Today brings the last commercial flight of Concorde . Concorde was built jointly by engineers in Toulouse and in Bristol (the city where I live and work). It is a tremendous source of local pride for the people of the city. Just last weekend I happened to be in the British Aerospace Welfare Association in Filton and overheard a number of elderly people who had worked on the project chatting about their experience of the aircraft. Anyone who grew up in Britain in the 1960s and 1970s will also know what the plane represented then in terms of confidence in a new technology-driven future, how the test flights were reported, the celebrity status of test-pilot Brian Trubshaw , the worries about Concordski (later crashed at the Paris air show) and Boeing’s rival SST (abandoned). Now it will take longer to get from London to New York than it did twenty-seven years ago.
I think you’ll find that getting from London to Bristol is no faster now than it was in the age of steam, and on many other routes the journey is longer.
Progress in transportation seems mixed.
In general fuel consumption per trip is likely to be at least proportional to the speed. (resistance scaling like the square of the velocity, journey time to the reciprocal). Boarding, taxiing and holding patterns dilute the benefits significantly as do limitations on flight over populated land.
In the mean time more normal airliners have become faster, more efficient and easier to get to. The real boom in aviation has been at the Ryanair/SouthWest end of the spectrum. Unlike the problems with railways which make Sherlock Holmes ability to defeat criminal masterminds with a good knowledge of the train timetables seem like science fiction, most people flying are probably getting there faster if a plane can be involved.
Still Concorde was pretty fab, it’s just that top speed isn’t the most useful measure of techological progress anymore. In fact imagine what Bristol would have been like if an effective rival to the 747 had been built instead.
In all the reams of stuff written about the Concorde I think the most interesting was an article in the LRB last year ‘Love that Bird’, by Francis Spufford (sadly subscriber only).
It was full of fascinating facts, such as the fact that it runs very tight on fuel — ‘It can cross the Atlantic, but only just. London-New York and Paris-New York are possible; Frankfurt-New York is not.’, and this rather nice story,
“One of the best was told by Captain Jock Lowe, who had, he said, once met the American pilot of an SR-71 Blackbird spyplane. This pilot had been on station in the stratosphere over Cuba one day, when he and his co-pilot got a crackly request from Air Traffic Control to move a couple of miles off course. ‘Eh?’ they thought; for not much moves in the thin air up at 60,000 feet that a spyplane can get in the way of. But as they sat there swaddled up like astronauts and plugged into their craft’s systems by a tangle of umbilicals, an Air France Concorde out of Caracas sailed by, ‘with a hundred passengers sitting in their shirtsleeves, eating canapés’. Another planeload of rich people had entered the kingdom of heaven.”
>Progress in transportation seems mixed.
The number of traffic lights between my house and the main hwy I get on to for work has gone from 4 to 8 in the last 10 years, and a new set (put in to facilitiate a new mega car lot, at I’m sure no cost to the wildly rich owners) is already hung but not uncovered yet.
Ah, sprawl.
Ah yes, new roads. First is the inconvenience of the construction, then a blissful honeymoon when the ‘bypass’ is new and clear and traveling is easy. Then reality steps in, traffic increases, and stoplights go up. One here, one there, until the new ‘bypass’ is nothing more than another city street.
And they start planning the bypass for the bypass.
Lance, really? It takes 2.5 hours now on a National Express coach.
Now it will take longer to get from London to New York than it did twenty-seven years ago.
Good point.
I suspect the cost-per-mile, adjusted for inflation, has dropped considerably, though!
After 9-11, I’ve heard that there are lots of charter jets (corporate jets) that celebrities take to and fro.
They are likely as expensive as the Concorde for a seat, but it’s gotta be much more easy going. I don’t know if every airport has customs, though.
Hmm, I don’t really know if there is a supersonic corporate jet right now. I’d assume not, but it would make sense.
À Gauche
Jeremy Alder
Amaravati
Anggarrgoon
Audhumlan Conspiracy
H.E. Baber
Philip Blosser
Paul Broderick
Matt Brown
Diana Buccafurni
Brandon Butler
Keith Burgess-Jackson
Certain Doubts
David Chalmers
Noam Chomsky
The Conservative Philosopher
Desert Landscapes
Denis Dutton
David Efird
Karl Elliott
David Estlund
Experimental Philosophy
Fake Barn County
Kai von Fintel
Russell Arben Fox
Garden of Forking Paths
Roger Gathman
Michael Green
Scott Hagaman
Helen Habermann
David Hildebrand
John Holbo
Christopher Grau
Jonathan Ichikawa
Tom Irish
Michelle Jenkins
Adam Kotsko
Barry Lam
Language Hat
Language Log
Christian Lee
Brian Leiter
Stephen Lenhart
Clayton Littlejohn
Roderick T. Long
Joshua Macy
Mad Grad
Jonathan Martin
Matthew McGrattan
Marc Moffett
Geoffrey Nunberg
Orange Philosophy
Philosophy Carnival
Philosophy, et cetera
Philosophy of Art
Douglas Portmore
Philosophy from the 617 (moribund)
Jeremy Pierce
Punishment Theory
Geoff Pynn
Timothy Quigley (moribund?)
Conor Roddy
Sappho's Breathing
Anders Schoubye
Wolfgang Schwartz
Scribo
Michael Sevel
Tom Stoneham (moribund)
Adam Swenson
Peter Suber
Eddie Thomas
Joe Ulatowski
Bruce Umbaugh
What is the name ...
Matt Weiner
Will Wilkinson
Jessica Wilson
Young Hegelian
Richard Zach
Psychology
Donyell Coleman
Deborah Frisch
Milt Rosenberg
Tom Stafford
Law
Ann Althouse
Stephen Bainbridge
Jack Balkin
Douglass A. Berman
Francesca Bignami
BlunkettWatch
Jack Bogdanski
Paul L. Caron
Conglomerate
Jeff Cooper
Disability Law
Displacement of Concepts
Wayne Eastman
Eric Fink
Victor Fleischer (on hiatus)
Peter Friedman
Michael Froomkin
Bernard Hibbitts
Walter Hutchens
InstaPundit
Andis Kaulins
Lawmeme
Edward Lee
Karl-Friedrich Lenz
Larry Lessig
Mirror of Justice
Eric Muller
Nathan Oman
Opinio Juris
John Palfrey
Ken Parish
Punishment Theory
Larry Ribstein
The Right Coast
D. Gordon Smith
Lawrence Solum
Peter Tillers
Transatlantic Assembly
Lawrence Velvel
David Wagner
Kim Weatherall
Yale Constitution Society
Tun Yin
History
Blogenspiel
Timothy Burke
Rebunk
Naomi Chana
Chapati Mystery
Cliopatria
Juan Cole
Cranky Professor
Greg Daly
James Davila
Sherman Dorn
Michael Drout
Frog in a Well
Frogs and Ravens
Early Modern Notes
Evan Garcia
George Mason History bloggers
Ghost in the Machine
Rebecca Goetz
Invisible Adjunct (inactive)
Jason Kuznicki
Konrad Mitchell Lawson
Danny Loss
Liberty and Power
Danny Loss
Ether MacAllum Stewart
Pam Mack
Heather Mathews
James Meadway
Medieval Studies
H.D. Miller
Caleb McDaniel
Marc Mulholland
Received Ideas
Renaissance Weblog
Nathaniel Robinson
Jacob Remes (moribund?)
Christopher Sheil
Red Ted
Time Travelling Is Easy
Brian Ulrich
Shana Worthen
Computers/media/communication
Lauren Andreacchi (moribund)
Eric Behrens
Joseph Bosco
Danah Boyd
David Brake
Collin Brooke
Maximilian Dornseif (moribund)
Jeff Erickson
Ed Felten
Lance Fortnow
Louise Ferguson
Anne Galloway
Jason Gallo
Josh Greenberg
Alex Halavais
Sariel Har-Peled
Tracy Kennedy
Tim Lambert
Liz Lawley
Michael O'Foghlu
Jose Luis Orihuela (moribund)
Alex Pang
Sebastian Paquet
Fernando Pereira
Pink Bunny of Battle
Ranting Professors
Jay Rosen
Ken Rufo
Douglas Rushkoff
Vika Safrin
Rob Schaap (Blogorrhoea)
Frank Schaap
Robert A. Stewart
Suresh Venkatasubramanian
Ray Trygstad
Jill Walker
Phil Windley
Siva Vaidahyanathan
Anthropology
Kerim Friedman
Alex Golub
Martijn de Koning
Nicholas Packwood
Geography
Stentor Danielson
Benjamin Heumann
Scott Whitlock
Education
Edward Bilodeau
Jenny D.
Richard Kahn
Progressive Teachers
Kelvin Thompson (defunct?)
Mark Byron
Business administration
Michael Watkins (moribund)
Literature, language, culture
Mike Arnzen
Brandon Barr
Michael Berube
The Blogora
Colin Brayton
John Bruce
Miriam Burstein
Chris Cagle
Jean Chu
Hans Coppens
Tyler Curtain
Cultural Revolution
Terry Dean
Joseph Duemer
Flaschenpost
Kathleen Fitzpatrick
Jonathan Goodwin
Rachael Groner
Alison Hale
Household Opera
Dennis Jerz
Jason Jones
Miriam Jones
Matthew Kirschenbaum
Steven Krause
Lilliputian Lilith
Catherine Liu
John Lovas
Gerald Lucas
Making Contact
Barry Mauer
Erin O'Connor
Print Culture
Clancy Ratcliff
Matthias Rip
A.G. Rud
Amardeep Singh
Steve Shaviro
Thanks ... Zombie
Vera Tobin
Chuck Tryon
University Diaries
Classics
Michael Hendry
David Meadows
Religion
AKM Adam
Ryan Overbey
Telford Work (moribund)
Library Science
Norma Bruce
Music
Kyle Gann
ionarts
Tim Rutherford-Johnson
Greg Sandow
Scott Spiegelberg
Biology/Medicine
Pradeep Atluri
Bloviator
Anthony Cox
Susan Ferrari (moribund)
Amy Greenwood
La Di Da
John M. Lynch
Charles Murtaugh (moribund)
Paul Z. Myers
Respectful of Otters
Josh Rosenau
Universal Acid
Amity Wilczek (moribund)
Theodore Wong (moribund)
Physics/Applied Physics
Trish Amuntrud
Sean Carroll
Jacques Distler
Stephen Hsu
Irascible Professor
Andrew Jaffe
Michael Nielsen
Chad Orzel
String Coffee Table
Math/Statistics
Dead Parrots
Andrew Gelman
Christopher Genovese
Moment, Linger on
Jason Rosenhouse
Vlorbik
Peter Woit
Complex Systems
Petter Holme
Luis Rocha
Cosma Shalizi
Bill Tozier
Chemistry
"Keneth Miles"
Engineering
Zack Amjal
Chris Hall
University Administration
Frank Admissions (moribund?)
Architecture/Urban development
City Comforts (urban planning)
Unfolio
Panchromatica
Earth Sciences
Our Take
Who Knows?
Bitch Ph.D.
Just Tenured
Playing School
Professor Goose
This Academic Life
Other sources of information
Arts and Letters Daily
Boston Review
Imprints
Political Theory Daily Review
Science and Technology Daily Review