I reward him welcome to another episode of mega-projects this is sort of a two-part of thing that we've got going on this one is planned to be the first video this week later in this week we'll be doing something else so this one is about Concord and then later in the week we have sort of the russian/soviet of Concord which is called the tuple of something or rather the T new something which I don't remember right now should probably have in my notes but basically the Russian version of Concord which was in many ways even more intense but for now let's jump into Concord but do subscribe so that later in the week you will get a little notification all about that video so let's get into it [Music] fast loud and sexy just a few of the many words that the news to describe this visionary aircraft that was first unveiled to the general public of the Paris Air Show in 1969 quite simply unlike anything we'd ever seen before it was a beacon of engineering ingenuity that shone brightly for any thirty years an aircraft so ahead of its time it was retired without a successor because frankly we're not even sure what comes next and of course we're talking about Concorde every now and again humanity leaps forward we've come to assume that technology progresses in this sort of linear fashion we create something and then it's improved upon just a little bit over time it's just all of these little incremental steps but occasionally we launch forward to such a point that it makes further progress difficult or even impossible these projects are the outliers the futuristic visions that are so far ahead that they sometimes struggle to find their place in our time certainly true for Concorde like supersonic flight not a thing today and just as a personal note as expensive as it is I would love to travel on Concorde I'd love to travel faster than the speed of sound tearing through the skies at a maximum speed of 1,000 352 miles per hour that's 2,000 180 kilometers per hour and shattering the sound barrier Concorde was one such engineering feat we're now approaching 20 years since Concorde took its last flight but in that time no commercial passenger airliner has come anywhere near what Concorde was capable of in terms of size and passenger capacity airliners today have never been bigger but when it comes to speed altitude and indeed just aura Concorde remains unmatched in terms of like what airplane looks the coolest concorde but this was also a project that raised serious questions about environmental issues affordability and noise pollution this was an extraordinary airplane that eventually because of a combination of political and social situations became of of its own pioneering vision the us bell x-1 fighter jet became the first aircraft to fly supersonic in 1945 meaning it broke the sound barrier and was capable of flying at speeds in excess of 767 miles per hour that's 1234 kilometers per hour or above mac-11 note here and haven't checked recently but I'm relatively sure Chuck Yeager is the Chafee first book broke the sound barrier here's why most people who is you know surprised they are still alive Chuck Yeager still with us so far over the next two decades many military aircrafts flew above this speed but most questioned whether larger passenger aircrafts would ever be able to match it in 1955 the Royal aircraft establishment our AE British aviation research group released a report in which the concept was explored for the first time in Britain while the technology and indeed knowledge around supersonic air travel was still in its infancy most agreed that the drag at supersonic speed was directly correlated with the wingspan in layman's terms the planes wingspan had to be very narrow to be aerodynamic enough to reach such speeds and remained stable the Boeing 707 released in 1959 had a wingspan a 42 point six meters that's 130 feet which would be virtually impossible for supersonic travel so the ra II suggested something closer to the planned Avro 730 this was a plans British reconnaissance aircraft with a wingspan of just under eighteen point two meters or 60 feet but such a narrow wingspan would result in very little lift at low speed meaning it would need a huge runway for takeoff and landing would be at incredibly high speeds and I've actually already read the scripts for the russian concorde video coming later this week and definitely subscribe because there's interesting stuff about how fast that plane had to land and take off anyway back to the video initial studies found the concept to be unfeasible but shortly after this the DeltaWing design appears these triangular shaped wings that we would eventually see on Concorde led to a breakthrough and paved the way towards supersonic commercial lights in 1956 a new research group supersonic transport aircraft committee s TAC was formed in Britain and by the end of the decade it was clear that something important was emerging contact was made with both the American and French governments over a possible collaboration but by the start of the 1960's it was still anybody's guess where the first supersonic airliner would appear now if you watch the video about the Channel Tunnel which while was planned to go before this one is actually going to come after so subscribe to get that you'll know that when these old warring neighbors really want to Britain and France they can collaborate with astonishing success so the surprise of many in 1960 a partnership emerged between British Aircraft Corporation and sort a VA ssin in France though they didn't agree on everything it was the British of the French after all there was certainly enough to move forward on November the 29th 1962 the British and French government signs an international treaty that effectively greenlit the project and included several penalties for cancellations this set off some alarm bells in Washington not only did it appear that the British and French would lead the way in supersonic travel but the Soviets of all people were also developing their own supersonic passenger airline the tupolev tu-144 thank you there it is coming later this week subscribe said it again now we're not going to go to that aircraft now because it has its own video which we're going to do later but the Americans were worried and they pushed forward with their own design the Boeing 2 707 which was eventually cancelled in 1971 anyway back to the Europeans they really needed a name that exemplified the entire project and one that reflectors the anglo-french partnership the word chosen means agreements harmony and union in both French and English but of course carries an extra ear the ends in the French version Prime Minister Harold Macmillan controversially dropped the final e some say because of a perceived slide from Charles de Gaulle however at the press unveiling in 1967 Tony Benn the Minister of Technology announced the government was restoring the e too much nationalistic outrage fuelled by the British press Wow who really cares his eventual explanation was that the II stood for excellence England's Europe and on tone cordial which were a series of green reached in the 19th century between Britain and France this all seemed to calm the rabble and the II stood sounds a bit like an excuse though doesn't it and that here just ended up having it the French Way which is fine who cares in 1965 construction began on the first two prototypes Concorde 0:01 was constructed by aérospatiale in Toulouse with Concorde 0:02 being built by BAC in Bristol but with the engineers working feverishly behind the scenes the most pressing matter for the project was future sales the vast amounts of money needed for the project immense thus in order to be profitable there would need to be plenty of buyers in 1967 a marketing campaign began named and attracting airline companies from all over the world Concorde bosses that made the bold prediction of 350 aircrafts worldwide by 1980 yes while it's certainly gone with interest and a non-binding order of 62 planes from 16 companies it remained well below what had been anticipated more on that shortly and of course this is Concorde the whole story is very commercial and we'll be getting into all of that as well lastly as most of these kinds of projects tend to do the cost spiraled well beyond what was originally calculated this is a mega-projects video that does tend to happen original estimates place the production costs at 70 million pounds in total but eventually it cost an eye-watering 1.3 billion pounds that's more than 8 billion pounds today the final unit cost of a plane in 1977 was 23 million pounds which is 120 billion pounds in today's money on the seconds of March 1969 Concorde 0:01 took to the skies above Toulouse piloted by Andre to car and seven months later on October the 1st it went supersonic for the first time Concorde 0:02 later became airborne for the first time on the 9th of April 1969 piloted by Bryan shrub Shaw the early 1970s saw the advertising campaign expand even further with Concorde 0:01 visiting numerous countries around the world to help drum up business they didn't work despite a public interest a perfect storm was brewing that would set concorde sails back from the very start a stock market crash and oil crisis in 1973 along with the crash of the soviet tupolev at the Paris Air Show proved disastrous for concours sales the vast financial implications of Concorde were becoming clear and it began to hemorrhage orders eventually only leaving British Airways and Air France both of whom were able to rely on their governments for support but despite all of the problems with sales the world still watched in awe on the 21st of January 1976 as to full concorde flights departed simultaneously on their maiden voyages one from London Heathrow to Bahrain and the other from Paris to Rio de Janeiro with a stop in Senegal along the way [Music] this was an aircraft that quickly became iconic not simply because of its speed but also because of its sleek exterior design but you might be surprised to hear that when the plane first launched the design inside looked a bit more Ryanair than British Airways business class it was decidedly unluck shariah s-- things eventually changed with much larger leather seating eventually being added but this was always an airplane that placed speed above comfort the windows were tiny designed to maximise the strength of the airframe rather than supply much of a view to those who had paid a small fortune to the on board at sixty one point six six metres that's turned her and two feet four inches in length Concorde was roughly 10 metres shorter than a modern Boeing 747 with a wingspan of just 25 point six meters that's 84 feet all-in-all this plane was really a lot smaller than a 747 Conchords maximum takeoff weight of four hundred eight thousand pounds that's 185 thousand 70 kilograms about 15 double-decker buses was just half of that of the 707s that's 735 thousand pounds or 333 thousand four hundred kilograms when I was airborne Concorde had a maximum altitude of 60,000 feet an astonishing 15,000 feet higher than that of a 747 this is so high you can actually see the curvature of the earth probably through those tiny windows apart from their Delta wings perhaps the most iconic aspect of the plane was its droop nose if you've ever seen two pictures in the concorde and thought to yourself well why did the noses look so different well it was because the nose could be set in two positions the best aerodynamic position is straight ahead and this was used when airborne however it does obscure the pilots view definitely not something you want when the plane is coming in to land at 187 miles per hour to solve this problem the news can be lowered by 12.5 degrees giving a lovely clear view of the quickly approaching lands beneath you another area that needed to be different was its brakes a typical Concorde landing at Heathrow meant that the temperatures of the brakes could reach between 300 and 400 degrees Celsius or 573 to 752 Fahrenheit to handle this sort of heat each wheel had multiple discs which were cooled by a left fans while the brakes themselves were made from carbon rather than steel significantly reducing their weight Concorde was powered by four olympus 593 turbo jets built by rolls-royce bristol siddeley and Snecma each one of these beasts produced 38,000 pounds of thrust onboard Concorde had a crew of three two pilots and a flight engineer this was complemented with nine flight attendants always on hand with the champagne and beluga caviar that's not a joke by the way if you're paying that much you expected it on more than a bag of peanuts into cold pasta dish so I guess it's not entirely like a Ryanair although on Ryanair they they just give you nothing but let's be honest you can get champagne anywhere and what you can't do anywhere is break the sound barrier and most passengers waited in anticipation for the captain to announce that they had gone supersonic which was virtually impossible to tell by simply looking out of the window there was one common very cool phrase often heard over the intercom on Concorde I just wanted to let you know how the flight is progressing the answer is quickly almost from its inception Concorde faced opposition while many of the early objections related to safety by the 1970s most focused on noise and environmental problems by far the biggest issue was the sonic boom created by Concorde this is the noise generated by shockwaves when an object travels faster than the speed of sound extra little tidbit of information for you here the cracking sound of a bullwhip it's a mini lil sonic boom the volume of a sonic boom can seem to fluctuate quite a bit and sometimes can't even be heard on the ground but often it absolutely could Conchords 100 to 110 decibels sonic boom was said to mimic a small explosion now that sounds hellish enough especially when it's above your home but that's actually only about the same number of decibels as a car horn so it's not that bad the US Congress banned Concorde from US airspace preventing the lucrative transatlantic routes that had always been plans eventually this was lifted but individual cities still prohibited them most notably New York City this was despite a report showing that Air Force One the u.s. presidential plane who is this actually louder than the Concorde in fact the plane was much quieter than was generally perceived especially with pilots throttling back their engines while flying over urban areas It was as if people had built up the sound of the plane in their mind rather than being realistic about its actual noise at the time the u.s. ban led some to question that US government's motives and whether it had more to do with protecting US prestige ins aviation manufacturing or rather than noise pollution just speculation however it wasn't just the US many countries around the world rejected the chance to be on Concorde rubes or to allow it to fly through their airspace the environmental impacts that Concord left was also keenly addressed by activists with a full load Concorde had a 15-point eight passenger miles per gallon ratio while the large Boeing 707 had a 33.3 PMG it's a bit like looking at a Hummer today it's definitely not the most environmentally friendly way to travel in fact Concorde could burn two tons of fuel by just taxiing along the runway as our awareness of climate change grew it just became harder to justify these fuel guzzling speed demons but perhaps the most glaring issue was its tagline as an elitist form of Transportation in 1997 a return flight from London to New York would set you back around 7995 dollars which is twelve thousand seven hundred dollars in 2019 roughly 30 times more expensive than the cheapest available airfare this is simply not a service that every man and woman could afford many airlines themselves were now focusing on affordability rather than style and speed it was all beginning to look like Conchords days were numbered in its time kong-kong completed roughly 50,000 flights and shuttle 2.5 million passengers around the world but perhaps with the exception of its inaugural take-off the flight many remember most vividly occurred on the 25th of July 2000 watching a Concorde in action it was a sight to behold with its 250 Marlboro 400 kilometer per hour takeoff speed and a hundred and eighty seven miles per hour 300 kilometer per hour landing speed it was significantly faster than most airliners we have today but as this Concorde roared along the runway on its departure from Paris shoulder all airport it was immediately clear that disaster was looming as flight 4590 lifted into the sky a torrent of flames erupted from engine number two pilots on board shut down the stricken engine but with engine number one surging as a result the aircraft failed to gain altitude and plummeted back to earth killing all 100 passengers and nine crew an investigation into the crash revealed that an aircraft had taken off moments earlier and shed a metallic strip when flight 4590 surged along the runway it ran over the strip piercing a tire which exploded a fragments of the tire then hits the fuel tank causing the fuel leak and leading to the fire however further investigation raised questions about the official narrative of the story eyewitnesses claimed that the metallic strip was in fact a thousand feet from the path of the aircraft and perhaps it had more to do with an unbalanced weight distribution in the fuel tanks and loose landing gear that caused the aircraft a veer off course so this day don't remain about what really happens concorde on its darkest day all Conchords were grounded for almost a year but returned to testing in july 2001 then one morning in September the first flight with passengers since the crash in Paris and it safely in New York carrying British Airways crew hours later the world changed and it proved to be one of the final nails in Conchords coffin on September the 11th 2001 four American airline flights were hijacked in the skies above the United States the resulting terrorist attacks sent shockwaves around the world was the airline industry suffering catastrophic losses numerous carriers went out of business and the industry as a whole lost around 11 billion dollars in revenue for a service that had become an expensive extravagance the more austere method of air travel after 9/11 spelt the end for Concorde Air France operated its final commercial flights on the 3rd of May 2003 while in Britain October saw a grand farewell tour in which a Concorde traveled back and forth from London's cities in the country often flying low and slowly above urban areas to give the public an opportunity to glimpse these Wizards of the skies for the last time on the 23rd of October 2003 the last Concorde to leave London flew west to New York with Windsor Castle the official residence of the royal family illuminated to mark the historic moment the following date 3 concourse converged over London circling the city ceremoniously before landing one after the other the age of concourse was over and we had only ever seen 20 of them in 2015 Club Kong Court essentially a concorde fan club announced that it had secured a hundred and sixteen million pounds to bring one concorde back into service though the initial date for this 2019 has come and gone with very little recent information about the venture many doubt the feasibility of refitting one of these planes and putting them in the sky once again it may be a nice idea but the practicalities do look pretty remote well we may never see a Concorde in the skies again there are small passenger planes on the horizon that will be able to break the speed of sound once again some of which may be operational by 2023 however it's likely even the biggest of these will only be about half the size of Concorde if we want to really look to the future and we need to talk about hypersonic flight NASA is already trying planes that can far exceed Concorde smack - with hopes that eventually we will have a plane's capable of traveling above Mach 5 or 3,000 miles per hour 6000 174 km/h meaning a flight from San Francisco to Sydney could be completed in two hours rather than the 15 hours today and if you're like a video about hypersonic aircraft could probably do something on that I'm not sure if there's enough information to do one on a specific hypersonic aircraft but you have if you have suggestions and ideas let me know in the comments below while hypersonic flight might seem like distant dream today I remember the what was first conceived in the 1950s was also considered a futuristic absurdity by son Concord was an extraordinary achievement for many reasons but if nothing else it gave us a fleeting glimpse of the future a dream that came and went unable to find its place in the presence we've already seen the future and it happened 50 years ago so with that I really hope you enjoyed this video if you did smash the like button do not forget to subscribe because later this week we have the Russian version of Concorde which is a little bit different so please do subscribe for that turn on the notification bell so you find out about it and as always I'll see you then [Music] [Music]
