Boom Supersonic (US) has a Mach 1 test flight in 2 days, https://www.aerotime.aero/articles/boom-supersonic-mach-one-...
Test flight livestream (Tue Jan 28 6:45AM PST/9:45AM EST/2:45PM GMT), https://boomsupersonic.com/flyby/xb-1-supersonic-test-flight...
You can go and see a Concorde at Bristol Aerospace Museum[0], and walk inside it.
There is an absolutely bewildering array of dials and switches exposed to the pilots[1].
And they have lots of other aviation stuff at the museum, it's not just Concorde. Other highlights include some very early planes, cut-away jet engines, and a cut-away section of a jumbo jet fuselage, so you can see the locations of pipes, tubes, cargo, etc. in relation to the seats. It is well worth a visit if you're nearby.
It always saddens me that in the 1960s it took 7 hours to fly from NYC -> London, and today, 60 years later, it still takes 7 hours to fly from NYC -> London...
Apart from fuel efficiency improvements, there hasn't been much innovation in the commercial commercial aerospace industry, with the exception of Boom's supersonic passenger airplanes which is just now starting to become a reality.
Circa 2000, British Airways(?) did a competition for technical people/students, and the prize was... to get to fly on the Concorde. I remember thinking "big whoop", and didn't enter. Not knowing that the Concorde would soon never fly again.
I was fortunate to travel in one of these, back in 1996 - London to New York.
(BA was offering some sweet deals to staff at partner airlines, at about 10% of retail pricing.)
At the time there was no expectation that we'd regress, though had I been more generally aware I'd have noticed the lack of next-gen SST R&D during Concorde's operational lifetime.
I recall they flew one out to Sydney Australia in the mid 1980's, but I think appetite was quite low, probably from both regulators and small market size -- despite the obvious appeal (it's about 24h flight time still in conventional commercial passenger jets, to get to the antipodes).
It should be noted you can see the curvature of the earth in the photo.
As I understand it, that was one of the perks of the Concorde in that in flew so high that the passengers could see this as well.
I remember at school at lunch time we’d see a Concorde fly overhead, just sort of got used to it.
As much as I appreciate being able to fly for relatively cheap, I think we can all agree that deregulation and fuel costs absolutely destroyed this kind of innovation for commercial air travel.
I wish I was old and well-off enough to take a flight on that majestic bird.
"Meanwhile, the Concorde continued its effortless cruise toward New York’s JFK Airport."
i.e. it used only 4,800 US gallons per hour of fuel (a 747 burns around 3600 gallons/h). Not what I would label "effortless", but not nearly as bad as I expected.
There is a story about Concorde chasing a solar eclipse for an hour.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Concorde_eclipse_flight
Seems strange that's the only photo. They never made test flights in pairs to monitor each other? And during these tests they didn't take any photos?
It says that it was fastest airliner with 2.05 Mach, but Tu-144 was faster with 2.15 Mach
Somewhere an SR-71 pilot is definitely rolling his eyes.
Only publicity photo, surely.
Here is a monster pilot forum thread on Concorde that ends up pulling in senior engineers, pilots, aerodynamicists and even a former flight attendant. They lovingly go over every detail of the plane's design and operation.
WARNING, serious temporal hazard. Do not click if you have work to do today or are supervising small children.
https://www.pprune.org/tech-log/423988-concorde-question.htm...