial flight being on 23rd October 2003...

Which here I would like to bring you another of my published articles highlighting safety concerns, which put the US Space Shuttle systems into being 'mothballed.'

STS 51-L Challenger Explosion

Takeaway Time

Despite Concorde having been a brilliant idea, it was fundamentally flawed. Its design had not been fully investigated, and seemingly was rushed into active service as a result of its initial onboarding development costs. An active example being of the initial UK Government warnings over costs, and evidence that came to light due to the crash investigation of 25th July 2000, identifying hairline cracks on the wings throughout the fleet of craft. Furthermore, the doomed craft had been over-laden in the safe carriage 'take-off' weight by 1,790lbs. Rather disturbingly too, is the evidence that a spacer was missing from having been installed in the left-hand main landing gear - later to be discovered sat in an Air France maintenance workshop (it had never been installed!)

-- So let's just pause for thought here and join a comparison between the non-installation of this spacer on the doomed Concorde, and the faulty 'O'-ring on the ill-fated Challenger (see in the above link to the article STS 51-L) and what do we find?

The errors in both disasters were of HUMAN cause...

• 1. Missing landing-gear-spacer left in maintenance workshop by the repair crew.
• 2. Faulty O-ring not noticed on the space shuttle or replaced by the repair crew.

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