There's a Concorde Engine Complete with Afterburner for Sale on eBay | Hacker News Reader

There's a Concorde Engine Complete with Afterburner for Sale on eBay

simpleflying.com

153 pointsiLoveOncall112 comments

One of the strangest sightings in Kansas City, MO is a Concorde nose cone encased in glass in someone's back yard easily seen when driving down the street.

https://flatlandkc.org/curiouskc/question-everything/questio...

Wow, I’m glad I read the entire article. I did not anticipate the answer to: “Why did you buy this?”. Thank you for sharing.

Spoiler for others because I don't like being teased:

> “People come and look at it all the time,” Azima said. “They ask me, ‘Why’d you buy this?’ [I say] ‘I want to be buried in it.’”

Spare parts for the Apollo Lunar Module get auctioned too. NASA apparently just sold the lot when they shut down the Apollo program. Put it in a museum? Nah, we can totally get a fiver for this thing.

I work in aerospace industry now. Trust me, the amount of hardware stored for decades ongoing projects is shocking. Storages are full, basements are full. Labs and offices slowly turn to storages too. Once you throw it away, there is no way to buy a replacement. So if one can get rid of parts for some finished/discontinued project everything gets disposed asap.

Reinstating the pipework caused the first major headache; most parts had been discarded and engineers had to scour scrap yards and museums to find them. One vital piece was discovered being used as an ashtray.

https://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/9664538.the-falklands-raid-...

There are no better souvenirs than those! I have a part of a helicopter tail rotor as a very decorativr paper weight, titanium part sure look sexy if you ask me!

>Labs and offices slowly turn to storages too.

There may or may not be six pelican cases full of junk, I mean totally useful equipment, next to me in my office right now.

Nobody cares about spare parts in a museum unless they add up to a full replica of something recognizable. Selling to people who care is likely much better in the long term.

If they turn out to be valuable our grandkids can read about how someone donated them from their private collection.

Which is why 5000 year old shards of pottery dug up at some site displayed in a museum are so boring. Having the full thing (even a non-original mock up) with the authentic pieces presented as an exploded view of the individual parts would be more interesting.

There are entire Concordes on display.

This is what I like about USA. History? Who gives a damn. ;)

(I don't mean it in a demeaning way. It is just an observation and I think it has some advantages, too, if you do not preserve every building there is for example.)

I believe people in the US care about history, but it's around the person, legend, myth, not around objects.

Firearm auctions are pretty common. High bids are definitely often about person/legend/myth, like being at a famous battle, but many others are pretty much just the gun. I think that's because they're relatively common, affordable, usable, and easy to preserve. There's one Girl with a Pearl Earring made of canvas but millions of wood and metal Lee-Enfield rifles.

Cars seem like they'd be similar but I don't know any car collectors. I've also heard of antique furniture auctions, very curious what those collectors are like.

"History? Who gives a damn" has been the default behavior of humanity until very recently

You could probably say the same about almost any criticism of a modern country.

Not preserving buildings is typically developers thinking their new shiny would be better (mainly because they get paid for it) are always keen to getting rid of the existing building. If the building is lost to a fire, probably an insurance thing. It gets really intriguing when a building owner really really wants a new building but the existing vacant building has been marked historic and cannot be demolished suddenly is lost in a fire.

My cousin worked on the Apollo 13 movie in the prop department. All that extra hardware made his life much easier. He said they didn’t really track what happened to non-flown equipment. A couple things from the Smithsonian had guards.

It has the afterburner, but it is arguably not complete without the variable geometry nozzles (yes, there were two) and intake.

There's lots more information on the nozzles here: https://www.heritageconcorde.com/variable-exhaust-nozzles

Takeaway quote:

The intake and variable exhaust system are together responsible for a good deal of Concorde’s thrust development: about half of the thrust at Mach 2 is due to their combined effect.

Now hang on, reading Russian propaganda makes me completely certain that variable geometry nozzles were invented by the USSR for the SU-37.

So I think it's clear that the information presented by you is hallucinated by a recent large language model.

Just wanted to clear that up.

Interesting from that link that concorde could use in-flight reverse thrust to achieve an increased rate of descent. I wonder if this was regularly used, or only so concorde could descend rapidly enough from cruise altitude if they lost cabin pressure? The oxygen masks aren't effective at cruise altitude, which is one reason the windows are so small - if one fails, they needed to descend quickly before cabin pressure was fully lost.

Link to eBay listing: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/116001533010

"This item is no longer available."

ITAR/DDTC works fast.

It says to me it was sold for £678,000.00. Perhaps only visible in the UK?

I think it depends on some gymnastics of eBay cache. Thought I saw a sale number, then that disappeared on next load.

Congrats to the lucky winner!

interestingly it shows as "Sold for: £565,000.00" for me

If there is anything still covered by ITAR in a 50 year old engine, then it really reflects badly on humanities pace of innovation.

There's probably a lot covered by ITAR in a 78-year-old atomic bomb. For better or for worse, ITAR isn't specifically about new technology secrets, it's about information and material with military application. You can't sell a US WWII tank without rendering its main gun inoperable to a civilian, much less a foreigner. That's not because ITAR is worried about foreign governments reverse-engineering that gun.

Afaik, there's surprisingly little about the atomic bomb construction that's covered by export restrictions.

Fissile materials, ofc.

But the US government took the approach that "secret is better than banned" with the bomb, and just never stated any of the details (as they would have been required to, in order to prohibit them).

MAD trade secrets, I guess.

> You can't sell a US WWII tank without rendering its main gun inoperable to a civilian, much less a foreigner.

You actually can sell a tank with a working cannon (to a civilian in the US, foreign national or not) if you have at least a Type 09 license to deal in destructive devices and the buyer has a destructive device permit. To export it would be a lot harder (and getting the aforementioned permits is no joke either).

Hmm, seems like they missed licensing "Collector of 'Destructive Devices'." Maybe that's the invisible Type 9¾?

  Types of FFL:
  Type 01 – Firearm Dealer/Gunsmith
  Type 02 – Pawnbroker
  Type 03 – Collector
  Type 06 – Manufacture of Ammunition
  Type 07 – Manufacturer of Firearms
  Type 08 – Importer of Firearms
  Type 09 – Dealer of “Destructive Devices”
  Type 10 – Manufacturer of “Destructive Devices”
  Type 11 – Importer of “Destructive Devices”

https://rocketffl.com/ffl-license-types/

There's basically two main classes of destructive devices: explosives and firearms with a bore over half an inch. The permits for the former are mostly issued to demolition and mining and it would be insane to allow anyone to "collect" explosives that degrade and become unstable.

You don't actually need either the FFL or the permit if you just decommission the main gun, which is how most tank and artillery collectors get theirs. DD permits are rarely issued for explosives without a good reason (like construction or mining) so even if you get the permit for the gun, you'll struggle to get one for the shells.

Sure, but one would expect that any country whose military was a credible threat wouldn't be 50 years behind on any technology, and therefore would have independently invented something equivalent, or at least have all the knowledge/technology to be able to.

So…I can buy an X-15?

Sure, Venmo me and I’ll get it shipped today.

If you haven't seen the listing, scroll down.

The engines on the Concorde were Anglo-French Rolls-Royce/Snecma Olympus 593, based on Bristol B.E.10 Olympus, an entirely British project, the second jet engine of its type in the world (preceded by a Pratt and Whitney).

Why would it be covered under American export restrictions?

I think that was the same engine as the Vulcan bomber - I can remember when I was 12 or so watching a Vulcan doing aerobatics above the small Scottish village where I grew up.

A Vulcan being thrown about the sky is quite an impressive sight, but what I really remember was the noise....

Many years later I was sitting in the BA lounge at Heathrow waiting for a flight to Edinburgh and pretty much the whole room started shaking and a loud rumbling could be heard. Someone commented it was Concorde taking off... :-)

Yep, it was the original use case, the Vulcan bomber's engine.

> Many years later I was sitting in the BA lounge at Heathrow waiting for a flight to Edinburgh and pretty much the whole room started shaking and a loud rumbling could be heard. Someone commented it was Concorde taking off... :-)

Unfortunately there was a v2 revision/refresh of the Concorde that implemented many small improvements, including reduced noise, but it never got off the drawing board due to poor sales of the original model, which itself was in part due to the Concorde world wide tour to prop up sales, which used an even louder pre-production model and left a bad impression.

There was also the ear splitting noise of the engines but also what I have since learned was the Vulcan's characteristic "howl"...

I have no idea what the aircrew were doing, apart from having some fun, possibly waiting to land at Lossiemouth or Kinloss...

This seems to be a decent approximation, absent the bone shaking that mics can't capture: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xJlsDiC9TBI&t=12s

Because I'm still having my morning coffee and was too lazy to thresh through the morass of (EU + national + whatever the UK falls under now) regulations to see what the ITAR-equivalent would be.

And so used it as a shorthand. Mea culpa.

But I understand that the UK, France, and EU as a whole do regulate arms exports to some degree (at the very least, with sanctions).

Can you link the regulation then?

As far as I'm aware of UK laws there is nothing preventing the export this engine.

You'd have to go through it with a fine toothed comb and technical spec sheet on the engine, but the consolidated UK Strategic Export Control Lists.

Dual Use List / Annex I, CATEGORY 9 – AEROSPACE AND PROPULSION

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

Why do you believe there is one, if you haven't done the 'fine toothed combing' yet?

Because supersonic jet engines are on the list.

Never said I didn't do the combing.

It's unclear what your reason is for believing there's an actual, specific, restriction, in force against these specific engines.

If you haven't read many of these types of regulations before, a general category that matches means very little.

So is there some reason why you believe there is one?

Because the exclusions are written around civil air certification, of which there are many subsonic examples but few (any?) supersonic examples.

Consequently, it's likely other clauses otherwise targeted to military-only powerplants might apply to the Olympus 593, despite being a civil certified engine, simply by virtue of also being supersonic.

> But I understand that the UK, France, and EU as a whole do regulate arms exports to some degree (at the very least, with sanctions).

Each country has its own rules, but AFAIK they're all on a case per case basis. Which adds complexity in multi-national programmes, like the Eurofighter, which the UK wants to sell to whatever regime regardless of war crimes, but Germany opposes certain sales.

Fun fact my mother was a teen in the 1860s and lived on a farm adjacent to the BAC facility where they were assembling and/or testing components and fondly remembers the time they powered up one of the Olympus engines “and blew out chicken hutch to smithereens and spread parts of it all over the field”. Apparently apologetic staff then helped collect the wreckage and round up the scattered birds (which, as I understand it, were unhurt by the event).

that's an interesting typo on that date. kind of rewrites a lot of history

Whoops.

American export restrictions rarely care about source and rarely care about how old something is. See for example shenanigans between Japanese and German machine makers and exporters about equipment useful to make submarine propellers. Technically it might not be "ITAR" - same result.

The "why" is because they can.

Well-rated seller, too: "GOOD PRODUCT - CAN'T GO WRONG - QUICK DELIVERY - AAAAA+++++"

already sold!

Damn, no Concorde flying for me this xmas then. Gotta wait for another one.

Darn. Now nobody can attach it to a car, like in the urban legend.

I’m fairly skeptical of the “frequently bought together” section

Funny that "compare to similar item" is a "British Airways Concorde Silver Letter Opener"

“Not able to fly but perfect to dismantle and repurpose into collectable pieces of furniture or art”

I mean ... what a tragedy if that will be it's end result!

Interesting that they're a "private seller" on eBay, although seem to actually have quite a business going... https://www.concordemem.com

At Dyson HQ, there is a Concorde engine! (https://www.laurenfleishman.com/industry/ayv6iuo4va6yo3xuuv4...)

“Hey can you move your car? I’ve got a package coming”

I was an aviation and space-obsessed teen in 1994. My uncle was a private pilot. He took me to the Oshkosh EAA show that year. Being the 25th anniversary of the Moon Landing they had what was purported to be the largest gathering of Apollo astronauts all on one stage as dusk was falling. After dark I realized I was going to miss something else I REALLY wanted to see.

So after dark I left this "historic" gathering early believe it or not and rushed to the flight line to watch the Concorde take off on the shuttle flight they brought it in for. With nothing between the runway and the flight line it was possibly the loudest thing I've ever heard, and in the otherwise dead darkness the afterburners lit up the entire place, their flame visible almost as long as the tail cone.

It's sold already: https://jalopnik.com/concorde-engine-finally-sold-on-ebay-af...

Some ham radio guys with a jet engine in the backyard:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsR8pCkSFW4

Anyone know how "BA restriction of use, it must only be used for static display" works? The buyer must agree to an additional covenant?

It's probably a clause to protect the seller so the buyer can't try to return it (or refuse to pay) on the grounds that "I planned on buying this as an investment, but found out nobody in the industry will buy the parts and you didn't tell me about this first". edit: or cuts their finger off trying to play around with it.

Or "No you can't put this in a plane and expect it to works safely and within regulations so if you do and it explodes, not our problem"

I grew up in northern Virginia and very fondly remember going to Dulles with my dad as a kid to watch the Concorde take off for the last time. That this is the engine off the same plane I saw 20 years ago is really cool. Our old house was directly under the approach path; the windows would shake at 2:30PM almost every day.

> watch the Concorde take off for the last time. That this is the engine off the same plane I saw 20 years ago is really cool

The future is fading away quickly.

"According to the seller, the engine is “not able to fly” and “must only be used for static display."

Hmmmm

> BA restriction of use, it must only be used for static display.

> Something went wrong. Please disable your blocker on SimpleFlying.com

Yeah, nah.

Interesting, because I didn't get that. Maybe my blocker disabled their blocker blocker?

[It's either something in Firefox + uBlock Origin, or because I'm in the EU.]

Same, I'm using Firefox and unlock and didn't get this message either. Btw it reads even better in reading mode. Can you imagine needing a mode for reading for stuff that's actually meant to be read?

> Can you imagine needing a mode for reading for stuff that's actually meant to be read?

Yes, because only in a discussion a few days ago on HN:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38681437

... someone was excited because the new web allows them to deliver 'experiences' instead of information. Gives some insight into some mindsets.

And how will they deliver this 3,5 ton, 5,5 meter long package?

Probably on a train!

The ebay listing is for collection only. But you can just hire DHL or whoever to ship it, even if a 5 ton pallet (once you include the stand) is a bit heavier than normal.

Should fit well into standard box truck?

The late Jacques Littlefield used to tell visitors that, in some cases, transporting a given armored vehicle from the dock up to his barns in Portola Valley was the most expensive part of the vehicle's acquisition process.

Specialty haulers charge a pretty penny.

Gotta wonder for a case like that when the balance tips towards buying a truck & trailer and hiring a driver as needed.

Some kids’ school bus is about to get a serious upgrade

Seatbelts everyone!

I used to live near Heathrow and its flight path when it was flying and never got tired of seeing (and hearing) it

I used to live out at Reading (about 30 miles away) and we still had to pause conversations and phone calls when it went past. It was VERY LOUD.

I also worked at BA for a while. Everyone who worked for BA would glance at their watch when they heard it take off - the BA001 flight to NYC at 10am (I think? Or was it 11am?) was a good indicator of how smoothly our systems & the airport's were running - if it was late we probably had a problem.

Finally... coming in to land at the north runway you could see it directly overhead from the staff car park for Viscount House (where most of IT was based). The noise of it usually set off half the car alarms and you could see a huuuuge trail of dirty brown imperfectly burnt fuel with the engines throttled back.

Good times!

I lived there too. When I was at school, our morning break was timed so Concorde would take off while we were out of lessons. Every now and then we'd have an extended playtime because of delays at Heathrow.

And I lived on the other end, about 5 miles from the approach end of runways 22R and 22L at JFK. I always ran to the window when it came by. Big planes would sometimes rattle the dishes in the kitchen.

I now live ~10 miles from a relatively busy airport with business/charter jet traffic, and its barely noticeable to me. But lots of noise complaints in my town and neighboring towns.

Also 10 miles from a main airport and on flight path. Sometimes get plane shadows! Not too bad noise wise as they are at 3000ft I think. And either I got used to it but swear they have got quieter over time.

> I now live ~10 miles from a relatively busy airport with business/charter jet traffic, and its barely noticeable to me. But lots of noise complaints in my town and neighboring towns.

Direction of the runways matters a lot. I live fairly close to an airport, but was paying attention to the relevant info when house-hunting. The map for my city (Calgary): https://maps.calgary.ca/AVPA/

Same ... I remember being in awe, seeing it high up above our school ...

https://web.archive.org/web/20231220131012/https://simplefly...

The obvious use for it is to mount it in a VW Bug.

The VW Van would be a bit more appropriate I think

I skimmed it quickly, but I can't see how the seller got his hands on this engine.

Why isn't it being auctioned by British Airways themselves?

If it's a case of sticky fingers, I would love to see how that heist went down.

With a very big lunch box.

BA probably disposed of it years ago, possibly as part of a consignment of other unneeded spares

I was looking for some nice heavy object for cable management on my desk, but this one may be a bit too bulky

Does "Nil hours" in the photo mean it was never used?

Article says the plane it came from flew 16,239 hours so I'm guessing the photo was from initial certification if it was actually used.

Now that the plane is in Seattle and the engine is in the UK, does that mean it was shipped back after the plane landed? What is on display in a Seattle, dummy engines? So many questions.

The parts of the logbook shown in the listing seem to imply that this engine was removed in the 1980s when the plane was still registered as G-BFKW.

As for the plane, engines 3 and 4 are visible in a 2010 photo.¹ By 2015 the ducts had all been covered.², albeit № 3 haphazardly in the rear.³

¹ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Concorde_(British_AW...

² https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Concorde_2015-06_673...

³ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Concorde_2015-06_692...

The logbook says "at commencement" (i.e. at the time this logbook starts from, the engine has 0 hours). It's because there might be multiple logbooks for an engine, so if you reached the end of logbook1 and it had 5000 hours accounted for, logbook2 would say 5000 hours at commencement.

why would a passenger jet even have an afterburner you may ask?

apparently it was needed for takeoff, and since it was there, also used to more quickly cross over the sound barrier

Missed it, darn.

Harold and Kumar buy a Concord Jet Engine.

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shit, what a pity it’s not in working order, would’ve swapped it into my Miata in a heartbeat

Reported it as “junk” since it’s not functioning. ;-)

Condition is actually set to "Used". So this technically violates eBay policies, as the seller should have explicitly mentioned "For parts only". Whoever bought it can now file a SNAD case with eBay and likely get his half million pounds back.

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