I don't remember any talk of withdrawing Concorde until the Paris crash. My memory. May be faulty.
I do remember my class being herded down to the school hall to watch the first commercial Concorde flights on the telly.
That was a solid fuel booster issue involving poor checking of seals, causing high-temperature outgassing which caused an explosion, which was visible in footage of the event, IIRC. It wasn't an inherent flaw in the shuttle itself.
Inherent saftey flaws in the shuttle design included an exposed heat shield, vunerable to damage on launch (which did for the second shuttle disasater) and lack of a realistic escape mechanism for the crew post launch and pre-orbit.
Current spacecraft designs being worked on by SpaceX and Lockheed Martin will be way better than the shuttle, if they ever fly. They just don't look like sci-fi space planes.
Whilst preparing for this thread I'm sure I read that they were in development..
So, a couple of small companies with nothing beyond the design stage talking about first flight in six years.
Meanwhile, from a company that has been actually making bizjets for some time:
But the reality remains starkly different says Gulfstream senior VP marketing and sales Scott Neal. “In order to make the market viable for supersonics you have to make it feasible to fly overland faster than sound – which is currently against the law. We don’t think there is a viable market until you change that.”
Jury's out obviously. But TBH I'd believe Gulfstream over a handful of as yet unproven startups.
I never said it was going to happen or the companies were great. Just that some people are working on it 🙂
^ fair point!
I thought they had thought of various methods of crew escape for the shuttle but were too costly to incorporate, then after the first disaster when the crew are actually still alive in the cockpit after it broke up, they looked at them again and still said it was to much to retrofit...Then the second disaster was impossible to survive anyway. ..
ended up having to have the second shuttle ready at all times instead. .
which was just being a PR stunt because in reality both disasters were just management failures in ignoring everything they were told on the basis of costs and deadlines
reality both disasters were just management failures in ignoring everything they were told on the basis of costs and deadlines
Yes. The Columbia disaster, where the heat shield was damaged on the leading edge of the wing. Apparently several previous shuttle flights suffered worse heat shield damage on launch, but just in less critical areas. So they didn't think it would be a problem 🙄
Still doesn't mean its not a flawed design though.
Progress isn't about blowing shitloads of money on vanity projects. It's about getting more done. We can put stuff in space more cheaply than with the Shuttle, that allows us to put more stuff up there and provide more services. Far more people can afford to fly places now than they could in 1970 - this is progress.
We still have the technology to build Concorde, but we ALSO have the technology to build the 787 and A380. This is progress.
Indeed everything up to now has been a learning exercise and humanity's knowledge of science and engineering is richer for it, but is it true [i]Progress[/i] or is it Blindly marching on having not really thought about how progress should be measured?
Concorde died off because it was becoming an old aircraft and the Market didn't really support renewal or developing a direct replacement, Airlines are more interested in shifting "volume" rather than selling speed, they're also keen to control their costs and aviation fuel isn't cheap, Concorde would not be commercially viable today (it could be argued it wasn't when it was developed)...
That's not a [i]Bad[/i] thing necessarily, The fact that Concorde was built and operated successfully for many years tells us just what is possible, by the same token the A380 is a massive leap in it's own right, it's capacity and relative fuel efficiency would have been unthinkable when Concorde was built, it may not seem as sexy but in it's own way it is, and it actually caters to modern commercial aviation needs...
But, without coming over all Buckminster Fuller, I think we're definitely at the point where humanity need to start learning how to [i]do more with less[/i].
We probably understand just how finite our resources are better than ever before, we have several centuries of Scientific and Engineering achievements to look back on and learn from now, it's really time to take stock and question how sustainable our general affinity for High speed, hydrocarbon fuelled transport, inefficient use of energy and widespread wasting of natural resources really is, in the age of the internet and with booming populations how do we proceed? More of the same? engineering Bigger, Faster, cheaper solutions to first-world problems? Or should we really be rationalizing stuff like Air travel back to a bare minimum?
is it true Progress or is it Blindly marching on having not really thought about how progress should be measured?
Well that's a good question. How should progress be measured?
I think we're definitely at the point where humanity need to start learning how to do more with less.
And that's exactly what Boeing and Airbus are doing.
i'm surprised this hasn't popped up yet, on a thread about supersonic travel...
[url= http://www.cnet.com/news/is-a-hyperloop-prototype-really-possible-by-2015/ ]hyperloop_2015[/url]
it's bonkers, but if anyone can do it...
