GTP Alternative Cool Wall: 1965-1979 Aérospatiale-BAC Concorde

1965-1979 Aérospatiale-BAC Concorde

  • Total voters
    99
  • Poll closed .
AlvaroF
The Lord Kelvin Ice Box should be renamed after the SR-71. Probably the coolest thing ever
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I thought it was Steve McQueen Land that needed renaming (as the coolest category)
Anyway, surely it would be Cucumber Land. Cool as a cucumber?
 
Jimlaad43
I thought it was Steve McQueen Land that needed renaming (as the coolest category)
Anyway, surely it would be Cucumber Land. Cool as a cucumber?
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Whatever :lol:. I'm unsure about cucumbers since they are used as dildos. (I actually know one story about this thing)
 
If Steve McQueen fails to make Steve McQueen's Land, then I might rename it to The Boomerang Nebula. Now, back to Concorde.
 
I actually did a small write up on Concorde for when we had the Bugatti Veryon for the "Car of the week, beater or sleeper? thread.

The conclusion I came to is that they both showed what was possible in terms of technology and speed for each industry but also had their own flaws mostly being cost to build and sell.

Whilst I never got the chance to see Concorde in action with my own eyes, I respect it for what it set out to do and did, carrying passengers at supersonic speeds. :bowdown:

Sub-zero 👍
 
Roo
In the summer of 2003 I attended an international Scout camp in Windsor Great Park, about 7 miles south west of Heathrow. A number of things contributed to that week being one of the best of my life, and one of those things was that once in the morning and once in the afternoon, every day, whatever you were doing would be interrupted by
BOOM​
and everyone would look up and see that shape going supersonic over our heads. It was utterly magical.

Concorde was a brilliant thing and I'm glad I got to see them fly. I imagine it got a bit tiresome if you lived in the flight path of an airport visited by it every day, but for me seeing Concorde fly was a rarity and a privilege, and I know that was a feeling shared by many. Easy Sub Zero.
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I've been standing in the flight hangar of an aircraft carrier as an F-16 went supersonic off the bow and shook the whole thing. And yet I still envy being able to see such an elegant thing moving so quickly.

haitch40
Hope to see the return of supersonic air travel one day.
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IIRC there are some supersonic private jets in the works, so maybe some day it won't be so costly to do the same with passenger jets.

Turtle
I've seen one in a museum and the only thing there that got more of my attention was the SR-71. Not even the space craft things were as interesting, Sub-Zero.
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Gotta love Udvar-Hazy. I'm glad the SR-71 and Concorde are a good distance apart. I don't think I could handle being so close to both of them at the same time.

And the shuttle there isn't so great once you've seen the Atlantis in person.
 
Minty
Gotta love Udvar-Hazy. I'm glad the SR-71 and Concorde are a good distance apart. I don't think I could handle being so close to both of them at the same time.

And the shuttle there isn't so great once you've seen the Atlantis in person.
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That was the name of the place, thanks for reminding me. I went to two museums while I was in the area I think, I was kind of worried that they were in separate places and my memory was failing me.
 
I saw one of these in Washington once... that museum also had an SR-71, it was probably the same museum (although the Enola Gay was far more interesting than anything else for me).

Anyway, the Concorde was the airplane equivalent of the Chaparral 2J: A machine with too much potential. A prime example of a modern marvel.

Sub-Zero. Possibly the coolest aircraft in existence.
 
The performance is unmatched - especially for it's time - but the nose of the plane is extremely ugly and what kills it for me. Uncool.
 
The Bman
The performance is unmatched - especially for it's time - but the nose of the plane is extremely ugly and what kills it for me. Uncool.
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Did you read how it works? I mean even in the first positon (position A it is still ugly to you?)

I'm glad that @Adamgp and @Azure Flare at least made it easy for people to read and understand why it looks like most of the images on here and also that it doesn't always look like that.
 
I've never flown in one, but I was able to go inside one at museum in Washington(State), I think ran by Boeing? It was so tiny inside, if I was inside that thing while it did Mach 2, I'd been in a fetal position. :lol: Same museum also let you walk inside through JFK's Air Force One. Very cool experience.

Shinkansen of the air. Sub Zero.
 
Grayfox
Shame the crash pretty much killed the company.
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Well that and the fact that September 11th and the entire downturn of the industry during that early 2000s, as well as the cost of maintenance. All that combined made for an expense that was sitting on the runway more times than actually being used and thus wasn't feasible compared to a fleet of Airbus
 
There was no real push to overhaul the dated analogue fly-by-wire system for digital FBW either. And since it was almost five times more fuel efficient per passenger to cross the Atlantic by jumbo (though Concorde itself used slightly less fuel than a 747 for each transatlantic journey), airlines were more inclined to go for the more profitable route anyway.

Not even interest from Branson in taking control of the fleet could help get them back in the air when he offered £5mil per aircraft (which was a fraction of the actual unit cost).



In terms of historical value, it was an awe-inspiring machine that made the supersonic dream come true for those who could afford such a novelty. Nowadays, it stands as a symbol of what the future of supersonic flight could bring. A timeless delta shape that helps stir such ambitions, and the hope that we'll be able to hear the characteristic double boom again someday soon.

 
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I never saw these fly but I've seen one up close and it's an impressive machine. I don't really know much about why they took them out of service but I'm sure that there'd be people who'd want to fly on them again. I would.

Sub-Zero.
 
SVT Cobra GT
I never saw these fly but I've seen one up close and it's an impressive machine. I don't really know much about why they took them out of service but I'm sure that there'd be people who'd want to fly on them again. I would.

Sub-Zero.
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Air France Flight 4590
A crash that happened right after take off which was caused by debris from a normal jet being run over and striking the fuel tank which caught fire.
Flight 4590 ended up crashing into a motel.

By the time all concordes had their fuel tanks strengthened and the cost of running them pretty much ended them.
As well as other factors.

Concordes main passengers were business people not your average joe..
 
As a young kid there were only two planes I knew about. The Boeing 737, and the Concorde. I knew about the 737 because my dad works with these planes on a daily basis. I've seen every part of these planes, even walked inside with the interior completely stripped out for maintenance.

I knew about the Concorde because of the speed. How I longed to fly in one of these. To feel what it feels like to break the sound barrier. Unfortunately in 2003, that dream had to say goodbye.

I have an absolute obsession with aerodynamics. Whether it is on a racecar, airplane, boat, etc. The Concorde represents true aerodynamic performance. The nose, the delta wings, the amazingly small cabin space. All these have the purpose to scoot air around at speeds well above 1,000 MPH.

There is only one answer. Sub-Zero.
 
Sub-Zero. It's a shame the company went bust, it would have been interesting to see what they would have come up with in this day and age.
 
Let's not forget that Concorde is not a modern plane. It's old, really old in terms of aerospace industry.

And yet it's unsurpassed in one key area. Speed. And don't forget, it didn't just break the sound limit, it smashed it. Mach 2. It was faster than anything else the RAF flew at the time.

If it had been given clearance to fly supersonic overland it would have stood a better chance of staying in business and a successor. Sadly, that wasn't to be.
 
The RAF flew Concorde? :confused:

Last I checked, it was flown by Air France, British Airways, Singapore Airlines, and Braniff International Airways. The RAF never came into it.
 
Roger the Horse
The RAF flew Concorde? :confused:

Last I checked, it was flown by Air France, British Airways, Singapore Airlines, and Braniff International Airways. The RAF never came into it.
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What he's saying is that the Concordes that Air France and BA flew were quicker than any military jets that the RAF flew at that time.
 
Some technology and engineering has a spark of magic as if it's taken on a little bit of the soul of those who conceived and created it. The Concorde is without doubt in that exclusive club of human achievement. It was also a time machine as you could land before you took off. What more do you want? Sub Zero.
 
DQuaN
DO YOU WEAR SOCKS WITH SANDALS AND LISTEN TO JAMES BLUNT???
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:lol: :lol: :lol:

Wait a minute... I wear socks with sandals... :grumpy:

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It saddens me that there are people alive nowadays, and apparently legal on the internet, too young to remember the wonder at supersonic air travel, or to even remember a time when every single space launch was an intense media event. Even after dozens of them, each Space Shuttle launch was something to be marveled at... a monumental achievement in engineering, performed by mayflies whose lifespans are not even the blink of an eye in the cosmic scale of things.

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The Concorde was one of those things we still had, when growing up, that would cause you to go... "Oooh... aaaah... Damn it... I want to be an engineer!"

Today's generation, though... takes all these physical wonders for granted. 100-plus story buildings? Yawn. Stopping a river and creating an artificial lake miles wide? Yawn. Supersonic jetliner? Double yawn.

Oooh... somebody filmed a flying banana on the space station! Neat!

International Space Station itself? Triple Yawn.

Where's your sense of wonder, people?

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May sound hypocritical for someone who doesn't like the Veyron all that much. But the Veyron is simply a very, very expensive brick built to go fast. It's not a 190-mph Insight, or a jet-powered car.

Marvelling at the Veyron would be like going "ooh" over a special-edition 777 that went 100 km/h faster than all the other 777s.

The Concorde is a jetliner that goes over twice as fast as any other jetliner. That would be like a Veyron going 800 km/h (which, I admit, would actually be cool).

But even if it did, the Veyron would still be an ugly triumph of surface design over function (the design was penned first. The engineers were forced to work around it). The Concorde? Beak down, coming in for a typical high angle landing... looked as close as you could get to a mechanical raptor. And that part wasn't on purpose.

Sub-fricking-zero.

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You know, the energy crunch started long before 2008.

Shrinking margins of excess mean that we have not had a man on the moon since the 70's.

We have not developed any new orbital vehicles since the 80's.

We have not had any new nuclear seacraft built since the 90's (one was completed recently, but construction started decades ago).

It's a sad comment on the state of funding for engineering that we seem to be out of fundamental breakthroughs that can be achieved given what our society is willing to budget for research. We still don't have practical fusion. We still don't have cheap solar power or orbiting solar power stations. We still don't have nuclear cars. And we have yet to travel to other solar systems... let alone other planets.

/Rant Off.
 
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