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How the Concorde Worked · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know from how Stuff Works
0:04
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
0:14
Speaker 1: There's Charles W Chuck Bryant, There's Jerry over there, Frank
0:17
Speaker 1: the chairs in here, my thick tongue, Chuck's haircut, Chuck's beard,
0:23
Speaker 1: Chuck's hat, Jerry's glasses, Jerry's on the phone, not knowing
0:29
Speaker 1: what's going on. Everybody's right with the world. Oh, I've
0:34
Speaker 1: been spelling this wrong all these years, by the way,
0:37
Speaker 1: we've been spelling out like Flight of the Concords between
0:40
Speaker 1: that and Concord with no E and all my writings
0:45
Speaker 1: on the Concorde. Well you have that blog Concorde days. Yeah,
0:51
Speaker 1: but yeah, and I noticed there's no E on it,
0:53
Speaker 1: and I spelled days day z as you did. Chuck.
0:57
Speaker 1: We share a mind sometimes because I was about too
1:00
Speaker 1: had I not been taking a sip of coffee, I
1:02
Speaker 1: would have said that at the same time d a Z. Yeah. Well,
1:06
Speaker 1: I was waiting on you to take a sip so
1:07
Speaker 1: I could steal that thanks to uh. In fact, I
1:11
Speaker 1: tried to get a And we're gonna talk a little
1:13
Speaker 1: bit later about the experience of flying on the the
1:16
Speaker 1: famed and fabled Concord Jet airliner. That's what we're talking about.
1:20
Speaker 1: But I tried to get in touch. I know a
1:22
Speaker 1: person who made that trip. Uh, Justin's mom. I don't
1:27
Speaker 1: know Justin, Well, imagine Justin but mother. Ok. Yeah, Justin's
1:34
Speaker 1: mom carry from England, and she made a like since
1:38
Speaker 1: I've known her, so I guess one of the one
1:41
Speaker 1: of the last trips early two thousand's. Yeah, that would
1:44
Speaker 1: have been I think it's two thousand three, October two
1:47
Speaker 1: thousand three when it was decommissioned. Yeah. So I hit
1:49
Speaker 1: her up on Facebook and it was like, Carrie, you know,
1:51
Speaker 1: let me know what it was like. But she's in
1:53
Speaker 1: a hurricane ravage North Carolina, so she's probably like buzz off, chuck,
1:57
Speaker 1: everything all right with her. Yeah, Yeah, they're good. They
2:00
Speaker 1: went inland. Shout out to all of our peeps who
2:03
Speaker 1: were who had to go through Florence. Yeah, my sister
2:05
Speaker 1: was there right in the middle of it. She okay, yeah,
2:08
Speaker 1: she's good. Trees down in the area, but like minimal
2:12
Speaker 1: house damage and they're high on you know, they sit
2:16
Speaker 1: higher up, so it's not like they're not flooded. That's
2:20
Speaker 1: good because a lot of the area is yeah, and
2:23
Speaker 1: she was also I mean, she said it's bad, but
2:25
Speaker 1: she said the news is always just so sensationalized. She's like,
2:29
Speaker 1: this is not like Hurricane Katrina or anything. Did you
2:32
Speaker 1: see that UM clip of the Weather Channel? Dude? No,
2:35
Speaker 1: I didn't, So what was he just like making stuff
2:38
Speaker 1: like no, leaning into the wind like he was about
2:41
Speaker 1: to be blown over? And then in the background, two
2:43
Speaker 1: guys just strolled by and like shorts and flip flops,
2:46
Speaker 1: not even I mean, like I don't even think their
2:48
Speaker 1: hair was blowing. That's shameful. It is shameful, and I'm
2:50
Speaker 1: so glad that that made the round because that's ridiculous.
2:54
Speaker 1: It is, you know, especially for a weather event where
2:57
Speaker 1: there's genuine fear and like you could incite panic. Like
3:01
Speaker 1: I think that there's a lot of a lot wrong
3:03
Speaker 1: with that. So let's shake on it. Okay, alright, So concords.
3:09
Speaker 1: So we're talking concords today. I never got to fly
3:12
Speaker 1: on one. You didn't, because go ahead and assume Jerry
3:16
Speaker 1: didn't UM, And I don't know anybody who did, but
3:20
Speaker 1: I would have loved to have. And I think I've
3:23
Speaker 1: stepped on board one. There's one at the Smithsonian Air
3:27
Speaker 1: and Space Museum by Dullus. I thought you met you
3:29
Speaker 1: boarded a flight and they're like, sir, you're on the
3:31
Speaker 1: wrong plane. Back when you could do that, Sir, you're
3:33
Speaker 1: asleep right now. This is a drink. UM. I can't
3:38
Speaker 1: remember if they actually let you step on it or not. Um.
3:42
Speaker 1: Where was this Dulless Dullis Airport that the Smithsonian Air
3:45
Speaker 1: and Space Museum? Is there one still there? Yes, it's um.
3:49
Speaker 1: It's called the Stephen f Udvar Hazy Center. I just
3:56
Speaker 1: call it the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum at Dulless.
3:59
Speaker 1: It really nice. They have like a a stealth Um
4:03
Speaker 1: black Hawk, No, not black Hawk, Blackbird SR. Seventy one Blackbird.
4:08
Speaker 1: Did you know that those things are built so that
4:11
Speaker 1: when they're on the ground, the plates that hold them
4:15
Speaker 1: like that make up the plane, they have gaps in
4:19
Speaker 1: between them. The reason is because that thing flies so
4:22
Speaker 1: fast and gets so hot that the plates expand and
4:26
Speaker 1: it becomes solid when it really counts. But on the ground,
4:29
Speaker 1: apparently when it's taking off, it would just leak fuel
4:32
Speaker 1: everywhere because it doesn't have like a solid plate to
4:35
Speaker 1: to speak of. That's like us basically becomes solid when
4:38
Speaker 1: it counts anyway. At the Seran Space Museum at Dullus,
4:41
Speaker 1: which is frankly worth flying to Dullus just to go
4:43
Speaker 1: to it's that good. Is a concorde I think it's
4:47
Speaker 1: an Air France concorde Um, one of the last ones
4:50
Speaker 1: that was ever flown. Yeah, I'm a fan of air
4:52
Speaker 1: and space museums. You you would love this one, man.
4:55
Speaker 1: I wouldn't. I wouldn't say I'm like an aviation uh
4:59
Speaker 1: how owned, But I know people that are, well you
5:03
Speaker 1: you don't have to be to appreciate this. Yeah, sure
5:05
Speaker 1: for everybody. And there's a space shuttle there too. Yeah,
5:08
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to check that out. Yeah for sure.
5:09
Speaker 1: I used to go to the one in Pennsyl Pensacola,
5:12
Speaker 1: the Naval Air Museum. They're growing up, and I just
5:14
Speaker 1: thought it was cool, you know, walk around looking at planes.
5:16
Speaker 1: You're gonna love this. Well, all right, so let's go
5:20
Speaker 1: back in time to uh the swinging sixties in England. Yeah,
5:26
Speaker 1: which was pretty swinging. It was, in fact very quickly.
5:29
Speaker 1: I want to recommend that Michael Caine documentary my generation.
5:33
Speaker 1: I haven't seen it. It's not just about Michael Caine.
5:35
Speaker 1: He's sort of like the host of what London was
5:37
Speaker 1: like in like the late sixties, so pretty cool, the
5:40
Speaker 1: whole Alfie thing, Alfie and the Rolling Stones and Marry
5:44
Speaker 1: and Faithful and he and Albert Finney and just like
5:47
Speaker 1: saying to the class establishment, yeah, we're young and also
5:52
Speaker 1: super rich. Well eventually sure, but anyway, in the sixties,
5:58
Speaker 1: this is the early sixties, so and quite as winging.
6:00
Speaker 1: Then the British and the French government's got together and
6:04
Speaker 1: they say, hey, let's uh, let's build a really fast
6:08
Speaker 1: plane together. Yeah, because it turned out that the British
6:12
Speaker 1: and the French, we're both building what's called the supersonic
6:15
Speaker 1: transport plane s s t S. And they weren't the
6:18
Speaker 1: only ones doing it either. It was the Soviets and
6:22
Speaker 1: the Americans, the British and the French were all working
6:25
Speaker 1: on their own supersonic transport plane at the same time,
6:29
Speaker 1: which is weird until you think about jet. Jet airliners
6:35
Speaker 1: were really really new, and so everybody was all about
6:39
Speaker 1: jet airliners, which made them think, well, what goes even
6:42
Speaker 1: faster than that? Supersonic planes that travel faster than the
6:46
Speaker 1: speed of sound. So everybody was working on them at
6:48
Speaker 1: the time. Yeah, I'm surprised that it was that early
6:51
Speaker 1: in airline travel when they thought, hey, maybe we can
6:55
Speaker 1: go really fast. That seemed like it would be like
6:57
Speaker 1: a thirty years on developed it. I think there was
7:00
Speaker 1: a lot more like inspiration and ent, let's shoot for
7:06
Speaker 1: the stars to burn. Sure, um, who cares about the
7:11
Speaker 1: environment kind of thing. Yeah, but I I really get
7:14
Speaker 1: that that sentiment because I think about it, four different
7:17
Speaker 1: nations working on the same kind of pie in the
7:19
Speaker 1: sky project. That's impressive. So they built a couple of prototypes, um,
7:25
Speaker 1: and then the very first flight of the Concorde was nine.
7:31
Speaker 1: Together they made about twenty or they made twenty not
7:35
Speaker 1: about this is actually something where they know the number.
7:38
Speaker 1: Although I did see sixteen and fourteen production models, but
7:42
Speaker 1: every place I've seen sixteen sixteen was in more places,
7:46
Speaker 1: so not no production models. So like I guess prototypes
7:50
Speaker 1: and stuff don't count, like sixteen that actually flew commercially. Gosh,
7:54
Speaker 1: what did they do with the prototypes and his trash
7:57
Speaker 1: them or something? I don't know. Maybe that's the dullest
7:59
Speaker 1: or No, that was probably a production model. Yeah, it
8:01
Speaker 1: definitely was, because you got you want seat stains on
8:04
Speaker 1: display and all their glory. This one smells like Gerard Depard.
8:08
Speaker 1: Oh God, not that guy. Uh. Alright, so you talked
8:12
Speaker 1: about the Soviets they built and this is hysterical. But
8:17
Speaker 1: they built something called the t U one, the tupa left,
8:21
Speaker 1: and they nicknamed it with a K, the Concorde Ski. Right.
8:26
Speaker 1: That seems like a joke, I think, well, I think
8:28
Speaker 1: the Brits and the French nicknamed it, and kind of
8:32
Speaker 1: derisively too, because the Soviet what the Soviets came up
8:36
Speaker 1: with looks an awful lot like what the Brits and
8:38
Speaker 1: the French came up with. And it makes you wonder
8:42
Speaker 1: one of two things was there, like espionage going on
8:46
Speaker 1: on one side or the other one one group was
8:48
Speaker 1: spying on the other group. I would say, yes, probably,
8:50
Speaker 1: Or is it just that the Concorde follows these aerospace
8:54
Speaker 1: principles that any highly skilled, well trained aerospace engineer would
8:59
Speaker 1: fall low and come up with on their own. Probably
9:01
Speaker 1: that too. I wonder that makes more sense though, because
9:05
Speaker 1: Concorde Ski was so hysterical. It seems like something from
9:09
Speaker 1: like the Benny Hill Shower or something. Right, So, so
9:12
Speaker 1: by this time I can laugh just hearing Benny Hill
9:15
Speaker 1: Shaw Yeah. By this time, the French and the British
9:19
Speaker 1: are coming up with their own concord, the Soviets have
9:21
Speaker 1: come up with their own, and the Americans are like
9:23
Speaker 1: war out. I think Congress funded a report just saying
9:28
Speaker 1: like how much is this singing and cost? By the way,
9:30
Speaker 1: and um got back the bill and we're like, no,
9:33
Speaker 1: we're not doing this anymore. And they scrapped the boeing,
9:36
Speaker 1: which is the oh seven Oh is that what it
9:39
Speaker 1: was going to be? And I think they made hey
9:42
Speaker 1: about the sound and the noise of the sonic boom.
9:45
Speaker 1: That's supposedly why there aren't super sonic planes anymore. They're
9:49
Speaker 1: going to be that their kin though, I think, well,
9:51
Speaker 1: we would have to repeal a law in the United
9:53
Speaker 1: States that you can't have overland sonic booms from commercial airlines,
9:58
Speaker 1: and you got the same law in Europe. So there's
10:01
Speaker 1: two huge continental markets that are just you can't service
10:05
Speaker 1: anymore because it's illegal to fly over I'm in a
10:08
Speaker 1: supersonic plane. And that, from what I understand, is the
10:10
Speaker 1: true reason why there's not concords any longer. Really just
10:14
Speaker 1: the boom, not just the boom they're really expensive in
10:18
Speaker 1: but the boom killed it and it's kept it from
10:21
Speaker 1: coming back. Have you ever heard of sonic boom? Yeah?
10:26
Speaker 1: I don't think it's that bad. It depends on the
10:29
Speaker 1: sonic boom, right, I guess it depends on how big.
10:31
Speaker 1: I guess you wouldn't want one, you know, eight times
10:33
Speaker 1: a day over your neighborhood. Well that's the thing is like, Yeah,
10:37
Speaker 1: you know, if if everybody was flying supersonic, think about
10:40
Speaker 1: how many planes fly overhead of you know a place
10:43
Speaker 1: that's a place where you live by the airport. Imagine
10:46
Speaker 1: each one having a sonic boom. No, that would get old.
10:48
Speaker 1: But I'm saying, like, if I'm at the beach and
10:50
Speaker 1: there's like an F sixteen I hear the boom, I'm
10:52
Speaker 1: kind of like, oh that's awesome. Yeah, you like toast
10:54
Speaker 1: him with your beer. I love it when those guys
10:58
Speaker 1: buzz the beach like sending reything tumbling. It's fun stuff.
11:02
Speaker 1: Uh boy, should we take a break already? Sure? All right,
11:06
Speaker 1: let's do it. We'll describe what these things were. I
11:09
Speaker 1: right after this, sorry, Chuck, before we describe the concorde,
11:38
Speaker 1: I'm kind of excited about. We should say what happened
11:40
Speaker 1: to the Soviets Um Concorde SKI, so it very publicly
11:47
Speaker 1: um flamed out and crashed at a play's air show,
11:50
Speaker 1: killed everybody on board and killed several I think eight
11:53
Speaker 1: people on the ground at this air show, which air
11:55
Speaker 1: shows are super dangerous to begin with, but apparently, and
11:59
Speaker 1: I saw footage of it, the Soviet pilot was basically
12:02
Speaker 1: flying a concorde like a stunt plane and overstressed it
12:05
Speaker 1: and it came apart in the air and just crashed. Yeah,
12:08
Speaker 1: that's not a good idea, No, it's not. It seems
12:10
Speaker 1: like I mean, these things were definitely agile, but they
12:13
Speaker 1: seemed the best use was to fly straight and fast
12:17
Speaker 1: and high right, and their their performance at the air
12:20
Speaker 1: show followed the either air I guess the air France
12:23
Speaker 1: concorde um, which just took off, did its thing and
12:27
Speaker 1: then came back down like a normal flight, and the
12:30
Speaker 1: Soviets were trying to one up it because again it's
12:32
Speaker 1: the Cold War and France was friends with the US.
12:37
Speaker 1: This would get back to the Americans. Well, maybe we
12:40
Speaker 1: should talk about the other famous crash too, because that
12:42
Speaker 1: had a lot to do with its ultimate demise, Like
12:45
Speaker 1: combined with many other factors that will get to like
12:47
Speaker 1: you're saying the expense in the boom. But had it
12:50
Speaker 1: not been for the crash on July thud of an
12:54
Speaker 1: Air France concord flight from Paris to New York, it
12:58
Speaker 1: may not have been killed all as quickly. So this one,
13:03
Speaker 1: it was flight ninety. It was a charter that I
13:07
Speaker 1: think had a bunch of mainly German tourists headed to
13:10
Speaker 1: a cruise to depart from New York. And about five
13:15
Speaker 1: minutes before this thing hit the runway, there was a
13:17
Speaker 1: Continental jet that took off left behind a piece of
13:20
Speaker 1: metal that was about sixteen inches long and about three
13:24
Speaker 1: inches wide, very small. No one caught it. Uh. And
13:27
Speaker 1: then this concord runs over this thing at like three
13:32
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy miles an hour or something, yeah, which
13:34
Speaker 1: I mean, we'll get to that. But those things were
13:36
Speaker 1: fast when they were taken off. Yeah, so who knows
13:39
Speaker 1: if it would have happened on on a regular flight. Uh.
13:42
Speaker 1: And this thing popped up and it blew out of
13:45
Speaker 1: tire and disturbed the fuel tank. Yeah. Well the tire
13:49
Speaker 1: blew the debris into the engine and blew out one
13:53
Speaker 1: of the engines. Yeah, and it ruptured the fuel tank. Too,
13:56
Speaker 1: so fuel just comes spewing out of it, Okay, And
14:00
Speaker 1: there's a very famous picture of that concorde taking off
14:03
Speaker 1: with just a trail of flames coming out of it,
14:06
Speaker 1: and you see it and you're like, wow, the concorde
14:08
Speaker 1: was cool looking, and then you realize it's not supposed
14:11
Speaker 1: to look like that at all. Yeah, two hundred feet
14:14
Speaker 1: of flames. So we'll talk in a minute here about
14:18
Speaker 1: the the weird fuel distribution in this thing. But uh,
14:22
Speaker 1: it was about eighteen hundred pounds overweight at time of takeoff,
14:26
Speaker 1: and they said that didn't necessarily have anything to do
14:28
Speaker 1: with the wreck, but because it was overweight, they had
14:31
Speaker 1: one of the fuel tanks full, where otherwise it might
14:36
Speaker 1: have been a little redistributed, So that was most of
14:39
Speaker 1: the fuel at the time. Again, it probably wouldn't have mattered,
14:43
Speaker 1: like any fuel on fire is not good. But what
14:46
Speaker 1: struck me was that it was on fire before they
14:48
Speaker 1: took off, Like they told them, you're on fire and
14:52
Speaker 1: you're still on the ground. But apparently they were going
14:54
Speaker 1: so fast that it was too dangerous, like you couldn't
14:58
Speaker 1: stop the plane. Well, the reason that I saw that
15:01
Speaker 1: the pilot um tried to take off even though he
15:04
Speaker 1: knew he was on fire. Was because he figured he
15:06
Speaker 1: could put the fire out just from the thrust up
15:09
Speaker 1: in the air, starving it of oxygen and basically blowing
15:12
Speaker 1: the fire out from the engine. See. I saw that
15:15
Speaker 1: he couldn't stop because he was going almost four miles
15:17
Speaker 1: an hour and they had to go somewhere. Um. I
15:21
Speaker 1: also saw that had they not had more fuel than
15:25
Speaker 1: what they should have had, had they not been overweight,
15:27
Speaker 1: they probably could have gotten aloft right, And I think
15:32
Speaker 1: the flight engineer also shut down one of the engines inexplicably,
15:36
Speaker 1: So now they were down two of their four engines,
15:40
Speaker 1: and they just crashed into a hotel, right, which is
15:43
Speaker 1: remarkable that more people in a hotel didn't die, but
15:47
Speaker 1: I think only one person in the hotel was critically injured,
15:50
Speaker 1: and then everybody on board died the plane. Yeah, which
15:54
Speaker 1: I mean, did it blow up into a fireball or
15:56
Speaker 1: something like that. I don't think they're just going that fast. No,
16:00
Speaker 1: think they just crashed. I mean I'm sure there was
16:02
Speaker 1: a lot of fire involved. Uh, clearly from that photo. Yeah.
16:07
Speaker 1: So Continental and one of Continental's mechanics were actually found
16:11
Speaker 1: guilty of manslaughter. But then it was later overturned. The Yeah, interesting,
16:17
Speaker 1: um with the get they were exonerated in two thousand ten.
16:21
Speaker 1: That really that that, yes, that piece of metal did
16:25
Speaker 1: start the series of events. But had it just been
16:28
Speaker 1: the piece of metal and nothing else, they probably would
16:32
Speaker 1: have survived. They would have taken off and then been
16:34
Speaker 1: able to come back in for a control. I wonder
16:36
Speaker 1: if the airport was sued. I don't know, because it's
16:39
Speaker 1: not the continental planes fault necessarily. From what I understand,
16:42
Speaker 1: France sues everybody when there's a plane crash that has
16:46
Speaker 1: to do with France. They might sue us maybe about this, right,
16:51
Speaker 1: all right, so you want to talk about all right,
16:53
Speaker 1: that was a tragedy. Well that so that that, combined
16:57
Speaker 1: with the memory of what happened to the Soviet concourse,
17:00
Speaker 1: really shook people's faith. But as we'll see later on,
17:04
Speaker 1: there were a lot of people who were involved in
17:07
Speaker 1: this project who if they canceled it would lose a
17:10
Speaker 1: lot of face that I think hopped on the opportunity
17:14
Speaker 1: to be like, yep, concords aren't safe. We tried, We'll
17:17
Speaker 1: just scrap it. How about that? Interesting? Yeah, this is
17:20
Speaker 1: a movie totally for the movie with any alright, so
17:26
Speaker 1: let's let's just talk about the plane and what made
17:29
Speaker 1: it different and special. A normal seven forty seven Boeing
17:34
Speaker 1: seven forty seven goes about five D sixty miles an
17:38
Speaker 1: hour at just cruising speed at about thirty five thousand
17:41
Speaker 1: feet the concord, it's cruising speed was about hundred and
17:45
Speaker 1: fifty miles an hour at almost twice the altitude between
17:49
Speaker 1: sixty and seventy thousand feet, which is faster than the
17:53
Speaker 1: speed of sound. Yeah, by a long shot. I think
17:57
Speaker 1: Mack one is the speed of sound. This thing would
17:59
Speaker 1: fly mocked two cruising cruising speed and sixty feet. That's
18:04
Speaker 1: eighteen thousand three D above sea level. Yeah, that's ridiculously high.
18:09
Speaker 1: You're basically kissing the edge of space right there. Yeah,
18:12
Speaker 1: it's not quite suborbital, but you're flirting with it. Right.
18:15
Speaker 1: So I was like, gosh, I guess it's about where
18:17
Speaker 1: Felix bomb Gardner jumped for that one stratosphere jump. Remember
18:21
Speaker 1: when he did that. He jumped at twice that height
18:25
Speaker 1: and I think twenty eight thousand feet. Yeah, that's insane.
18:29
Speaker 1: That guy jumped out of a platform skydive from that height. Yeah,
18:34
Speaker 1: that's almost so high. That it's like, what's the difference
18:36
Speaker 1: between that and yeah, maybe you know, I don't know.
18:42
Speaker 1: And he lived, He did live, and he really pulled
18:44
Speaker 1: out because remember he started to spin and they were worried.
18:47
Speaker 1: He blacked out and he was done for I bet
18:49
Speaker 1: he's not finished. No, I'm surprised he hasn't done anything recently.
18:53
Speaker 1: It's been long enough. Yeah, all right, so let's talk
18:56
Speaker 1: about the design of this thing, because you can't just
19:00
Speaker 1: like soup up an engine on a seven seven and
19:04
Speaker 1: say all right, now you can fly faster and higher,
19:07
Speaker 1: like this plane had to be completely designed for this purpose. Yeah,
19:11
Speaker 1: because again seven, which flies pretty fast, we just totally
19:15
Speaker 1: break up if you could somehow get it to the
19:19
Speaker 1: speed of sound, because the speed of sound itself is
19:22
Speaker 1: really really fast, and it's a different type of flying
19:24
Speaker 1: just from the friction and everything in the air. But
19:27
Speaker 1: also to get to the speed of sound requires um
19:32
Speaker 1: a lot of effort on your planes part. Do you
19:36
Speaker 1: ever read the right stuff? Now? I never read that.
19:39
Speaker 1: The Tumbults did a great explanation of Chuck Yeager being
19:42
Speaker 1: the first person to break the sound barrier, like no
19:45
Speaker 1: one knew what happened beyond this wall. Of sound that
19:49
Speaker 1: forms or wall of air that forms that the nose
19:53
Speaker 1: of the plane, and Yeager was like, it's gonna like
19:55
Speaker 1: it felt like the plane was just gonna break the pieces.
19:58
Speaker 1: But he just knew, just knew that if he just
20:00
Speaker 1: got on the other side of it would be smooth sailing, right, absolutely, right. Yeah,
20:04
Speaker 1: supersonic sailing or supersonic flight is smoother than subsonic flight. Um,
20:10
Speaker 1: and it's definitely smoother than flying just below the speed
20:13
Speaker 1: of sound. But it's just this beautiful description of what
20:16
Speaker 1: you're doing it that's awesome. Yeah, But the point is
20:19
Speaker 1: is to fly at super sonic faster than sound speeds,
20:24
Speaker 1: you have to have a specialized plane, I think, is
20:26
Speaker 1: what you're trying to say, like five minutes ago. Sure,
20:29
Speaker 1: So we're gonna go through each one of these sort
20:31
Speaker 1: of design features and uh, one by one, starting with
20:36
Speaker 1: the fact that it was streamlined to begin with, and
20:38
Speaker 1: it's designed so like you were talking about that wall
20:41
Speaker 1: of air. Uh, in order to help punch through that,
20:45
Speaker 1: you have to streamline your plane. And the Concorde had
20:48
Speaker 1: very famously it just looked cool, but it had a
20:51
Speaker 1: very specific purpose. That needle like nose on the front
20:55
Speaker 1: that's to punch through that wall of air. Yeah, it
20:57
Speaker 1: wasn't to look cool, no, but it did look pretty cool,
20:59
Speaker 1: that's just aside beside benefit. And the plane itself was
21:03
Speaker 1: very sleek and in um needle like too. Yeah, for sure.
21:09
Speaker 1: The the wings it had a uh what's called a
21:13
Speaker 1: sweatback delta wings, so the wings were triangular and connected
21:18
Speaker 1: to the fuselage all all along. So it wasn't just
21:21
Speaker 1: like a rectangular wing coming off you know, you've seen pictures.
21:24
Speaker 1: It's just like a big folded napkin, like a big triangle, yeah,
21:28
Speaker 1: kind of. And and for those of you not in
21:30
Speaker 1: the know, a fuselage is like the main body of
21:33
Speaker 1: the plane where the passengers go, that's right, and not
21:36
Speaker 1: many of them in the case of the Concorde, no,
21:38
Speaker 1: because it was much smaller um width wise than a
21:42
Speaker 1: seven forty seven seven sevens like twenty ft across. This
21:46
Speaker 1: is half that, and so it would fit about a
21:49
Speaker 1: hundred passengers in two rows of two with an aisle
21:53
Speaker 1: going down the middle. It was not a big plane.
21:56
Speaker 1: It was small, no, And apparently there was a bathroom
21:59
Speaker 1: in the middle, so it sort of divided into two sections,
22:02
Speaker 1: but they weren't different like one wasn't first class and
22:04
Speaker 1: one was business. They were all identical. But I have
22:07
Speaker 1: pulled some quotes from writers and one of the guys
22:10
Speaker 1: was like, but you still felt better if you were
22:12
Speaker 1: in the front, like you were a better person, I guess,
22:16
Speaker 1: which is crazy because you will die sooner. Um, did
22:20
Speaker 1: we determine that at one point you're slightly more likely
22:23
Speaker 1: to survive in the rearver plane crash in the middle
22:27
Speaker 1: of the two really not the front though, to take
22:31
Speaker 1: that first class snobs. Uh, yeah, so not in a
22:35
Speaker 1: half feet wide, um two and two feet long, So
22:39
Speaker 1: it's a little shorter than a seven forty seven, but
22:42
Speaker 1: not much, not much. So it's just it's just narrower
22:46
Speaker 1: and more streamlined, like a little dark just punch him
22:49
Speaker 1: right through the air. Yeah. Uh. The other thing is
22:52
Speaker 1: the fuselage, like you said, the body. Uh, in the
22:55
Speaker 1: wing there was there was no space, like I mentioned,
22:58
Speaker 1: It was all just attacked in the and the engine
23:01
Speaker 1: mounted not on struts but directly to the wing. So
23:04
Speaker 1: that was very different. Yeah, it's That's one of the
23:07
Speaker 1: things that's like so iconic about the Concords design is
23:10
Speaker 1: that it was it appeared to be like all one piece,
23:14
Speaker 1: Like the body just kind of moved out into the wing.
23:17
Speaker 1: The wings like dropped down to to produce the engines
23:21
Speaker 1: and then dropped back and then went back up into
23:23
Speaker 1: the wing. It just looked super cool, and I'm sure
23:27
Speaker 1: a lot of it was aesthetics, but even more so
23:30
Speaker 1: it was this thing has to have as few separate
23:34
Speaker 1: pieces as possible, because more pieces means they could break up.
23:38
Speaker 1: You want to just basically be one solid plane. Yeah,
23:41
Speaker 1: and because of that wing design, it meant uh, not
23:43
Speaker 1: only did you have reduced drag and better lift for
23:47
Speaker 1: takeoff and landing, but there we was there was no
23:50
Speaker 1: horizontal stabilizer on the tail. So when you look at
23:53
Speaker 1: a regular jumbo jet, you see like the horizontal piece
23:56
Speaker 1: of the tail goes up, then you have the two
23:58
Speaker 1: little tiny wings on that they don't They didn't have
24:00
Speaker 1: those tiny wings, so again just kind of streamlined right exactly.
24:06
Speaker 1: Um the nose itself too. So the wing that's a
24:09
Speaker 1: pretty significant aerospace design. I didn't realize that until it
24:13
Speaker 1: started popping up like and researching this again and again
24:17
Speaker 1: that like it's one thing to design a wing that
24:20
Speaker 1: can you know, cut through the air at supersonic speeds.
24:25
Speaker 1: But you aren't gonna land or take off at supersonic speeds,
24:29
Speaker 1: so that wing has to do double duty. It has
24:31
Speaker 1: to be able to keep you aloft at supersonic speeds.
24:33
Speaker 1: It also has to keep you aloft at subsonic speeds. So,
24:37
Speaker 1: from what I understand, the wing on the Concorde was
24:39
Speaker 1: like a triumph of engineering. Yeah. I don't know about you,
24:43
Speaker 1: but I don't get scared to fly. But sometimes still
24:46
Speaker 1: when I look out and I see the wing wobbling
24:50
Speaker 1: and kind of flapping, I think, Man, I wish more
24:53
Speaker 1: of that was connected to the plane. Yeah, it just
24:55
Speaker 1: looks like more stable, it looks like it's trying to
24:57
Speaker 1: flap its way. Yeah, that always is dis concerting to me.
25:00
Speaker 1: I have to say, I have come so far with
25:04
Speaker 1: fear of flying, and I've thanked her before and I'm
25:07
Speaker 1: going to thank her again. Thank you to you me
25:09
Speaker 1: for getting me over my fear of flying, because my
25:12
Speaker 1: life would be so much worse if I were still
25:15
Speaker 1: scared to fly. Well, yeah, she was probably like, dude,
25:18
Speaker 1: I want to go places right with you. You're gonna
25:21
Speaker 1: have to get over this, buddy. Yeah, I remember the
25:23
Speaker 1: days when you were the what was it the dark
25:25
Speaker 1: Night of the sky or the black Ghost and the sky. Oh,
25:28
Speaker 1: I'm glad you brought that up, Joshua, were a blanket
25:30
Speaker 1: completely over his head while you flew, so it could
25:34
Speaker 1: be the black Ghost, of the red Ghost of the
25:36
Speaker 1: gray ghosts, depended on the color of the blanket, Chuck.
25:39
Speaker 1: To my great dismay, I found recently that they washed
25:43
Speaker 1: those blankets maybe once every four flights, over once every
25:47
Speaker 1: eight flights. Did you think they washed them between every flight?
25:49
Speaker 1: I thought it was new every time that I wouldn't
25:52
Speaker 1: have put it over my head if I had known that,
25:54
Speaker 1: Like God knows, who did wide into that blanket? Did
25:58
Speaker 1: you know? I thought they were either single serve and
26:03
Speaker 1: then they like donated them, or if they did rewatch
26:07
Speaker 1: them that it certainly was not every flight. I wish
26:09
Speaker 1: you would have brought this up because I can still
26:12
Speaker 1: like taste old blankets in my mouth. Now I think
26:15
Speaker 1: I'm hallucinating, but I can still taste it. It's the same.
26:18
Speaker 1: It's real to me, all right. So I believe before
26:21
Speaker 1: we got sidetracked a minute ago, you were about to
26:23
Speaker 1: say something about the nose tilting and moving. So what's
26:28
Speaker 1: the deal there? Okay, So the angle of attack. If
26:33
Speaker 1: a plane's flying straight, we'll call that a horizontal angle
26:37
Speaker 1: of attack. I call it getting there. What is this
26:40
Speaker 1: ninety degrees? What are you talking about? So what angle
26:44
Speaker 1: is this? Well, you're not saying an angle, You're just
26:47
Speaker 1: you just have your arm out straight. Okay. So let's
26:49
Speaker 1: say a plane is flying completely horizontal parallel to the ground,
26:53
Speaker 1: but it's flying forward, so it's if we pop it
26:57
Speaker 1: up so the nose is up, it's flying at a
27:00
Speaker 1: steep angle of attack. I think if it's coming down
27:03
Speaker 1: really fast, it's also a steep angle of attack. But
27:06
Speaker 1: the concorde is meant to come in so that its
27:09
Speaker 1: nose is popped up way higher than like a seven
27:12
Speaker 1: or forty seven when it lands. The angle of attack.
27:15
Speaker 1: The problem is is because of that long needle like nose,
27:19
Speaker 1: if you're a pilot, you can't see past that when
27:21
Speaker 1: you're flying or taking off because the angle of attack
27:24
Speaker 1: is so steep. So they actually designed the nose too
27:27
Speaker 1: basically elevate downward to get out of their view when
27:31
Speaker 1: the plane was taking off her landing, and then before
27:34
Speaker 1: it went into sub or supersonic speeds, it would pop
27:37
Speaker 1: into place so that it was a pointy needle. Yeah,
27:40
Speaker 1: so it actually awesome. Yeah, it moved in flight and
27:43
Speaker 1: you can and it also had a little visor on
27:45
Speaker 1: it because you're going so fast too. I guess just
27:47
Speaker 1: to break that wind over the window or that bird guy,
27:51
Speaker 1: can you imagine what that thing did? The birds are
27:53
Speaker 1: in into Yeah, no bird, No, like a Randy Johnson fastball. Yeah.
27:58
Speaker 1: Do you ever see that Big Unit? Wow? Look at you.
28:03
Speaker 1: It's like it's almost like when Emily throws out of
28:07
Speaker 1: sports fact every now and then. That was alive in
28:10
Speaker 1: America the nineties. Everybody knew who the Big Unit was. No,
28:15
Speaker 1: that's true. She was talking one time about she said
28:18
Speaker 1: something about Eli Manning. It's like, how do you know
28:21
Speaker 1: Eli Manning? She's like, I know the Manning guys. She's
28:25
Speaker 1: like one of them wears the the orange outfit and
28:28
Speaker 1: when whears the blue outfit. At least she didn't say
28:30
Speaker 1: costume costume outfit. You know who's got me and Emily
28:36
Speaker 1: combined beat is hodgment. Oh for sports? Yeah, he's just
28:42
Speaker 1: willfully ignorant of sports. Yeah, although he has gotten into
28:46
Speaker 1: a thing here in his middle age where he will
28:49
Speaker 1: go to a sporting event if someone offers him the chance,
28:52
Speaker 1: because he just was almost more like a sociological experiment,
28:56
Speaker 1: not like oh I want to go root for the
28:59
Speaker 1: giants or whatever, just like, oh, well, this is fascinating
29:02
Speaker 1: to observe. Count the number of hot dogs that are
29:05
Speaker 1: eaten by Hodgman, No, just by everyone around him. Um,
29:10
Speaker 1: all right, where were we the visor and killing birds?
29:15
Speaker 1: So now let's talk about the engines. Okay, So those
29:18
Speaker 1: engines on a concorde where there were four engines, two
29:21
Speaker 1: on each wing. Yeah, Rolls Royce, how do you say
29:25
Speaker 1: the other company taking a stay up at it? I
29:28
Speaker 1: would say the s S silence. So I'm just gonna
29:30
Speaker 1: go the Necma Olympus or Snecma. I would have gone
29:35
Speaker 1: with Snecma. All right, maybe it's Snecma. It sounds like
29:37
Speaker 1: a skin condition, it does. So the Rolls Royce Necma
29:41
Speaker 1: engine we're capable of eighteen points seven tons of thrust each,
29:47
Speaker 1: which I have reference. It does sound like a lot.
29:51
Speaker 1: And if it doesn't sound like a lot to you,
29:52
Speaker 1: prepare for this. The four engines aboard the concorde um
29:58
Speaker 1: combined burned six thousand, seven hundred and seventy one gallons
30:03
Speaker 1: of fuel per hour, and not only that. Yeah, that
30:07
Speaker 1: sounds like a ton. It was. Well, supposedly it took
30:10
Speaker 1: a ton of fuel per seit that was the rule
30:13
Speaker 1: of thumb for the Concorde, Like literally a ton of
30:15
Speaker 1: fuel per passage, that's what I read. Um. And the
30:20
Speaker 1: the fuel they used was kerosene, which is so redneck
30:23
Speaker 1: for like a British Airways air France joint thing. They
30:27
Speaker 1: were burning kerosene hank Kill City. Yeah, well that was propane,
30:31
Speaker 1: but still that's right. Um alright. So, like we said before, though,
30:35
Speaker 1: these engines were attached directly to the underside of the wing.
30:39
Speaker 1: There were no struts. I know, when you're in a
30:41
Speaker 1: plane now and you just look at a normal jumbo jet,
30:44
Speaker 1: it looks like that engine is attached to the wing,
30:46
Speaker 1: but it's or part of the wing, but it actually
30:50
Speaker 1: is attached with these metal poles called struts, right, which
30:53
Speaker 1: is fine for sub sonic flight. Um. Again, though the
30:57
Speaker 1: engines for the Concorde are basically part of the wing
31:02
Speaker 1: so that they wouldn't come off U and then the
31:04
Speaker 1: after burning that is probably the coolest part of this
31:06
Speaker 1: whole thing to me. The Brits called it reheating or
31:11
Speaker 1: having a wet engine. Yeah, but after burning is like
31:14
Speaker 1: what an F sixteen will do. Uh. If you want
31:18
Speaker 1: extra juice, you mix raw fuel, you know how you
31:22
Speaker 1: see like the red flame coming out of the back
31:24
Speaker 1: of an engine. You actually mix raw fuel with that
31:27
Speaker 1: after it's been burned once, just to juice you even more. Yeah.
31:32
Speaker 1: Like the whole reason they have um uh tests of
31:36
Speaker 1: your cars emission systems is because you're you don't burn
31:41
Speaker 1: all of the gas that you're trying to burn in
31:44
Speaker 1: your engine, some of it escaped, unburned or partially burned.
31:48
Speaker 1: What the what an after burner engine does is it
31:50
Speaker 1: captures that exhaust and puts it through a second burner
31:54
Speaker 1: to get as much of that that what would have
31:58
Speaker 1: been lost energy from being lost and just giving it
32:01
Speaker 1: that extra boost. That is how it would reach supersonic speeds.
32:06
Speaker 1: Um and the it was it would be so loud
32:09
Speaker 1: in there apparently when the afterburners were on. But in
32:13
Speaker 1: the in the British French Concord you didn't have to
32:16
Speaker 1: have after burners on all the time. In the Soviet
32:19
Speaker 1: Concord Sky you had to have the afterburns on the
32:22
Speaker 1: whole time, So it was like unodly loud in the
32:25
Speaker 1: cabin the entire flight. That was another mark against it. Well,
32:29
Speaker 1: that's crazy because afterburners are for like even in fighter jets,
32:33
Speaker 1: it's like for minimal use. But when you're like on
32:36
Speaker 1: the highway to the danger zone, that's when you kick
32:38
Speaker 1: in the afterburners. Yeah, it's just like every now and
32:41
Speaker 1: then to get more thrust. That's that is crazy. It's
32:45
Speaker 1: only meant to be for short bursts. Right from what
32:47
Speaker 1: I saw. They had to have the afterburners on the
32:49
Speaker 1: whole time to maintain supersonic flight in the t U one.
32:54
Speaker 1: Is that right? Yeah, that's yeah. The concord sky that
32:58
Speaker 1: is nuts. Well, no, wonder it didn't work. Um, should
33:01
Speaker 1: we take another break? Sure? All right, we'll talk more
33:04
Speaker 1: about fuel and paint right after this things chop cho Sorry, alright,
33:34
Speaker 1: fuel and paint. What's the deal with the fuel? Seventeen
33:38
Speaker 1: fuel tanks, thirty almost thirty two gallons. Yeah, that's a
33:43
Speaker 1: lot of fuel. Yeah, and I think it does. I
33:47
Speaker 1: did see a ton of seat, which we'll find made
33:51
Speaker 1: the concord really expensive to operate. Yeah, so that fuel
33:56
Speaker 1: against kerosene, which just blows me away. Um, they they
34:01
Speaker 1: had it designed really ingeniously because again, when you fly supersonic,
34:07
Speaker 1: all sorts of different things happen, and one of the
34:09
Speaker 1: things that happens is the balance of the plane. That
34:12
Speaker 1: what you would call like the center of gravity shifts backwards.
34:17
Speaker 1: And when that happens, like it's tough to imagine because
34:20
Speaker 1: you think the opposite is going to happen. But imagine
34:23
Speaker 1: you have like a little doul, a little stick balanced
34:26
Speaker 1: on your finger. If you move your finger further back
34:29
Speaker 1: along the dowell, you'll notice that the front of the
34:33
Speaker 1: doull goes down because the center of gravity is further back.
34:38
Speaker 1: It's balance is further back. So that would happen when
34:42
Speaker 1: you hit supersonic speeds in the concorde. Yeah, so in
34:46
Speaker 1: motion that's called the aerodynamic center. Um, I like center balance,
34:51
Speaker 1: but that's well, I think that's the same thing, but
34:53
Speaker 1: in motion, Okay, I might be wrong, and aerodynamically speaking,
34:57
Speaker 1: uh yeah. So they had what they call they had
35:01
Speaker 1: three auxiliary or trim fuel tanks. If you've ever been
35:05
Speaker 1: on a boat, a boat has a way to trim
35:07
Speaker 1: the the motor. You might have trim tabs on it,
35:10
Speaker 1: or you might have a little button that makes your
35:13
Speaker 1: boat motor go up and down and that's to keep
35:15
Speaker 1: you know, that's how you don't you're not cruising along
35:18
Speaker 1: through the water with your nose way out of the water.
35:20
Speaker 1: You you trim that thing and then it'll lower the
35:23
Speaker 1: nose a little bit. I had no idea that's what
35:24
Speaker 1: that was. Yeah, trim. So it's the same thing in
35:27
Speaker 1: this plane. But they used fuel that they would shift
35:31
Speaker 1: backward and forward to level this thing out to find
35:34
Speaker 1: its aerodynamic center balance, right, they would they would if
35:37
Speaker 1: the if the aerodynamic balance center balance was that what
35:43
Speaker 1: it was, aerodynamic center like, they could pump just as
35:48
Speaker 1: much fuel as it took to these empty tanks to
35:50
Speaker 1: balance the plane out and make it fly perpendicular or
35:54
Speaker 1: horizontal parallel to the ground again like they wanted to.
35:58
Speaker 1: And then when it was coming out of sub sonic speeds,
36:00
Speaker 1: the opposite would happen, that the center would move towards
36:04
Speaker 1: the front and the back would go up, so they
36:06
Speaker 1: would pump gas back to the other tank and level
36:09
Speaker 1: it out again. Really ingenious stuff. Yeah, I just think
36:12
Speaker 1: of a see saw. Yeah. And how however many little
36:16
Speaker 1: kids you would need to put on there to equalize me? Yeah,
36:18
Speaker 1: because you're moving the full frum from different places Yeah,
36:21
Speaker 1: that's just great, pretty cool man, way better than my
36:24
Speaker 1: stupid Dowell on your finger idea. Uh, well, imagine me
36:29
Speaker 1: on that doll, same thing, broken doll. Uh. And that's
36:33
Speaker 1: when I mentioned earlier when it had that famous crash
36:35
Speaker 1: in two thousand of its fuel because of you know,
36:39
Speaker 1: they had to have it in a certain place for takeoff.
36:41
Speaker 1: It was all concentrated right there where that fire was
36:44
Speaker 1: so bad news. Yeah, that's just bad luck. And then
36:47
Speaker 1: the paint was special paint even because crazily enough, this
36:51
Speaker 1: thing got super hot, right, they came up with a white,
36:55
Speaker 1: a shade of white that's like four times more reflective
36:58
Speaker 1: than the white you see on no plane, which apparently
37:02
Speaker 1: look at the concorde and blind you on the spot. Um. Yeah,
37:06
Speaker 1: Presian white sounds pretty nice, man, um. But they would
37:09
Speaker 1: do this to reflect heat, and they were they wanted
37:13
Speaker 1: to reflect heat because they needed to get rid of
37:16
Speaker 1: as much heat as they possibly could, because this thing
37:19
Speaker 1: would get really hot at the speeds it was going,
37:21
Speaker 1: just because of the friction it's going through the air,
37:24
Speaker 1: the air molecules in the air, and the faster you go,
37:28
Speaker 1: the harder you run into these air molecules. The hotter
37:31
Speaker 1: things get and that the Concorde would actually you could
37:33
Speaker 1: touch the windows from what I saw, and they would
37:36
Speaker 1: be warm to the touch and the flight, whereas if
37:38
Speaker 1: you touch a window on a forty seven, you're freezing
37:42
Speaker 1: because it's like negative sixty degrees fahrenheight out there. It
37:45
Speaker 1: would get up to like two hundred, like positive two
37:47
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty degrees fahrenheight on this out the outside
37:51
Speaker 1: of the nose in particular of the Concorde. And that's
37:54
Speaker 1: despite the air temperature which would be even lower higher
37:57
Speaker 1: up right right, like negative sixty. Yeah. So in the end,
38:02
Speaker 1: the paint was about double twice as reflective as any
38:06
Speaker 1: other jet. So that's solved that problem. Yeah pretty well.
38:11
Speaker 1: Uh all right, so I guess let's talk about flying
38:14
Speaker 1: on this thing. Like we said, can only hold a
38:16
Speaker 1: hundred people, right, a hundred wealthy, wealthy people. Yeah, Like
38:21
Speaker 1: round trip was ten to twelve grand And I don't
38:24
Speaker 1: know if we said this, Like the lure of the
38:27
Speaker 1: Concord was not just that it was it looked cool
38:29
Speaker 1: and it went like really fast. It cut the time
38:33
Speaker 1: to get from London to New York or Paris to
38:37
Speaker 1: New York virtually in half, which is huge, Like if
38:41
Speaker 1: you've ever made that trip, it's just long enough to
38:44
Speaker 1: be we started to get pretty uncomfortable. Um so half
38:49
Speaker 1: the time, like three and a half hours basically from
38:52
Speaker 1: London to New York. That was a really valuable thing
38:56
Speaker 1: that people would be willing to pay for. And you
38:58
Speaker 1: had to pay a lot to get on the Concorde.
39:01
Speaker 1: I saw upwards of twelve thousand dollars round trip, which
39:06
Speaker 1: correct me if I'm wrong, But if that's like nineteen
39:08
Speaker 1: eighty money, that's like thirty two grand today. Yeah, and
39:12
Speaker 1: that's for sitting in what amounts to like a bucket seat. Um.
39:18
Speaker 1: Apparently the meals were very nice and the service was impeccable, sure,
39:21
Speaker 1: and you felt special and the lounges were Did they
39:25
Speaker 1: have lounges, Yeah, they had special Concorde lounges. See, I
39:28
Speaker 1: didn't see anything but seats in a in a bathroom.
39:30
Speaker 1: They well no, no, I'm sorry. At the airports they
39:33
Speaker 1: had special lounges just for Concorde passengers. Yeah, they had
39:37
Speaker 1: to gus see it up. I guess I got like
39:39
Speaker 1: a foot massage. Yeah, but I mean, if you're talking
39:41
Speaker 1: thirty two tho dollar round trip tickets, like you were
39:45
Speaker 1: sitting there rubbing elbows with like the world's elite and celebrities,
39:49
Speaker 1: And on one particular day in ve Um, one of
39:53
Speaker 1: the people you might have been sitting next to was
39:55
Speaker 1: none other than Phil Collins. That's right. Do you want
39:58
Speaker 1: to tell them about Phil Collins in the concorde? Uh? Yeah,
40:02
Speaker 1: all right, I remember because I was watching Live AID
40:06
Speaker 1: at the time and as if Live AID wasn't a
40:09
Speaker 1: big enough awesome thing to do on a I can't remember.
40:12
Speaker 1: It was Saturday or Sunday afternoon. Tell the kids what
40:15
Speaker 1: Live AID was. Oh, jeez, we should do a Live
40:18
Speaker 1: AID episode. Yeah, we should. Live AID was a benefit concert,
40:22
Speaker 1: and not the first benefit concert, but the first huge
40:27
Speaker 1: um multicontinental benefit concert. There was a led Zeppelin reunion.
40:32
Speaker 1: It was that big, the first ever back when they
40:35
Speaker 1: hadn't been broken up for that long, which is crazy.
40:39
Speaker 1: Um USA. For Africa, wasn't that what it was called? Uh?
40:44
Speaker 1: I don't know if it was. If Live AID, I'm
40:46
Speaker 1: not sure if you say for Africa was different, but
40:49
Speaker 1: it was. They're basically trying to alleviate the um the
40:53
Speaker 1: droughts famines in in Western Africa, right, headed up by
40:57
Speaker 1: Bob who very famously portrayed Pink in um The Wall
41:04
Speaker 1: of the movie The Wall and was you've seen that right, Yeah,
41:08
Speaker 1: but I didn't know that was Bob Geldo. Yeah, that's
41:09
Speaker 1: Bob Geldo in the movie. The character's name is Pink.
41:13
Speaker 1: Not in real life. Everyone I know that. Uh. And
41:17
Speaker 1: he was the singer for you know, he had the
41:19
Speaker 1: big hit for the boomtown Rats. No idea. I don't
41:22
Speaker 1: know why. I don't like Mondays. No. I thought that
41:26
Speaker 1: was an Elvis Costello song. No boomtown Rats. It sounds
41:29
Speaker 1: just like Elvis Costello, doesn't it. It sort of does.
41:31
Speaker 1: I never thought about that. I always thought that's who
41:33
Speaker 1: it was. Yeah, okay, alright, So we got Bob Geldof
41:36
Speaker 1: put on this huge concert to help fund to help
41:39
Speaker 1: fund um this charity for Africa, which we've mentioned before
41:43
Speaker 1: was actually like a terrible move. It went straight to
41:45
Speaker 1: the war lords, remember, yeah, it did. I think in
41:49
Speaker 1: our Famine's episode we talked about this good one. But um,
41:54
Speaker 1: it was such a huge concert that it took place
41:57
Speaker 1: at the same time in Europe and North America. Yea,
42:00
Speaker 1: Like this concert spanned the Atlantic wasn't it in Philly, Yes, Philly,
42:06
Speaker 1: and I believe London, right, So that's the stage. It's
42:10
Speaker 1: the hugest thing ever. That's where Queen very famously just
42:14
Speaker 1: brought down the house at Wembley Stadium. Uh and one
42:18
Speaker 1: of the great performances of all time. Many many performers
42:21
Speaker 1: did so. Uh. And Phil Collins, as if that wasn't
42:25
Speaker 1: big enough, was like, here's what I want to do.
42:27
Speaker 1: I want to play on both continents. I want to
42:31
Speaker 1: do both of these shows. So he did. He did
42:33
Speaker 1: a show at Wembley Stadium. From what I understand, it
42:35
Speaker 1: went pretty well, and then he went to the I
42:40
Speaker 1: think he throw and hopped on in British Airways Concord
42:44
Speaker 1: and flew from London to New York, took a helicopter
42:48
Speaker 1: from New York to Philadelphia, and I think he went
42:51
Speaker 1: on stage at one or two pm in London, and
42:54
Speaker 1: he made its Philadelphia on time to take the stage
42:57
Speaker 1: and I think two pm in Philadelphia. Time travel, yes,
43:01
Speaker 1: because that was the thing. The concorde got you there
43:03
Speaker 1: so fast that it was less than the time difference
43:07
Speaker 1: between the East Coast of the United States in London
43:10
Speaker 1: or Paris, and so it was actually like a four
43:14
Speaker 1: hour trip, but there's a five hour time difference, so
43:16
Speaker 1: you could actually travel back in time figuratively speaking with
43:21
Speaker 1: the concorde. And that's what Phil Collins did. So he
43:24
Speaker 1: went off a stage in London and then came on
43:26
Speaker 1: stage in Philadelphia. It was pretty thanks to the Concorde.
43:29
Speaker 1: It was amazing. And then they had a camera crew
43:31
Speaker 1: following him and stuff. I remember seeing like he's at
43:33
Speaker 1: the airport now and he's getting on the helicopter. It
43:36
Speaker 1: was a big deal. Yeah, and apparently Share was on
43:38
Speaker 1: the concorde. It was Share with Phil Collins and it's like, hey,
43:42
Speaker 1: what's going on? And Phil Collins like, oh, we got
43:44
Speaker 1: this live AID thing. She's like what is that? And
43:46
Speaker 1: he told me. She was like do you think I
43:48
Speaker 1: could come? And he's like, yeah, I sure, just show up.
43:50
Speaker 1: I don't know if she did show up or not,
43:52
Speaker 1: but she didn't know about Live ABE. Maybe she joined him.
43:56
Speaker 1: She was probably like, why wasn't I invited? Kind I
43:58
Speaker 1: would say that if I were Shared, well, wrong with me.
44:01
Speaker 1: She would have been like snap out of it to
44:03
Speaker 1: Bob Gelda. Alright, so Phil Collins is on this plane. Um,
44:08
Speaker 1: through his eyes, this is what it looks like. You
44:10
Speaker 1: take off, nose down thirty eight thousand pounds of thrust
44:14
Speaker 1: to get you going from zero to two miles per
44:17
Speaker 1: hour in three seconds. That is mind boggling. Yeah. Like
44:22
Speaker 1: you feel a little bit of like push you back
44:25
Speaker 1: in your seat on a regular plane, but not much.
44:28
Speaker 1: This is like you're sitting normally. You're back in your
44:31
Speaker 1: seat like at the snap of a finger from what
44:34
Speaker 1: I gather. Okay, so Phil collins face is like smashed
44:37
Speaker 1: off under the seat behind him, and he's like, what
44:39
Speaker 1: have I done? All right? I should have never left Genesis.
44:43
Speaker 1: I don't know about that. I don't know that he
44:45
Speaker 1: left Genesis now, he just did his own thing. Yeah,
44:48
Speaker 1: that's right, great solo career. That's a good documentary too.
44:51
Speaker 1: There was a Genesis stock out a couple of years ago. Yeah,
44:54
Speaker 1: like it covers starts with the Peter Gabriel years. That's
44:57
Speaker 1: good stuff. All right. So you're back in your seat.
45:00
Speaker 1: Phil Collins is drinking his um vodka cranberry slashing all
45:06
Speaker 1: over his face. They reached cruising altitude very fast and
45:09
Speaker 1: past the sound barrier. The noses up now and inside.
45:13
Speaker 1: This is very clever. They had a displace on on
45:16
Speaker 1: what mock you were flying so everyone could see, Yeah,
45:18
Speaker 1: mock and altitude pretty cool. Yeah, and again like the
45:22
Speaker 1: the in flight service was just bar none like the cutler.
45:27
Speaker 1: He was amazing. The food was amazing, the wine on
45:29
Speaker 1: board was amazing, the service was amazing. Like when you
45:32
Speaker 1: were on the Concorde, apparently they would you would leave
45:36
Speaker 1: with a signed certificate saying that you've been on the Concorde.
45:40
Speaker 1: That's pretty cool. Like that's how important it was, even
45:42
Speaker 1: like the super rich and famous and um, the whole
45:46
Speaker 1: presumption was is that the super rich and famous would
45:48
Speaker 1: pay to go on this flight and everybody else would
45:52
Speaker 1: just fly sub sonic. Um. But it was just too
45:55
Speaker 1: expensive even for the super rich and famous. Yeah, and
45:58
Speaker 1: but we didn't mention even before where you took off.
46:01
Speaker 1: I think the pilots made a bit of a show
46:03
Speaker 1: of it, and they told everyone, like, prepare yourself. What
46:06
Speaker 1: you're about to experience is not like a regular flight.
46:09
Speaker 1: You're gonna be pushed back into your seats. We're gonna
46:11
Speaker 1: be going this fast this soon. And everyone's getting all
46:15
Speaker 1: jazzed up, you know, because like, hey, this is awesome.
46:17
Speaker 1: We're all super rich and we're all going super fast. Uh.
46:21
Speaker 1: Then once you get up there and you look out
46:23
Speaker 1: the window, what do you see? Apparently you can see
46:25
Speaker 1: the curvature of earth. That's crazy. There would not be
46:28
Speaker 1: any flat earther's had everybody written on the concorde. If
46:31
Speaker 1: there were still around, right, you'd be like, no, it's around.
46:35
Speaker 1: And apparently you don't really feel the speed um even
46:38
Speaker 1: when you're hitting. Yeah, like even when you hit the
46:42
Speaker 1: speed of sound, it doesn't feel much different. Although I
46:45
Speaker 1: did see it was very noisy in the plane because
46:47
Speaker 1: of the afterburners. Yeah, I mean this one dude, I
46:50
Speaker 1: got a bunch of quotes from people. He said it
46:53
Speaker 1: was more like office chairs, bucket seeds, very small windows,
46:56
Speaker 1: very noisy, extremely noisy. But I challenge anybody it didn't
47:00
Speaker 1: have a smile from ear to ear when they got
47:02
Speaker 1: on it, it looked like the seats looked like the
47:04
Speaker 1: bucket seats of a Ferrari. Yeah, like an expensive sports car.
47:09
Speaker 1: They were a polster that way there. They looked like
47:13
Speaker 1: a sports car, very nice sports car seats, but it
47:16
Speaker 1: was a plane fall of them. It was really cool looking. Yeah.
47:19
Speaker 1: This one guy, Fred Finn, international businessman, apparently took seven
47:23
Speaker 1: hundred and eighteen flights on the Concorde. I saw that
47:27
Speaker 1: he holds the record, right, he's got to Yeah, he
47:30
Speaker 1: has seven eighteen signed certificates that he was on the
47:33
Speaker 1: concod So they definitely made it special for that price tag.
47:38
Speaker 1: About two and a half million people flew flights on
47:42
Speaker 1: the Concords. That's a lot for how expensive it was,
47:45
Speaker 1: and the fact that it really just ran from ninety
47:48
Speaker 1: two thou three. Yeah, that's a lot of that's a
47:50
Speaker 1: lot of people. But it just like you said, it
47:52
Speaker 1: wasn't affordable, right, No, So from the outset, apparently the
47:56
Speaker 1: Brits were like, oh my god, what have we gotten
47:58
Speaker 1: ourselves into? And I saw it compared to the Brexit
48:02
Speaker 1: of the time, that the politicians all knew that this
48:05
Speaker 1: was a terrible idea. It was just a huge money
48:08
Speaker 1: was a huge money pit, but they pretended in public
48:13
Speaker 1: like it was going to do great things for Britain.
48:15
Speaker 1: And I think this is right before the European Union started,
48:19
Speaker 1: and I believe the Concorde actually was probably one of
48:22
Speaker 1: those projects that helped foster the European Union at the time,
48:25
Speaker 1: because Europe was not that many decades away from being
48:30
Speaker 1: ravaged by World War Two, and again the Marshall Plan
48:32
Speaker 1: came along. And by the way, I have to say,
48:35
Speaker 1: in the Think Tanks episode, apparently I said that the
48:37
Speaker 1: Marshall Plan was based on the New Deal, which is
48:39
Speaker 1: totally wrong, and I know it's wrong. But some listener
48:42
Speaker 1: wrote in and said you were really wrong, and I
48:44
Speaker 1: was like, I didn't say that, and apparently I did,
48:46
Speaker 1: but I know that that's not the case. But the
48:48
Speaker 1: Marshall Plan rebuilt Europe and at the same time it
48:51
Speaker 1: brought Europe together and helped foster the EU. But I
48:55
Speaker 1: think the Concorde was a project that helped bring the
48:57
Speaker 1: EU along, but it was a money losing project and
49:01
Speaker 1: the reason the Brits stayed in it was because they
49:03
Speaker 1: were afraid the French were going to sue them for
49:06
Speaker 1: even more money if they backed out. I love history, man, yeah,
49:12
Speaker 1: and I think I think. I think that was a
49:15
Speaker 1: money suck, even at full capacity, but like when you
49:18
Speaker 1: started having like half full flights, we only have fifty
49:22
Speaker 1: people on a plane. Um, it was just blowing through money.
49:27
Speaker 1: Plus also, nowadays, if if the Concorde were still around,
49:32
Speaker 1: there would be huge issues with it because it burned
49:34
Speaker 1: so much gas kerosene, sure, but it just burned through
49:40
Speaker 1: so much and created so much greenhouse gas. It was
49:43
Speaker 1: just such a just a polluting monster that if we
49:47
Speaker 1: had gone just too supersonic planes, that would be an
49:50
Speaker 1: issue by now for sure. But yes, expense the sound,
49:54
Speaker 1: the sonic boom, um definitely got rid of it. But
49:57
Speaker 1: I think also um, British Airways and Air France the
50:01
Speaker 1: only reason they took these planes on it because they
50:02
Speaker 1: got them for free from their governments. Um. Yeah, they
50:06
Speaker 1: bought like boughtom for a dollar or something. And there
50:10
Speaker 1: was this there was this point where, you know, in
50:13
Speaker 1: the seventies and I think again in like the early nineties,
50:16
Speaker 1: where it really seemed like supersonic passenger travel was this
50:20
Speaker 1: nut that we were going to crack, and it just
50:22
Speaker 1: went away. And the reason why, like Reagan actually wanted
50:26
Speaker 1: NASA to work on a transport plane that basically went suborbital.
50:31
Speaker 1: I could get you to Tokyo in two hours. It
50:34
Speaker 1: is crazy, but it's basically what Elon Musk is talking
50:36
Speaker 1: about with SpaceX. I think he says he could get
50:39
Speaker 1: you from New York to Tokyo in thirty nine minutes.
50:42
Speaker 1: But again, the environmental impacts just the wastefulness of the fuel.
50:47
Speaker 1: It's just mind boggling how how inefficient it actually is. Yeah,
50:52
Speaker 1: and there's something about building something just for the super
50:55
Speaker 1: rich that it's not like it's not a great time
50:59
Speaker 1: for that. I think he said he could do it
51:01
Speaker 1: for about more than an economy class ticket on a
51:04
Speaker 1: plane though, Yeah, which would be pretty amazing because he's
51:07
Speaker 1: a magician. He is. Did you see the dear Moon?
51:10
Speaker 1: Announced me last night. Oh dude, he's building a rocket
51:15
Speaker 1: that it's a it's a transport like passenger rocket that
51:18
Speaker 1: will go past the moon, like it's a tourist um
51:22
Speaker 1: trip past the moon. And this Japanese artist, now he's
51:27
Speaker 1: a Japanese entrepreneur, I can't remember his name. Um, he
51:31
Speaker 1: bought the whole he bought all the seats, and he
51:35
Speaker 1: is going to over the next like five years, I
51:37
Speaker 1: think before the flight, invite an artist from like nine
51:42
Speaker 1: different fields to come with them. Uh, just on the
51:45
Speaker 1: premise that they go back and make something that that
51:49
Speaker 1: they were inspired to make from the trip. It's like
51:51
Speaker 1: his gift to humanity. Um, this art project that he's
51:55
Speaker 1: basically kind of clumping onto. Elon Musk's BFR rocket. Well, sir,
52:01
Speaker 1: I think a podcast eloquently describing that trip would be
52:07
Speaker 1: a great contribution. So podcasting is in art. Yeah, why
52:12
Speaker 1: not choose the most downloaded podcast in iTunes history to
52:16
Speaker 1: do that. Yeah, he'll be like, okay, sure, but you
52:19
Speaker 1: guys have to choose which one goes. Oh you could go, Oh,
52:22
Speaker 1: we'd flip a coin. We'd leave it to UM to
52:27
Speaker 1: Javier bar down to this sign who gets the plug
52:30
Speaker 1: through the head. Uh. So we had the famous wreck
52:34
Speaker 1: in two thousand and then finally in April two thousand three,
52:37
Speaker 1: UM Air France president Jean Cyril Spinetta said, one, we're
52:45
Speaker 1: shutting it down. And then I think on June twelve
52:50
Speaker 1: they delivered to Dullest that that one Air and Space Museum,
52:55
Speaker 1: that very first production Concorde that was delivered to Air
52:58
Speaker 1: France and UM. I believe October two thousand three was
53:03
Speaker 1: must have been the last British Airways flight. Then yeah,
53:06
Speaker 1: I guess they stuck around a little bit longer, you know,
53:08
Speaker 1: the Brits. Uh. You can also go to the Aerospace
53:11
Speaker 1: Bristol Museum. That one. You can definitely get on board
53:14
Speaker 1: really wander around. Yeah. I saw a video of that
53:17
Speaker 1: in France. The Museum Air in Space Paris Leborge uh
53:23
Speaker 1: Intrepid Sea Air and Space Museum in New York apparently
53:26
Speaker 1: has one that has a space shuttle too. Auto and
53:29
Speaker 1: Technic Museum Sunshine in Germany. In the Museum of Flight
53:33
Speaker 1: in Seattle, I think has one nice all worth visiting
53:38
Speaker 1: for sure. It's net and you don't have to be
53:40
Speaker 1: like an aviation buff. You can just be inspired by
53:44
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. Yeah, I can't wait to hear
53:46
Speaker 1: back from Carrie and see her firsthand insight. Maybe I'll
53:49
Speaker 1: read that as a listener mail. Oh, that's a good idea.
53:51
Speaker 1: She'll probably say the same thing, which is like so loud,
53:54
Speaker 1: so loud and cramped, and there were a bunch of
53:56
Speaker 1: snobs on board. Phil Collins was crying so so scary it. Uh, Okay,
54:01
Speaker 1: Well that's Concords and it's done for now. Who knows,
54:04
Speaker 1: maybe they'll make a comeback and we'll do a follow up, agreed. Uh.
54:08
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about Concords, type that.
54:10
Speaker 1: We're in the search part how stuff works dot com.
54:12
Speaker 1: And since I said that, it's time for listener mate,
54:16
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this one one I found in a
54:18
Speaker 1: stack that I meant to read a while ago. So sorry.
54:21
Speaker 1: Sorry to Stephen if you've been waiting on this. Hello,
54:24
Speaker 1: my name is Stefan. I'm twenty three years old and
54:27
Speaker 1: I'm from Stuttgott, Germany. I started listening to your podcast
54:31
Speaker 1: because I want to improve my English for my bachelor's degree.
54:35
Speaker 1: That isn't that's hats off to Stefan. So I searched
54:39
Speaker 1: at Spotify for English podcasts and I found a playlist
54:42
Speaker 1: with some of your podcasts. I found out that they
54:45
Speaker 1: were from two thousand nine. It was so much fun
54:47
Speaker 1: to listen to these. They were about castles and Ninja's
54:49
Speaker 1: and hiccup uh. And after listening to these episodes, I
54:53
Speaker 1: thought they are from two thousand nine. I don't think
54:56
Speaker 1: Josh and Chuck do these podcasts still today? Wrong? But
54:59
Speaker 1: I search and I saw that you still make podcasts,
55:02
Speaker 1: and I was very happy. That's the story how I
55:05
Speaker 1: started to listen to you two guys, and I found
55:07
Speaker 1: nothing that changed from two thousand nine to today. You
55:10
Speaker 1: make the same podcast the same way. So great, the greatest.
55:14
Speaker 1: It's true. I really like this guy. I hope you
55:17
Speaker 1: read my email. Would be very glad with the best regards,
55:21
Speaker 1: Stephen Stephen from Stott I love it man, Thank you, Stephen.
55:25
Speaker 1: That's really awesome. That was great. It was really well written. Yeah,
55:29
Speaker 1: you're doing great with your English. Coherent everything about it
55:32
Speaker 1: couldn't have done anybody on myself. Yep, we understood that
55:35
Speaker 1: more than we understand Jerry on most days. Uh. If
55:39
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with this like Stefan
55:41
Speaker 1: did and let us know how great we are and
55:42
Speaker 1: how good we're teaching you English, is that correct? Sure?
55:47
Speaker 1: You can write to us, well, you can hang out
55:50
Speaker 1: with us on social media. Go to our website. Uh,
55:52
Speaker 1: stuff you should know dot com and you'll find all
55:54
Speaker 1: the links there and you can send us an email directly.
55:57
Speaker 1: Just send it off to Stuff podcast how stuff works
56:00
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56:08
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