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Mach 2 Madness - The Development, Heyday, Downfall & Legacy of The Concorde Jet · Dirt Nap City - History's Most Interesting Dead People

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: Good afternoon, Alex.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: How you doing?
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, Kelly, what's up, man?
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: Oh man, uh, just enjoying uh actually this little storm front that came through cooled things down nicely in Austin.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's a little buggy.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: But I've been in Las Vegas, and I will tell you, walking around in Vegas is like walking inside a hairdryer.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: Have you been there in the summer?
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_04: Dry heat.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_04: Just yeah, it's just, it's, it's uh, there's a fire aspect to it, right?
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's not, it doesn't feel wet.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: It feels just like like like I said, the breeze was blowing, feels like you're getting hit by a blow dryer, um, and you're just thinking, man, you know, everybody thinks this dry heat is great, but it actually can be pretty painful.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_04: Well, you don't sweat as much, but it always feels like you're about to catch on fire.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: Well, got back um and took a flight.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I think we take advantage of or take for granted the fact that we can fly halfway across the country in a couple of hours.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: Do you have any idea how long it took to get from uh Spain to America for Columbus?
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know how long that voyage was?
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: Oh man, let's see.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_04: Um probably a month.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: It was 70 days, 10 weeks.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: Now that that did include a stop in the Canary Islands.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I I also have a guest back on today, my cousin Jay, the airline pilot, is back.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: Jay, good to see you.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: Good to see you.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, Jay.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: We were just talking, uh, talking before this about the fact that um that there are some really great timelines of how um transition, how the um voyage across the pond, so to speak, going from Europe to the US or back, changed over time.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: Now, one thing I didn't realize that back in the 1400s, 1600s, it was actually faster to go from the from North America back over to Europe because of the trade winds.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yes, it is.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: You generally have uh tailwinds flying from west to east.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: So 1492, uh 70 days for Columbus to do it, 1600s, uh four to six weeks to get across.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: Now that was getting a little bit better because ships were getting a little better, mapping was getting a little better.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: 1700s, five to eight weeks.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: The 1800s um really was the big transition.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: So during the 1800s, when we started, that was the peak of sailing.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: That was a peak of these big wooden ships, the peak of um, you know, navigating using sextons and uh stars and all that stuff.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: But by the end of the 1800s, we had these um dual, I guess they called them um dual propeller um steamships that could get across.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh fastest trip across in the 1800s, and they called this, this was from Europe to the US.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: They called it the Blue Riband, R-I-B-A-N-D.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: I had never heard of this before, but it was like the the award you won for getting the fastest trip across.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: It was by a German ship, the Kaiser Wilhelm de Gross, and in 1897, take a guess how long it took them to get across from uh Europe over to North America.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: Three weeks?
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: Six days.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, wow.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: Big, big jump.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_04: It's smoking.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: So then we get into the 1900s, and the 1900s was another big um transition because you know you started off without aviation, and then all of a sudden, sudden aviation hits, and you're starting to see people like Amelia Earhart making these long journeys.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: You're starting to see records get broken, you're going from uh twin or single engine to twin engines, from standard propellers to turboprops, and then eventually to jets.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the pinnacle of flight across the pond was of course what, Alex?
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: You know this.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: Was it a Zeppelin?
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_04: No, the Concord.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_04: Did we talk about the Concord?
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_04: We never have.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, well then why would you make me go back into the you said it was a dead end.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it is today.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: That's today's dead end, is the Concorde.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, Concord no longer flies.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_04: Of course.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_04: No, you had me going down the wrong path in my in my head.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_04: Of course.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_04: No, the fastest way that people have ever gotten across the uh the ocean, of course, is the Concorde.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: And three and a half hours was a typical flight.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: There was a record-breaking flight for um, I think it was two hours and 56 minutes that that they took it across.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but that was with a big tailwind.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: One of the amazing things about the Concorde, it went from uh 1976 to 2000 2003, is that when you were coming, I think when you were going um, I guess going west, you were actually going faster than the Earth's rotation.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so you would see a sunrise twice.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: You might see it in your where you started, and then you would see the say sunrise on the same day where you landed.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, okay, because you're traveling.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_04: And it ticks off pretty much straight up in the air, right?
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, the the angle on that is is crazy, right?
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_04: You're going up like a rocket practically, right?
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it had a delta wing, and um, and Jay, you can jump in and and kind of correct this or add detail to it, but uh the Delta Wing didn't have a lot of lift at low speed.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: So they had uh what they called afterburners or reheats, and they would kick these things on, and that's how they would get airspeed to get the thing off the ground.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: Is that fair to say, Jay?
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, they would use the uh reheat, uh what we use, what we call in the military afterburners, uh they would use after takeoff and to uh break the sound barrier.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_04: Jay, uh, was the Concor particularly difficult to fly?
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_04: Like it did it require a lot more training, or uh was it pretty much similar to the I I know can it took uh considerable training.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh in fact, uh British Airways, if you signed up to fly the Concorde, you were committed for that for the rest of your career because it cost so much to train on it.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but it the training was extensive, and it also had a second officer, uh, you know, flight engineer, and uh his training was very extensive as well.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh they had so many systems on on that aircraft that uh you just don't have on subsonic airliners.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: What what is the difference between between a flight engineer and a copilot?
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well, a co-pilot is in the right seat and flies the airplane as well.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh flight engineer sits behind the two pilots and runs systems.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so in the case of the Concorde, the the really big one was uh managing fuel because they actually manage their uh center of gravity by uh pumping fuel uh forward and back uh to keep things uh balanced for the particular uh phase of flight that they are in.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_04: Kelly, would you say I'm the flight engineer on the show or the co-pilot on this show?
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I I I think in most cases, you're probably the pilot.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'm the flight engineer, and I don't know that we have a co-pilot.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Jay Jay is the co-pilot today.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: Even though in real life he outranks us both.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: But um, no, I want to I want to go back.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: So one of the things that blew my mind, I I did read a very long, I mean it was like seven, eight hours of audiobook um about the Concorde.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: It started, uh any guess, Alex, on what year they started talking about the Concords?
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: Oh man.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_04: Well, it was probably man, I can't.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_04: I'm the I'm trying to figure if uh probably in the late 50s, early 60s.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh mid-50s, yeah, yeah, you're right.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: It started so the Concord actually flew from 76 to 2003, but in 54, the uh United Kingdom and France started talks about it, putting together initial plans, feasibility studies, budgets, stuff like that.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: And in 1962, the two countries signed an agreement to build these things.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: And the cost at that time, estimated in 62, was 93 million dollars.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: Now I converted all this from um francs and euros to to dollars, but or pounds.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um today that would be 2.4 billion dollars that they were talking about in in 2026 money.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um they started building six prototypes.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: Not per not per plane, though, for the whole program you're saying.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: For the initial program to get to get to their first plane in order to get the first plane built, and then each thing after that was an additional cost.
• 8:55
  unknown: Okay.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: See, because their original idea was they were going to mass produce these, people were gonna love it, and they were gonna order, you know, all these airlines were gonna order hundreds of them.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: They they estimated 350 would be produced initially, yeah, and and that they would be able to make a lot of money by selling these to other airliners, um, to other airliners.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_04: They were never able to get the cost down for the general public, right?
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, all the major airlines were gonna be all over this thing.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they were.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: They were until until several things happened, but we'll get to that.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's a little later in the story.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: But initially, they built six prototypes.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: The first one uh flew in uh March of 1969 from Toulouse, and the second one flew, uh did a test flight, and it was the first British Airways one, uh flew in October of 1969, and they both got their certificate of airworthiness that same uh in 1975.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: So I think there's you know, there's the initial prototype design, there's the building and testing of it, and then airworthiness is where what we would say the FAA here, in in this case, this was the uh French version of that and the UK version of that, which I think is a civil aviation administration.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they have to actually award it and say, okay, this is worthy to fly.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: And it's it's something that is a big step because once you do that, then you can actually carry passengers on it.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the certification process is a very long, drawn-out deal by by the FAA.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then uh the Europe equivalent is uh ESA, E-A-S-A, which I can't remember exactly what that stands for.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: Well, one of the interesting things about the Concorde, you were talking about the Delta wing, Alex, um, and the fact that it took off at a very steep angle, is that it had a really narrow fuselage.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you're gonna fly it uh uh above the speed of sound, you need a narrow fuselage.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: And it only had two rows of two seats.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: So it was a four, four across kind of thing.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: There was no center seat in it, but the seats were actually pretty small, kind of like if you've been on a regional jet, you know, going from Dallas to Austin or Houston or whatever.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, those kind of planes, a lot of times they'll have two on one and one on the other, but this had two on both sides, very small windows.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but no middle seats, I think was actually something people liked and and would go back to today.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: I know like Porter Airlines, which is a fairly new airline out of um Canada, has the Embraer uh 195 E2, which is just uh two sets of um two seats on either side, so no middle seats.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like I feel like I would pay more on an airliner if if I had a little bit more space.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: Like I'm not I'm okay with that.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: And that was part of what the appeal of the Concorde was, in addition to the speed.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: The Concorde's other things that were really unique about it besides the Delta Wing was the droop nose.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: So this was a nose that would go down, I think 12 degrees or something like that, five to twelve degrees, depending on uh what it was doing.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: And it had to do that because they couldn't, the pilot couldn't really see when the nose was up in its uh horizontal position.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: So they would actually droop this nose down.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: I think most famous pictures of the Concorde, um, you know, when it's landing or taking off, that nose is down and it looks kind of funny.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: It makes it look a little bit comical, I think.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: But quite a quite an engineering uh feat.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um and the other big thing with it was because it was taking in air at such high speeds, it had to have this really sophisticated set of dampeners and ramps inside the intake, air intake, to slow the air down to below supersonic so that when it went into the um turbojet, it was able to process it and push it out properly.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, just really for considering it was built in the designed in the 50s and 60s um and kind of redesigned in the 70s, it was just a marvel of engineering.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: When you get supersonic uh aerodynamics change a whole lot.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: So uh I understand that they had 5,000 hours of uh wind tunnel testing for the Delta Wing, and they it went through numerous uh modifications uh because it has to fly at such a variety of speeds.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh on approach speeds, it had such a high angle of attack that part of the wing would actually be stalled.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh there'd be vortex vortices uh along the leading edge.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: And uh sometimes you could see them in pictures, these little clouds that run the uh link.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like making little circles, like making little uh little little circles on them.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so the vortex on each uh wing, and and uh because of the high angle of attack, that that's why they had to have the droop nose because pilots just couldn't see uh to land.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, if it's coming in at a at a steep angle like that, they're basically looking up and the nose is in their way, right?
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so this droop nose allowed them to be able to see.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: Well, well, a couple of before we get into too much about the plane itself, I wanted to tell you where the name came from.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um any guesses on that?
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_04: Concord with an E.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: I know the E, they made it for the French to make the French happy.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: So so uh it basically was the idea of an agreement or a union between the two countries.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: So the Concorde was, uh, you know, which is pretty much the same definition in English and in French, but there was some debate.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: The English wanted it without the E initially, the French wanted it with the E because that's how they spell it, and the British eventually agreed to add the E, but said that it stood for Excellence, Europe, and England.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: So there was a little bit of marketing spin on it.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of this was about marketing because this was something new and this was going to be more expensive than your average plane.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: So they had to really push it as a luxury kind of thing.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: Now, one of their big um challenges was they couldn't fly over land in a lot of situations, especially in the US, because of the sonic boom.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: So they were limited to flying across water, like routes with a lot of water.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: So a route from Europe to the US, and initially it was uh JFK and uh Washington Dulles was their was their main route that they would go back and forth because there was a lot of uh ocean crossing at that point and they could get to Mach 2.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: Was this British Airways or Air France?
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_04: Both.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: Both.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_04: And they were both called the Concorde?
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: That it was a partnership between the two, a Concorde between the between.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_04: Before the code sharing days, it was pretty unusual, right?
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think initially it was Airbus that built this, right, Jay?
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the company did eventually turn into Airbus.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: They wasn't called Airbus at the time.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um interestingly, their very first trip to the United States in 1973 was a landing at DFW to mark the airport's opening.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: So in 1973 is when DFW opened.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: Now, here's another clear.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: How did they pull it off?
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: How did they pull it off?
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, without flying over too much land.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um maybe they went subsonic.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't go supersonic over land.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: Oh.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the US still has a regulation today that you cannot fly supersonic over land.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: So kind of an interesting little fact, and Jay, you can tell me whether I should not include this or not, but Jay's father actually owned some of the land that was eventually eventually became DFW.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: Is that in that right?
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's correct.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, before they moved to the before they moved to where they are now, they uh had their land taken by eminent domain to build the new airport.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: And and you grew up in the Dallas Fort Worth area after after living in Hawaii briefly.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: And uh do you remember when the Concorde came into DFW?
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: I do not.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I knew Braniff, uh, which was a Dallas-based airline, had uh an interchange with the Concorde, but I didn't realize that the inaugural flight to the U.S.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: was uh landing or landed at DFW.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: Well, um getting back to a couple of things we were talking about a moment ago, which was the sort of structure of it.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: One of the really, really challenging thing about fly challenging things about flying at supersonic speeds is that the aluminum, the exterior skin of the Concorde, would heat up tremendously.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: It supposedly expanded by six to ten inches during flight, and it's so said that the flight crews could actually see a gap between the engineer's console and the bulkhead wall uh when they were at speed that would disappear when the plane slowed down and cooled down.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: So just imagine this little bit of uh, you know, 10 inches doesn't sound like a lot, but when you're thinking about a physical thing that isn't supposed to expand, the stress on that metal was one of the biggest challenges, and it also was a limiting factor for how fast it could go.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: They they figured um they figured out that they could go Mach 2.02 and it would um heat up and cool down.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: They basically had two cycles of heating and cooling during flight, and this was something that really stressed the metal, and they had to do a lot of um fatigue modeling to figure out if that was going to break the things.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: And they had a limited lifespan.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: They had a limitation uh based on temperature, which the probe was right in the very tip of the nose.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh they they had to slow down if it was getting too hot.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_04: What kind of altitude are we talking about here?
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: 57,000 feet.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: 58,000 feet, somewhere, somewhere between 57 and 60.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: So, Jay, what does a typical airliner fly at?
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, well, my airliner has a maximum altitude of 43,100 feet, and uh we typically fly uh 39,000, 40,000, 41,000 feet.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: If when we're really heavy right after takeoff, we'll start maybe 33, 30 uh to 35.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: But as we burn off fuel, we'll go up to the higher altitudes.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: But nothing near 60,000 feet.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: There's more there's more lift at lower altitudes, right?
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: The air is thicker, so you get a little more lift.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, the performance is definitely better at the lower altitudes, but uh as you get to the higher altitudes, you're the less air actually means less drag.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: So you can go faster on the same amount of fuel.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so 60,000 feet, they're cruising 20,000 feet above other airliners.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the things in the book that he talked about was they would fly over another airliner and look down, and it would be going the same direction.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: This they were all, you know, they're all in these kind of layers like a cake.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there's there's um there's kind of the takeoff and landing, there's the cruising speed for airliners, and then there's a concord up here.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: They would look down and it would look like the other plane was going backwards because they were going so much faster, like 800 miles an hour faster than it or something.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: And it would just kind of suplane them.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_04: How does that altitude compare with like military jets?
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I know like the SR-71, which was a reconnaissance spy plane, uh, would it would fly a Mach 3 and in excess of 80,000 feet.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: But uh, you know, the typical fighter jet doesn't fly typically that high.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, they might be able to fly for short bursts.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: But uh the Concorde was very special in that they had extended time at supersonic, and fighters typically will only fly supersonic for occasional bursts.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_04: So in a three-hour flight, would you say three, three and a half hours, Kelly?
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, three and a half across the pond.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_04: So how much of that three and a half hours is actually at Mach 1 or faster?
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was about 60 to 70 percent of the flight.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_04: Wow, yeah.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a it's a big chunk of it.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, they had to be a little bit more.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um they're taking off from Heathrow, and let's say they're going to JFK, but they're not going, you know, it's interesting because everybody thinks they're going this direct um uh east to west route.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: They're really not.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: They're kind of going north over the pole, right, Jay?
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's more, it's a little bit more deceptive.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they're flying the great circle routes.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: So you can get a really good indication of a great circle route by taking a thread and a globe and uh finding the shortest distance between two cities.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's really kind of fun to do.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's amazing how far north you go.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: So they're flying at supersonic for let's let's say 60% of the flight.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um do you uh, Jay, I'm sure you know this, Alex, any guess on how many miles per hour Mach uh Mach 1 is?
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_04: Oh man, I was gonna ask you that because I would be embarrassed about it.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: Mach one depends on the temperature, but it's typically at sea level like 716 miles an hour, but it actually goes down the higher you go as the temperature goes down.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the inner the internet said 767 miles per hour at standard atmospheric conditions.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: 767.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: So so Mach 2, let's just call it 1400 miles per hour that they're going.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: at and and what do you typically fly at Jay in your 787?
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh 0.85, 0.86 mock.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: So so so less than half.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_04: Half the half that speed.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_04: What at what speed would it be uncomfortable for the passengers, just a regular Joe flying on business?
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh well as you as you approach the uh maximum speed uh you start getting mock buffet.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that's where this the air over the wings starts exceeding the speed of sound and separating from the wings and uh it makes for a little rumble.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's not really uncomfortable but it um it's noticeable.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: You're noticeable um yeah you notice it that would that's where the supersonic aerodynamics are just so fascinating because uh you know the subsonic airliners are built uh to not go the speed of sound and and improve if if or have efficiency in other areas uh while Concorde just went right through this the uh speed of sound and uh was more efficient uh at a faster yeah at a you know supersonic speeds and it wasn't very uh from what from what the book said it wasn't very efficient at low speeds like it actually was kind of that was the more challenging uh time was when you were flying at the slower speeds when you were when you were um taking off and landing of course so one one thing that was different about it Alex um the the tail section didn't have an actual elevator um it had a combination of elevator and aileron on that big uh the big wing and they had a name for it it was uh eleron is that what they call it elebons so so instead of an elevator for lift it was a combination of the ailerons for roll and for lift right Jay uh yes combination of ailerons and elevators yeah I guess I'm just wondering like for the passenger was it a fun ride was it a scary ride was it was a I mean what what was that experience like was it thrilling did people pass out?
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: So so so in in the book he talked a lot about um the passengers on this thing first of all he um this this pilot that uh wrote the book Mike Bannister he said that there was a perception that the uh Concord was for the rich that it was a very elitist thing and and it was based on ticket prices and we'll talk about that in a second but he also said that they really tried to make it a different experience and that they also tried to make they would do these specials and they would have a lot of public outreach where they would do these trips of a lifetime for people.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: So they might have you know uh movie stars and rock stars and bankers and business travelers on board but they would also try to get on every flight ordinary people who would sort of spread the evangelism of it you know to go out and say hey I flew on the Concord and it was amazing.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: To your to your question about was it comfortable the they were serving high-end champagne they were serving high end caviar they were one of his one of the pilot's things was he had to make the flight smooth enough that when they when they poured the$500 bottle of champagne nothing spilled that was kind of his um way of looking at the luxury of it but it was something that um you know not many people got to do and so when somebody that was on their trip of a lifetime let's say a honeymoon or you know a 50th birthday or something like that he would always bring them up into the cabin into the into the um flight deck that was one of his things and then when they had uh rock stars or royalty on board they would do the same thing of course some of the famous people that flew on it you remember um you guys remember the uh live aid concert yeah Phil Collins flew the Concorde in order to be able to um play at both Wemberley Stadium and JFK Stadium in Philadelphia on the same day um Paul McCartney was a regular commuter uh he would occasionally bring his guitar out and and play songs Elton John was a regular on the Concorde Michael Jackson was a regular on the Concord Mick Jagger was a regular on the Concord Sting Rod Stewart Dolly Parton was a regular um and then the Queen Mother the mother of Queen Elizabeth II uh took a flight on the Concorde to celebrate her 85th birthday in 1985.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: Sarah Ferguson and of course Princess Diana and of course Queen Elizabeth all flew on the Concorde Sean Connery and then back to another episode we just recently did uh Andy Warhol was known to fly on the Concorde when he reached more fame.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: It was also big among golfers because they would go to the British Open and a lot of American golfers would use the Concorde to get across and back.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: And there was um there was a flight that featured I think it was like Tom Watson, Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicholas, Lee Trevino, uh just all these all these golfers and the pilot was quoted as saying I I hope I don't I hope I don't mess this up because the entire golf world would be destroyed if I did um so so um you asked about if if it was a thing to go on that people enjoyed or if it was scary.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_01: There was a guy named Fred Finn he set the world record in the Guinness book of world records for the most Concorde flights as a passenger uh you want to guess how many flights he took on the Concorde in in that 76 of 2003?
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: I mean how can I guess that I have no idea 718 supersonic flights on the Concorde this one guy did.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: Why um I think he was a business guy.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know I don't know but here's what's interesting about it the the the ticket pricing you know we're talking about this um this perceived value in 1977 uh on their first couple of years you know when they had just gotten it off the ground so to speak uh it was 431 pounds to fly one way so that was about the equivalent of 25 to$3,000 for a standard first class ticket at that time in 77.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_01: And then they figured out that they were actually losing money and this wasn't working very well.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: So in the 80s all these people that were flying on it they did a survey of these business people a lot of them were business people who had very tight timelines and celebrities and they asked them how much do you think a Concord ticket costs almost everyone guessed higher than what the actual ticket cost was because their secretaries their travel internal travel agents would book the flight for them and they were so wealthy they had no idea what the cost was nobody was actually paying their own money if you have to ask you can't afford it.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_01: Right right so so so at that point British Airways realized okay they think it costs this much more than it actually costs let's raise the prices and when they did raise the prices they became profitable that was actually their ability to um get into get into the black with it um in 1990 ultimately that's probably what did them in well uh no we're gonna talk about that in a it was one of the things yes economics was a big factor but that was short sighted Kelly it was short-sighted for them to raise the price I think so yeah yeah just because they could um well but they were losing money before that and the cost to run this thing because of how much fuel it took um I was just talking before you came on with Jay about the amount of fuel that a plane will take uh to fly it has a lot to do with how fast they go but an average flight for a Concorde was one way 6,700 gallons which I don't know Jay is that a lot it sounds like a lot to me to me.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah it is uh it burns a considerable amount of fuel and and the thing is because of the way the fuselage was designed to go supersonic it didn't allow the number of passengers that a 747 could carry.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_01: So they're carrying a hundred passengers and burning that much fuel and so your your costs go way up because per you know you're not even though they're more expensive tickets you don't have as many passengers.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: If you have 400 passengers on a 747 you're you're multiplying every ticket by four right as far as your your money goes.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_01: The other big thing that was problematic of the of it was there was a perception um after a really horrible crash that happened in France.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_01: So the the plane in France was fully loaded and actually um according to the reports might have been overweight it was taking off from Charles de Gaulle en route to JFK in New York City with 100 passengers and it hit some debris the tire exploded the uh a bit of debris either from the tire or from the debris that it hit on the runway went up into the wing and punctured the fuel tank and they tried to take off the pilots made some mistakes um they they cut one of the engines because they thought it was on fire and they didn't get enough lift and they crashed into a hotel and killed a hundred people on board plus uh four people that were in the hotel that were just minding their own business.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: They never really recovered from that all all Concord flights both from uh Air France and British Airways were were um postponed or grounded for a period of time after that while the investigation went on uh that happened in 2000 July 25th of 2000 um that that crash Jay you and I were talking about that a little bit ahead of time um first of all as Jay was saying before the the Concorde had 11 fuel tanks and the way that they would um the way that they would actually get that center of gravity right was by redistributing pumping the fuel around within the length of the aircraft in order to get it that center of gravity correct when this thing hit it punctured one of the fuel tanks and that should have never happened especially um well and a tire exploding Jay you said what happens if a tire a tire gives out on a regular um airliner typically well tires blow and you just continue the takeoff and uh a a blown tire should not take down a whole airplane so I I this was my personal opinion that uh the French really wanted to blame somebody besides the aircraft itself and so they wanted to blame the debris on the runway as being responsible for the crash uh which came from a U.S.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: airline and so they tried to blame the U.S.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: airline uh on that but uh my my opinion is that uh a blown tire should not bring down an airplane that makes the landing makes the landing exciting but uh it shouldn't well each each uh bogey has four uh tires and uh so two bogeys and uh so if you blow a tire you still have seven tires to land on so it might be a little bumpy might be a little rough you might blow some other tires on landing but it's really not that terrible have you ever had that happen at a blown tire?
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: I have had uh a couple of tire failures before but on landing uh not on takeoff and uh well from from the from that accident um Mike Bannister uh the guy who wrote this book that I read or listened to as an audio book he was very um adamant that there was no one single single cause of failure and this is one of the things that I think a lot of pilots say I I know when I took my Part 107 to get my drone license they say that it's usually a series of things that happen right and so it was the debris yes that was part of the problem the um the fact that they punctured the uh fuel tank was part of the problem of course but also some of the decisions that the pilots had made I think they were overweight a little bit they had actually overfueled the aircraft it was um flying with more fuel than it should have had uh they should have burned off some of that fuel before they took off um and then the pilots made some decisions but it's very hard to say to to badmouth or to blame you know pilots that have been killed in in their job right um but that's what it came down to was just this series of failures.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: After that oh go ahead from a pilot's from a pilot's perspective you have seconds to make a decision and then the whole world takes years to determine what you should have decided in the in those very few seconds.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah yeah it's it's it's but that's that's where all that training comes in right and that's where um these standard operating procedures come on from from that um they did they did change the material that the um uh wheels were made of the tires are made of they did change put on um some Kevlar I believe around the fuel tanks to keep that from uh being a a possibility of those getting um punctured again and a lot of things actually made the aircraft better out of that but of course that doesn't get rid of the fact that over a hundred people died and that the bad PR from that is going to last forever.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know a lot of people if you asked them about the Concorde that might be all they remember was the crash, right?
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's what people tend to to stick with.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_01: But it did come back into service.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_01: I think um I I I don't remember if it was Air France or or British Airways that that uh brought it back first.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_01: But at that point um they had a lot of problems because of the cost of fuel.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh 9-11 was a big factor that caused it to shut down because air traffic um and and um business flight kind of took shift uh people started using video conferences more instead of doing things in person.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um there was also the fact that Airbus Airbus in 2003 dropped support and wasn't going to build parts and because of the fact that they hadn't built the 300 they had originally envisioned they had only built 20 aircraft total they didn't have spare parts and it was very expensive to replace or modernize any of the parts so basically the economy of scale that they thought would happen uh didn't really happen.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_01: As a matter of fact they what what they had built just so you know um they had two original prototypes they had two pre-production aircraft they had two development aircraft so that's six and then they had 14 production aircraft that actually flew passengers and um except for two of the production aircraft um one was scrapped in 94 and the other one was the one that was crashed uh the Air France Flight 4590 um the others are all preserved in museums so you can I don't know if you've ever been to the Smithsonian or um some of the different places you can actually go see a Concorde like a real one hanging up in different places.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: There's one parked right at Heathrow Airport as we uh taxi for departure and there's also one right at uh Charles de Gaulle that's mounted on top of a great big stand that you can see as you drive into the airport.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh they're really cool to look at they're beautiful airplanes.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_01: And those I remember those are real ones right those aren't replicas.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah no those those are real I remember on 60 minutes like five or ten years ago talking about there was two or three companies out there trying to get started restart um supersonic air travel um I take it I haven't heard anything since then I take it this hasn't happened um is this gonna happen again the technology's there you just saw you you have yeah you were just telling me about that yeah I was just watching uh uh a podcast with Mike Rowe and uh there's a company called Boom Aerospace right uh they've flown a demonstrator I think it's about a quarter size demonstrator and they have taken a supersonic and uh they've got it set so that the super or the sonic boom should dissipate by the time it gets to the ground.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: They expect it to be no louder than uh a car door closing.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_04: So that way they can fly over land and make like flights from New York to LA if they get the law changed, right?
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: But the yeah the the law still exists and in fact I think there's legislation right now where they're trying to overturn that uh instead of stating supersonic flight just restricting sonic boom and uh so that that's gonna be a a tweak to the law to make it so it's possible to fly supersonic over like so do you think this really is going to happen?
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_04: Like would you invest in this company?
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: I have been very very skeptical but after watching this podcast uh I was really impressed.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh this guy really seems to have it uh have a lot of things figured out so uh I'm I'm excited about it.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_04: What could a flight how long would a flight be from like from coast to coast in the US if it was supersonic like an hour.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah they're they're talking about uh not quite Mach 2 I think and uh so it'd be basically half the time of a subsonic airliner so it's uh what is about four and a half five hours uh west to east so probably just uh two two and a half hours that's just a guess I don't know yeah I'm looking at their website it says their goal is 1.7 Mach 1.7 okay yep yep um and they're based in Colorado um you know the the what's interesting about this Alex because that's a great question and and it's kind of like the Artemis mission going back to the moon is it's 2026 the technology we have today is so much more advanced the the types of materials you can bend with build with the size the weight the the lack of weight like the lightness of things and the miniaturization of things it just kind of blows me away that we haven't done this you know that that this that we have self-driving cars that we have you know artificial intelligence but but we can't do something that we did in the 70s I know if we if you took somebody from 1976 forward 50 years in a time machine would expect travel to be so much like it's it's actually no offense Jay but it's actually worse than it was 50 years ago like the half a factor has just gotten to the point of being ridiculous.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_04: It's not I mean it used to be like special and fun and you know dress up and it was it was and now it's just such a freaking house back on football stuff right and and takes longer to get to most places you know and there's less competition don't get me started on that but like it's more expensive than it than it was when it was regulated practically.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_04: And we're probably gonna have to connect through a hub.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah exactly exactly so I think I think our our people in 1976 will be really disappointed um I mean we probably would have thought we'd be teleporting places by now.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_01: Well they'd also they'd also expect us to have a a colony on the moon by this time too right yeah good point I mean and and probably I mean flying cars right why don't we have flying cars?
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's but I I do applaud whether or not this boom supersonic does make it um the fact that they're trying to do it and the fact that they're using private money just just like we've done with with rockets you know that that public-private partnership that seems to work really well um that I think is going to be the key because the amount of money that was spent for what they did back then is almost there's things that happen that we did in the past that we built in the past humans built or the United States built that we could never do again because of costs.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's like the costs have gone up so much um even though the technology is better and more things are available a lot of things that uh happened um you know immediately get shut down but you know it starts to get into politics and stuff like that.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_04: But ultimately And you could also make the argument that because of the internet and because of things like we're doing right now, it's not necessary for everyone to be able to fly to across the country or to another continent in two hours.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_04: We can have Zoom calls.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_00: The airlines have been afraid of that you know taking away their business for years but they found that uh Zoom calls can only go so far.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_00: It takes a a smile and a handshake and sharing dinner and drinks and you know having a personal touch that that really seals the deal because the airlines were terrified of Zoom.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_04: But that's that's like the post office being afraid of email.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_04: I mean it's it's I mean you know I mean but Jay if you project yourself forward 50 years where what are we going to be is the the entire fleet going to be um supersonic or are we going to be pretty much where we're at right now you think I have been very skeptical of supersonic.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_00: I think uh if we do get it it'll be a very niche type thing, you know, maybe coast to coast flights and uh international flights but as far as domestic flights uh you know to go from Houston to Denver only takes two and a half hours how much are you going to really save by going supersonic uh on such a short flight so I don't know if your guess is as good as mine.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_01: I mean I've I've certainly been wrong about my predictions before well and and the other thing you got to keep in mind is that ultimately the supersonic uh flights from coast to coast or across the pond or whatever that might not be the end result Result, right?
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: Everything is a stepping stone.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_01: So if if doing that, if creating that technology again allows us to do better for space travel or allows us to figure out new ways to ship things, you know, it's it's like you don't know what's gonna become of it, but that that technology could very well lead to something that's completely groundbreaking that we haven't even thought of yet.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this could lead to uh sub or suborbital flights where you take off and you can be at any point on the entire earth in two hours uh by taking a shot outside of the atmosphere and then landing like an aircraft, you know.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh it would be pretty pretty exciting if they could do that.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the future's wide open.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, let's uh let's salute the Concorde and those brave souls, those brave French and British people back in the 70s.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_01: By the way, I didn't even mention that um that the Russians did have a Concorde uh sort of knockoff uh they called or we called the Concorde ski.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um but it only could fly with afterburners.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_01: Like it couldn't it only could go supersonic with afterburners and it it ate even more fuel and had lots of technological problems, so they scrapped that.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_01: And the Americans uh were in the race as well, but eventually scrapped everything due to um costs, politics, you know, a lot of factors, and never actually built one.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_01: So I I will salute the British and the um French for teaming up and doing something pretty amazing during that time.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the development uh by the United States supersonic was uh government funded, and Boeing really thought that everything was gonna be supersonic, and they were really disappointed that uh the program was or the government cancelled the program because they were developing the 747 at the time, and they thought that the 747 was just gonna be a great big freighter and uh that everybody be flying supersonic.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_00: And it turned out the 747 was an amazingly profitable aircraft for its time.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_00: And regarding Konkortsky, um there were a lot of data leaks from from uh Europe to the Soviet Union, and the Soviets really, really wanted to try to get an airplane airborne first, and so the the British and French would um send false information or they would leak false information to uh mislead the uh Soviets.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_00: And the Soviets actually did fly theirs first, but it was just an absolute shell of an airplane, it couldn't even pressurize, it could not go supersonic, but they could say they flew theirs first.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_00: And they also had uh a TU-144 supersonic airliner crash at the Paris Air Show.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so that was uh that really killed that program.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_01: They should have had Bob Hoover flying it.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_01: He wouldn't have crashed it.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_00: Bob Hoover would have would have made it work.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_01: All right, if you haven't checked out the Bob Hoover episode with Jay, uh that one is available.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh thanks everyone, and next time you're on a flight, don't forget that a long flight could be a good thing because you could listen to every episode of Dirt Knap City.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_01: Even if you heard it before, listen to it again.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_01: They get better with age.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you everyone for listening, and we'll see you next time.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_02: Cross the ocean in a blink.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_02: Silver wings and a velvet shrink sticks, hours gone and a whole new shore.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_02: We watched the fall like the paper and frame.