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> it feels like we’ve given up trying to reach for the space age style future envisaged 70 years ago We forget now that Concorde was a politically-motivated at

> it feels like we’ve given up trying to reach for the space age style future envisaged 70 years ago We forget now that Concorde was a politically-motivated attempt to demonstrate that the UK and France were still relevant in the aerospace industry and the project itself was plagued with costly development inefficiencies due to the desire to split the work between the UK and French participants. E.g. working in both metric and imperial units. Building parts in multiple factories. The Soviet equivalent (Tu-144) crashed and burned at the Paris air show and never had any economic justification. The Boeing 2707 was cancelled before it even flew because of cost overruns following the failure of an abortive swing-wing design. Concorde itself only became profitable to operate when the govt wrote off the development costs in 1983 in a deal described as "among the most disastrous conducted by a government minister" [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde#British_Airways_buys_its_Concordes_outright https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde#British_Airways_buys_...

hef19898 3y ago
Concorde was ine of the precusers of modern day Airbus so. As an aircraft, despite being gorgeous and an engineering marvel, it was kind of pointless, I agree.
zoeysmithe 3y ago
Also, it only existed via extreme subsidizes. So working class French and UK people were subsidizing rich people farting in 1st class seats going mach 2. Its funny how its beloved by the "free market" types when it was just a welfare flight for those who thought themselves too self-important to fly a few more hours between major far-away cities. 113 people died in 2000. It wasn't exactly the safest plane out there either. With teleconferencing and modern technology, the need for the business class to show up to far-away places should go down. But a lot of it is entitlement, that is to say, show up for a meeting then enjoy a free vacation while "working." Everything about the Concorde was corrupt if not classist. It was a mistake even if the engineering was impressive. Imagine if that money would instead have gone to public transportation. We'd have the Chunnel in the 70s instead of the 90s.
- ghaff 3y ago
  Concorde was at least partly a remnant of people flying to London to close a deal over lunch and getting back to New York in time to tuck the kids in. I assume that sort of things is at least less common today.
  - bobthepanda 3y ago
    JFK-LHR is still one billion dollars in revenue for British Airways alone. The innovation that killed Concorde was the lie flat business seat. You could be cramped in the Concorde’s leather bus seat for three hours, or you could save money and get a sleep in for six hours.
    - ghaff 3y ago
      It's still a huge route but it's also something you can do on a day flight. Heck, from Boston, I can fly to EWR and still be in London for a late dinner. I don't even need a lie-flat seat. The extra $4K or so in your pocket pays for a lot of reduced comfort for 10 or so hours.
      - bobthepanda 3y ago
        Sure, but an economy seat is pretty irrelevant vs a business seat for someone who was in the market to drop above $10,000 on a Concorde seat anyways.
    - markonen 3y ago
      Not really, because Concorde died in the seventies when the lie flat business seat didn't exist. BA and AF managed to keep the zombie fleet going very profitably all the way until the end in the early 2000s, and that business wasn't killed by the lie flat business class seat either. It was killed by the impossibility of continuing to operate a tiny fleet of '60s planes forever. Now if you said that the reason we don't have ANY supersonic passenger jets today is because lie flat business seats are good enough, then that's a more defendable position, but I'd still say that the overland flight restrictions limiting any SST to just a couple of routes is a bigger factor. When I flew on Concorde the one thought I never had was "I wish I had a lie flat seat and half the airspeed".
meekaaku 3y ago
But a lot of big technological developments hve political motivations, because governments are the first and biggest customer. Nuclear energy, internet, space race etc, have all been politically motivated, funded and supported.
- bell-cot 3y ago
  True - but the actual development of complex and expensive technologies tends to happen far faster, cheaper, and more reliably when a government feels a burning need for Actual Working Technology ASAP. Vs. when the whole thing is some combination of political showboating and spreading pork to everyone who wants "their share" of government money.
- dehrmann 3y ago
  Those aren't fair comparisons. Everything you listed was genuinely new and potentially revolutionary. The Concorde was 2x as fast as existing planes.
dtagames 3y ago
Even more than a supersonic jet, Concorde was a successful attempt to create a homegrown European airspace industry. The aircraft itself was a pioneer in fly-by-wire technologies, which Airbus (the current name of the consortium that build Concorde) later commercialized, also at an initial loss. In this way, the entire business was kickstarted by the governments of Britain and France. The net result was a company that now outsells Boeing, especially in light of the latter's quality issues. Even though Concorde never made money (and never really could make money w/ the supersonic restrictions it had), I think it was still a win for the companies and countries involved.
- KineticLensman 3y ago
  > I think it was still a win for the companies and countries involved Agree, although I'd love to know how many of Concorde's backers were considering this long-game effect. I suspect that the Airbus of today would be seen as even more fantastic than a supersonic aircraft.
  - bobthepanda 3y ago
    It was pretty fundamental. At the time commercial aviation was a different two horse race between Boeing and McDonnell-Douglass. The aviation industry in Europe was not doing well and those industries and their suppliers represented millions of jobs.
- panick21_ 3y ago
  This kind of ignores the alternative reality. The idea that well if not Concorde then nothing else would have existed and whatever would have existed wouldn't have been 'European'. This isn't really true. If you look at the British case for example, there were alternative planes in development that asked for British funding. While those projects were British lead, they had specifically designed them to have suppliers all over Europe, including France. Now that plane could have been a failure or a success, we wont know. Looking at the design, it seems to have some potential. The French on the other hand might have invested their money in another kind of plane primarily from France but with supply chains outside of France as well. You could see something like Airbus emerging out of that too. Or maybe something that wasn't Airbus but like Airbus. Or a you could see a British lead company that has success in the narrow body world and later a French plane with success in the Wide-body world. Those could eventually merge. History could have gone many ways, and could have failed many ways. That we have Airbus now does track back to Concord, but is not true that its clear that without Concord we wouldn't have something Airbus like.
mmsimanga 3y ago
Many politically motivated undertaking leave us better off. Modern day rocket engineers are literally working to get us to click on adverts. No I am not saying let's encourage politically motivated initiatives but not everything that costs a lot of money and doesn't necessarily workout is a bad thing. Look at how much was spent on Covid vaccine mandates. Now that was a waste of money and resources.

hef19898 3y ago

Concorde was ine of the precusers of modern day Airbus so. As an aircraft, despite being gorgeous and an engineering marvel, it was kind of pointless, I agree.

zoeysmithe 3y ago

Also, it only existed via extreme subsidizes. So working class French and UK people were subsidizing rich people farting in 1st class seats going mach 2. Its funny how its beloved by the "free market" types when it was just a welfare flight for those who thought themselves too self-important to fly a few more hours between major far-away cities. 113 people died in 2000. It wasn't exactly the safest plane out there either. With teleconferencing and modern technology, the need for the business class to show up to far-away places should go down. But a lot of it is entitlement, that is to say, show up for a meeting then enjoy a free vacation while "working." Everything about the Concorde was corrupt if not classist. It was a mistake even if the engineering was impressive. Imagine if that money would instead have gone to public transportation. We'd have the Chunnel in the 70s instead of the 90s.

ghaff 3y ago
Concorde was at least partly a remnant of people flying to London to close a deal over lunch and getting back to New York in time to tuck the kids in. I assume that sort of things is at least less common today.
- bobthepanda 3y ago
  JFK-LHR is still one billion dollars in revenue for British Airways alone. The innovation that killed Concorde was the lie flat business seat. You could be cramped in the Concorde’s leather bus seat for three hours, or you could save money and get a sleep in for six hours.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    It's still a huge route but it's also something you can do on a day flight. Heck, from Boston, I can fly to EWR and still be in London for a late dinner. I don't even need a lie-flat seat. The extra $4K or so in your pocket pays for a lot of reduced comfort for 10 or so hours.
    - bobthepanda 3y ago
      Sure, but an economy seat is pretty irrelevant vs a business seat for someone who was in the market to drop above $10,000 on a Concorde seat anyways.
  - markonen 3y ago
    Not really, because Concorde died in the seventies when the lie flat business seat didn't exist. BA and AF managed to keep the zombie fleet going very profitably all the way until the end in the early 2000s, and that business wasn't killed by the lie flat business class seat either. It was killed by the impossibility of continuing to operate a tiny fleet of '60s planes forever. Now if you said that the reason we don't have ANY supersonic passenger jets today is because lie flat business seats are good enough, then that's a more defendable position, but I'd still say that the overland flight restrictions limiting any SST to just a couple of routes is a bigger factor. When I flew on Concorde the one thought I never had was "I wish I had a lie flat seat and half the airspeed".

meekaaku 3y ago

But a lot of big technological developments hve political motivations, because governments are the first and biggest customer. Nuclear energy, internet, space race etc, have all been politically motivated, funded and supported.

bell-cot 3y ago
True - but the actual development of complex and expensive technologies tends to happen far faster, cheaper, and more reliably when a government feels a burning need for Actual Working Technology ASAP. Vs. when the whole thing is some combination of political showboating and spreading pork to everyone who wants "their share" of government money.
dehrmann 3y ago
Those aren't fair comparisons. Everything you listed was genuinely new and potentially revolutionary. The Concorde was 2x as fast as existing planes.

dtagames 3y ago

Even more than a supersonic jet, Concorde was a successful attempt to create a homegrown European airspace industry. The aircraft itself was a pioneer in fly-by-wire technologies, which Airbus (the current name of the consortium that build Concorde) later commercialized, also at an initial loss. In this way, the entire business was kickstarted by the governments of Britain and France. The net result was a company that now outsells Boeing, especially in light of the latter's quality issues. Even though Concorde never made money (and never really could make money w/ the supersonic restrictions it had), I think it was still a win for the companies and countries involved.

KineticLensman 3y ago
> I think it was still a win for the companies and countries involved Agree, although I'd love to know how many of Concorde's backers were considering this long-game effect. I suspect that the Airbus of today would be seen as even more fantastic than a supersonic aircraft.
- bobthepanda 3y ago
  It was pretty fundamental. At the time commercial aviation was a different two horse race between Boeing and McDonnell-Douglass. The aviation industry in Europe was not doing well and those industries and their suppliers represented millions of jobs.
panick21_ 3y ago
This kind of ignores the alternative reality. The idea that well if not Concorde then nothing else would have existed and whatever would have existed wouldn't have been 'European'. This isn't really true. If you look at the British case for example, there were alternative planes in development that asked for British funding. While those projects were British lead, they had specifically designed them to have suppliers all over Europe, including France. Now that plane could have been a failure or a success, we wont know. Looking at the design, it seems to have some potential. The French on the other hand might have invested their money in another kind of plane primarily from France but with supply chains outside of France as well. You could see something like Airbus emerging out of that too. Or maybe something that wasn't Airbus but like Airbus. Or a you could see a British lead company that has success in the narrow body world and later a French plane with success in the Wide-body world. Those could eventually merge. History could have gone many ways, and could have failed many ways. That we have Airbus now does track back to Concord, but is not true that its clear that without Concord we wouldn't have something Airbus like.

mmsimanga 3y ago

Many politically motivated undertaking leave us better off. Modern day rocket engineers are literally working to get us to click on adverts. No I am not saying let's encourage politically motivated initiatives but not everything that costs a lot of money and doesn't necessarily workout is a bad thing. Look at how much was spent on Covid vaccine mandates. Now that was a waste of money and resources.