Air Travel

[Chabsy]

1903 Orville and Wilbur Wright first sustained powered flight
1910 Bleriot crosses the channel
1927 Lindburgh crosses the atlantic
1933 First round the world flight
1947 Chuck Yeager breaks the speed of sound
1949 Fist commercial jet first flies
1950 Atlantic crossed in 10 hours 1 minute
1969 Concorde make first flight
1970 Boeing 747 comes into service
1976 Concorde starts service with BA

In the 73 years from 1903 to 1976 the advances in air travel have been remarkable.

What I am pondering was what has been going on for the last 32 years, if we had continued in the same vain we would have been crossing the Atlantic in 90 minutes

My point well, I haven't really got 1, except maybe to say where have the all innovators and risk takers gone.

 

[Chabsy]

Walk around a concorde then a 320/777 or latest business jet and you will realise the steps forward that have been made. The concorde doesnt compare to the advancements that have been made across all areas of an aircraft both Structurally, mechanically and electrically.

They haven't been standing still at all, just speed was no longer the goal.

The concorde is a piece of **** in comparison. Sure it's pretty and fast and we helped make it but other than that it doesn't compare to later aircraft.

But i want to fly fast, i dont to be stuck on a plane traveling to the west coast of America for 12 hours or 18 hours to western Australia even with flat bed, sauna, massage, laptop power supply or whatever

 

[Chabsy]

Just to set the record straight, Concorde was a fantastic piece of engineering for its day, and well ahead of its time in terms of engineering, but you do have to bear in mind it was conceived over 40 years ago so 'well ahead' then looks old now - even though we no longer have supersonic passenger jets (private toys for the super-rich excepted) and no prospect of getting them.

Fact is, taking into account the huge Government subsidies that went into getting Concorde flying, it was never really profitable, and until the end where there was a slight chance that mugs like me who dreamed about 'one day' could afford (or rather borrow the money to afford) a flight it was pretty much an exclusive club. With the Air France Concorde disaster and the prevalence of teleconferencing, both the desire and the need has diminished.

As others have said by various means, these days its far more about getting as many passengers wherever they want to go in the most economical way possible - and the likes of Concorde most definitely were not economical. With the price of oil hitting $100 a barrel, who can really blame anyone for that. As much as some may still like the sound of it, getting to your destination before you left is no longer sound business sense unless you're talking about a military fast jet. Its not that the advances haven't happened, its that they have gone in a completely different direction.

Yes teleconferencing has certainly hit the premium end of the market, these are the people who would happily pay 2 or 3 times the first class fare just to be there in half the time.

The problem with Concorde was it was such a blunt instrument, conceived in the day when if you wanted to go faster you just stuck a bigger engine in something, look at cars for example back in the 60s if you wanted 300 BHP you'd need a big V8 now you can have 300 BHP form something half the size with 3 or 4 time the efficiency.

If you use that kind of thinking you could easily design a plane to take 300 and fly at mach 1.5

 

[Chabsy]

Ok maybe 1.5 would be a push but 700 - 750 mph would be possible, that would cut just under 2 hours off an 8 hour flight, or just about the amount of extra time you need to spend getting through security at Heathrow now

 

[Chabsy]

yes you could with modern engines, things like ram jets. modern materials huge advances in aerodynamics and controls. You could make something much better than the concord. But the money just isn't there.

Maybe even 2 stage engines efficient jets up to 400mph and the ramjets take over.

It just saddens me that the world has been taken over by bean counters.

Just imagine we were all stuck with pentium 166s and 2 meg video even if they did only cost 4p to buy

 

[Chabsy]

Speed is the most important thing about ramjets you really need to be going over 400mph for them to work and iirc the colder the air the more efficient they are