Yes, really.

If you measure usefulness by numbers of people killed

Or put another way, ability to repel a planned invasion by a fascist mass-murderer.

As utility goes, it’s slightly higher than ferrying a very small number of rich people somewhere quickly, at the general public’s expense.

Or put another way, ability to repel a planned invasion by a fascist mass-murderer.

Well, if you put it like that then, it was considerably less useful than a series of nondescript weatherboard huts near Milton Keynes.

And probably less useful than the decisiveness of a certain B-29 bomber’s payload.

Well, if you put it like that then, it was considerably less useful than a series of nondescript weatherboard huts near Milton Keynes.

It also required a pilot, an airfield, petrol and mechanics. What’s your point?

And probably less useful than the decisiveness of a certain B-29 bomber’s payload.

You do realise that the facist mass-murderer had already been defeated by then?

What’s your point?

That the soulful, iconic spitfire contributed considerably less, and was therefore less worthwhile, than some men and women sat in sheds. And the Hurricane.

You do realise that the facist mass-murderer had already been defeated by then?

I am, but I trust you are aware that WWII didn’t end in May 1945.

That the soulful, iconic spitfire contributed considerably less, and was therefore less worthwhile, than some men and women sat in sheds. And the Hurricane.

Well no. It was all inter-dependent. The fact is, we could not have repelled a German invasion if we had lost the Battle of Britain. Winning that battle relied on many things, including successful fighter aircraft.

The Spitfire was useful. Concorde was not.

I am, but I trust you are aware that WWII didn’t end in May 1945.

I don’t recall making any claims about the Spitfire’s role in defeating Japan, so perhaps you might try responding to what was written.

The Spitfire was useful. Concorde was not.

As I said, useful at killing people.

Only not as useful as the much less flashy, much easier to build, and much easier to repair hurricane.

It wasn’t much use at crossing the pond with over 100 passengers in three hours either.

I don’t recall making any claims about the Spitfire’s role in defeating Japan, so perhaps you might try responding to what was written.

No, but you did make the point about the spitfire being useful. I’m saying its usefulness was outlived rather quickly; c/f statements about Concorde vs A380 buses

As I said, useful at killing people.

Only not as useful as the much less flashy, much easier to build, and much easier to repair hurricane.

It wasn’t much use at crossing the pond with over 100 passengers in three hours either.

The Spitfire was good at repelling an invasion by a fascist dictator. Concorde was good at swallowing vast quantities of public money in order to move a very small number of rich people somewhere else.

No, but you did make the point about the spitfire being useful. I’m saying its usefulness was outlived rather quickly; c/f statements about Concorde vs A380 buses

Concorde was never useful.

Concorde was never useful.

Unless you wanted to get across the pond in three hours

The Spitfire was good at repelling an invasion by a fascist dictator.

No, the dull Hurricane was. The Sexy Spit couldn’t be built or repaired in the numbers required.

For anyone less interested in practically pointless petty bickering, and more interested in details of Concorde, her design, development, and operation, see this legendary thread on PPRUNE:

PPRUNE Concorde Question

Something like 90 odd pages of amazing and often first hand info!

😉

I’m not sure whether to thank you or not for that link, maxtorque. I may be some time…. 😀

Unless you wanted to get across the pond in three hours

At great expense, using a vast public subsidy, to a very restricted number of people to a very restricted number of destinations at a very restricted number of times.

If that’s useful, the word has no meaning.

No, the dull Hurricane was. The Sexy Spit couldn’t be built or repaired in the numbers required.

The Hurricane was useful. The Spitfire was useful. Radar was useful. You’re not really getting this inter-dependency thing, are you?

If that’s useful, the word has no meaning.

It was useful to those people, yes.

You can be as melodramatic as you like, but you can’t rewrite the dictionary.

It was useful to those people, yes.

You can be as melodramatic as you like, but you can’t rewrite the dictionary.

If you wish to consider it at the scale of the tiny number of rich people who benefitted from this public subsidy, be my guest, but it’s irrelevant at any meaningful level.

but it’s irrelevant at any meaningful level in my view so I’m going to perpetuate this tedious argument for a little while longer in the hope you’ll see black is white.

Mrs deadly and I were doing a bit of shopping for bits for wee deadly some months ago in a well known department store (never knowingly undersold) and were having a coffee afterwards. An older couple sat in the seats alongside us and as often happens when you’ve got a baby (well, it seems to happen more often these days), we got chatting to them. I ended up chatting to the chap who was retired now so I asked him what he used to do. After a bit of digging (ie. me being a nosey fecker), it transpired he had worked most of his life on Concorde. He’d been one of the development engineers on the engines from concept to delivery 😯 and had worked supporting it until its withdrawal from service. To be honest, I’ve always been a bit meh about concorde (no strong feelings either way) but it was a fascinating half-hour or so chatting to someone who’d been in his position. It was most likely wasted on me though to be fair. 😆 Just goes to show that it’s often a good idea to just chat with older folk – they sometimes have very interesting stories to tell.

He probably thought it useless too, DD 😉

He probably thought it useless too, DD

🙂

Ah no…there was a certain quiet pride in his stories. All he wanted to talk about was timber **** floors (he’d just had some put in) so I had a job trying to keep him on topic.

timber **** floors

Infinitely more useful – you can stand on them and efrifink

but it’s irrelevant at any meaningful level in my view so I’m going to perpetuate this tedious argument for a little while longer in the hope you’ll see black is white.

You already see that black is white, and certainly require no help on that score.
I had hoped to persuade you otherwise, but you seem quite happy to be wrong, so I’ll leave it there.

I can see how you might not think cheap mass transport is not exciting. Imagine a businessman on his way to Fort Worth, that is dull. But imagine the family going on an adventure, or a couple on a romantic trip, they are having wonderful experiences. Allowing ordinary people to experience the world in ways that they have NEVER been able to do before is pretty fantastic. I have benefitted hugely from this, as have many of us on this forum. Concorde did nothing for me apart from be cool, and allow some suits to get home a day earlier. It did nothing to change the world, Boeing, Airbus et al have done far more.

End of thread.

So, you drive a Pious to save the planet, man, and yet espouse a massive growth in mass air transport? Hmm.

I was waiting for someone to say that. I said it had huge benefits, problem is it also has huge disadvantages…

I drive a Pious to avoid unnecessary waste of a valuable resource.. It’s a tradeoff between cost and benefit.

I thought you said it was the end of the thread up there? Yet it took someone else to point out your rather hypocritical stance before you did yourself.

More flying isn’t the answer. Better flying is. I’d rather have seen flying remain super expensive, and the advances made on faster, more efficient SSTs.

Oh, and valuable resources? A Prius? Ha! Funny man! An old Landy, cobbled together from spares and gaffer tape would have a far lower carbon footprint than your eco-ego wagon.

Slightly premature my dear molgrips! Where do you think “Airbus” sprang from? Yup, that’s right, it’s a consortium of companies formed including BAE systems and Aerospatiale, the companies that developed and built, yup, you guessed it, Concorde. And lets take all the Boeing airframes in the world, powered by Rolls Royce Aero engines, a company that forged it’s reputation and skills on high power military turbojets, that were commercialised on, yup, that darn Concorde program again!

And, lets take the Airbus “revolutionary” Digital Electronic Flight control system and cockpit Automation. Guess what? It was developed by the same team that developed Concorde’s cutting edge DEFCS.

I’m not sure the total cost to the british tax payer of the Concorde program will ever be known, we know it’s more that £500M but not how much more than that it was. But, where was that money spent? Not up at 50k feet where the plane flew that’s for sure. No, it was spend down here on the ground, keeping UK families in employment and UK aerospace companies and their supply chains in business.

In 1980, the UK spent £13.5B on defence in one year alone. The Falklands war alone cost over £2B in 1982.

Up against that spending i’d say Concorde was “worth it”! (what ever that means) and it is unlikely that the UK would have the involvement we currently have in worldwide aerospace engineering without the legacy of the Concorde program.

Lots of Concorde stories here:
Concorde

Yet it took someone else to point out your rather hypocritical stance before you did yourself.

Hmm, well, I’m not trying to be hypocritical, since the debate was about flying technology I kept it on topic. It is a difficult problem for me, certainly – travel is profoundly important to me personally, but it is damaging to the environment.

The Prius by the way is about mitigating the travel I choose to do, but let’s not get into that tired old slanging match on this thread.

I’d rather have seen flying remain super expensive

So us proles who want to travel have to make do with Blackpool, whilst the rich explore the world, then? Like in the 19th century?

Slightly premature my dear molgrips!

A knowledgable post maxtorque but I’m not quite sure of its relevance.

An old Landy, cobbled together from spares and gaffer tape would have a far lower carbon footprint than your eco-ego wagon.

Only if you don’t drive it much: the extra fuel consumption of the Landy vastly outweighs the impact of manufacturing the Prius.

Only if you don’t drive it much: the extra fuel consumption of the Landy vastly outweighs the impact of manufacturing the Prius.

Reference, please.

Or is this another selective viewpoint, as opposed to a fact?

A knowledgable post maxtorque but I’m not quite sure of its relevance.

Quite a bit more than Prius (Priuses? Prii?) have on a thread titled “Anyone flown on Concorde?”

Quite a bit more than Prius (Priuses? Prii?) have on a thread titled “Anyone flown on Concorde?”

Direct your complaints at CFH, he brought it up, and I said it was for another thread.

My comment to maxtorque wasn’t supposed to be a slight – he points out that certain things were developed during the creation of Concorde, but we can’t possibly conclude that they would not have been developed had Concorde existed. Likewise Airbus being created from BAE and others – I don’t know why this is relevant. It’s just an engineering company moving on to other (more profitable, sensible and imo COOLER things).

but we can’t possibly conclude that they would not have been developed had Concorde existed.

To some extent, I agree. However, Concorde was the catalyst for their development, and thus made their application to later models much easier.

and imo COOLER things

In the same way that a bus is cooler than a supercar, I suppose 🙄

Hang on, you drive a prius, so I can guess your response to that last comment 😉

Only if you don’t drive it much: the extra fuel consumption of the Landy vastly outweighs the impact of manufacturing the Prius.

Quite comprehensively proven wrong. For brand new cars, that you can buy today, the most environmentally friendly car, based on a cradle to grave cost to the environment is the Jeep Wrangler. The cost to manufacture and dispose of modern cars far outstrips the environmental impact of the fuel used.

Reference, please.

Or is this another selective viewpoint, as opposed to a fact?

We’ve done this before on STW. I suggest you review previous threads, as I wouldn’t want to offend your overly delicate sensibilities by talking about cars in this one.

If you care to look, you will find that any reputable LCA shows that the bulk of a car’s lifetime emissions occur during the use phase. That’s based on a nominal average mileage, hence my point about not driving much.

It’s a pity that once again you’ve chosen to wave your handbag around.

Quite comprehensively proven wrong.

Nope, ransos posted it, so it can’t be wrong….

Can it? 😯

If you care to look I have no references and am just making it up on the fly to sound self-important

My point was that nothing exists in isolation. In any industry, and especially in Aerospace, which is necessarily conservative and safety conscious, ideas, technologies, and processes simply do not “spring from nowhere” into existence.

The systems that make a latest generation airliner feasible have been forged over the last 20, 40, and even 60 years within the industry. Concorde, as a cutting edge project helped to lay the foundations for these advances. As i mentioned before, its aerothermodynamics, engines and especially the inlets, flight control systems, cabin environmental controls, high load rating high speed tyres, hugely powerful braking systems, Inertial guidance and stability augmentation, to name but a few, all have a legacy within more current commercial airframes, and especially those from Airbus. Even Boeings 747 responded, designed with an atypical high wing sweep and a high cruising speed to attempt to counter some of Concordes remarkable cruise capability.

No, Concorde was not a commercial success when viewed simply with an eye on profits, but look at the bigger picture and a you can trace a lot of it’s DNA in the current fleets. Things like 100% on-wing engine monitoring (now in real time during flights, using radio telemetry, sent back to Derby for analysis of engine performance and pre identification of any developing issues) started with Concorde (in that case, due to the complexity of the operating modes and environment).

So it leaves me with two questions:

1) Would current aerospace technologies be as advanced and as efficient as they are now without Concorde? I suggest the answer is No.

2) Is it better to have tried and failed, or to have not tried at all?
(i’ll leave that one up to each individual to answer for themselves!)

So far as the lifecycle CO2 emissions go, this site might be useful?

Of course, it might simply be wrong!!

My car… http://www.nextgreencar.com/view-car/37788/SKODA-Fabia-1.4-TSI-vRS-180PS-DSG-Petrol-Semi-automatic-7-speed

Rachel

So far as the lifecycle CO2 emissions go, this site might be useful?

Not really – It needs to comprehensively cover the energy embedded in both its construction and eventual recycling. This is especially the case if we’re considering scrapping an already built and functional car for a brand new one (that otherwise wouldn’t have been built).

That’s what it claims to do

That’s what it claims to do

Unfortunately it says “coming soon” for the Fabia you posted.

It’s also a pretty contentious area of science/economics as lots of values used seem to be best guesses by a committee if data doesn’t exist for a particular component / scenario. It’s also very easy to manipulate.