The only photo of the Concorde flying at supersonic speed

https://forum.expeditionportal.com/threads/democratic-republ...

I call these kinds of forum threads "afternoon destroyers". It would be fun to weaponize them into a whole organized link page.

Looking at how many people rent (or own) business jets with five figure+ price tags per flight, I think there's definitely a market for premium tickets, especially if you can do say LAX to Heathrow in ~5 hours instead of 10.5 hours.

There’s thousands of billionaires in the world. Not all of them would buy a supersonic private airplane, but include non billionaire CEO’s etc and the market is plenty large to support moderate scale production assuming they can keep costs within a fairly low multiple of a business jet.

  - YC incubated, 150MM+ total funding
  - quiet medium bypass turbofan engines
  - wing aspect ratio higher than Concorde
  - 5y of production orders, incl. United and American

In 1954, in the UK, the average male was 5'7" and 11 stone, 6 lbs, which equates to quite a high BMI of 25 (18.5 - 24.9 is healthy BMI). Nowadays there are very few men in the UK with that weight. Let's ignore women from this because women were second class citizens at the time. Men are on average 2 stone heavier.

But average weight is just average, nowadays with 2/3 of UK adults overweight, there are far more people at the top end of the Bell Curve, at double the average weight people had on the 1950s. So half of today's population would not fit in the seats.

When you look at old European or Japanese cars such as the MINI or old FIATs, bear this in mind. Those cars might not have ever been spacious, but, in period, they were not cramped. Similarly, Concorde was never spacious, but it was not a very snug ride until obesity got the better of us.

Kinda cool.

https://my.matterport.com/show/?m=uLQ9ZMRpPWY

Top tip : if you are flying internationally avoid Uas airlines where possible. The US airlines are built around domestic flights. They treat international flights as "long domestic ".

By contrast some airlines are built around long-haul (international) flights, with domestic either not there at all, or just a feeder.

Don't get me wrong, economy is still economy. But an economy seat on Emirates is better than economy on United or Delta (well, last time I flew those anyway.)

Perhaps the biggest innovation though is seat-back entertainment. Done well, it makes a huge difference to long-haul flights.

It took 64 years (until 1997) to again reach the 1933 speed of the Flying Hamburger [0] - 138 minutes from Hamburg to Berlin. Trains today need about 115 minutes.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRG_Class_SVT_877

Maybe for domestic flights but for international flights (especially if you live in Australia) it would improve the flying experience. I've noticed a big difference on my body when flying 8hr vs 12hrs.

It may not seem like a big difference but those extra 4hrs put a massive strain on your body and mind.

It's more that you just run in to real limits of physics; many planes already fly at mach 0.8 to 0.9, and going faster than sound is always going to be difficult because of the sonic boom. Realistically, there just isn't that much you can do without solving that first, which is a difficult problem to solve in a practical way. And even if you do, the fuel efficiency is always going to make it much more expensive.

I would be more inclined to travel overseas if travel times were shorter thus making me a more frequent customer and bringing the airlines more money.

Pricing will be interesting to watch, in any case.

As you note, a lot of the time cost is incurred for the 'last mile' part of that trip, so apart from the (tourist / comfort) benefits of splitting flights of that length, I could see it being much less appealing for travellers bouncing through London to get elsewhere into the continent.

I still watch the planes when I'm in the garden, but it's not quite the same

Now compare that annoyance level to that of the ninety or so special people on Concorde, or, more correctly, 'a' Concorde plane. You were thirty miles west of Heathrow, but I can remember being in South London and having to stop conversation for a few minutes for that stupid plane to screech overhead. Nowadays I learn that those were good times, to have that noise from miles away, making it impossible to hear the person next to me.

Until Concorde was some tens of thousands of feet in the air, cruising sub-sonically, that stupid plane was ruining everyone's day. All for what, Tony Benn's ego, 'jobs' and being best buddies with the old enemy - the French.

The need to be best buddies with the French was moot, after WW1 and WW2 it was clear that the UK and France were allies, at least in Europe.

We were lucky that the USA were a bit passive-aggressive when it came to Concorde, people would have had that thing fly supersonic but it wasn't in the economic interests of Washington (DC and the state) to have that.

Highlight of Concorde's career was Live Aid, bringing Phil Collins et al from the USA to Wembley so they could play both sides of the Atlantic, at the same event.

I am sure that people that went on a 'jolly' on Concorde for that special anniversary had their money's worth and a time to remember, but most people on that plane were pointless wealthy people that lacked purpose. In the bigger scheme of things, not one single flight of that plane was really important, even if Joan Collins was aboard. Your playtime, somewhere near where The Office was filmed, was far more important, in the bigger scheme of things.

They used these for surveillance so I assume the motion compensation on these things was state-secret levels of good.