[DaiPlusPlus]

"...where Concorde failed?"

Hold on, when did Concorde "fail"? Concorde was profitable: https://simpleflying.com/did-british-airways-make-a-profit-f...

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The reasons for Concorde's discontinuation are legion - I think even if it weren't for the 2000 Air France crash it would have been discontinued simply due to the age of the fleet, what other airlines are still running 50+ year-old airframes today? Let alone those with very inefficient engines by today's standards.

[notahacker]

> Concorde was profitable

Your own article points out that it really, really wasn't, especially not for the parties investing in its development, not their customers who profited mainly because they got the aircraft at knockdown prices (and operated it without any supersonic competition) in what was later described as one of the worst deals ever negotiated by any government

$3bn was spent developing an aircraft they hoped would be the next generation of flight. Only 14 ever saw commercial service, and most were basically given away because nobody else wanted them. The article suggests BA made $0.75bn profit (Air France less) over three decades, which meant they wouldn't have made a profit on operating it if they'd paid normal purchase prices for mass-market commercial aircraft, never mind if they'd had to underwrite the costs of the R&D programme which is what Boom needs customers to do...

[willyt]

But it jump started Airbus, a hugely successful aircraft manufacturer, the difference between Airbus and Boeing is the dependence on fly-by-wire a technology that was first used outside the military in Concorde. So yes it was £3BN down but Airbus supports > 100,000 jobs in Britain, France and Germany. If you compare it to the current Space Launch System, which is a vapourware project which exists to provide a channel for government subsidy to the US Aerospace industry it makes more sense.

[scoopertrooper]

That calculation rests on the assumption that Concord was a necessary step toward Airbus. Given that the Airbus A300 actually entered service prior to the Concord, it seems to me that Concord was not a necessary precondition.

Granted, the Concord was the first aircraft to have fly-by-wire. However, it used an entirely different technology (analogue fly-by-wire) to the Airbus A320 (digital) and preceded it by a decade.

Were there some lessons learned from the Concord that carried over to the Airbus A320? Maybe? However, the causal relation you've conjectured seems quite tenuous.

[willyt]

Well it set a precedent for Cross-European collaboration and presumably a whole bunch of engineers from Britain and France all started talking to each other sharing ideas, learning each other’s language and cultural differences in the early 1960’s. The development of the A300 was started about 8 years after France and Britain merged their SST projects, the bulk of the development of the A300 was done in the 70’s. The engineers that worked on the Concorde programme would have started to become available to begin work on the A320 in the late 70’s/early 80’s. Also there is at least one digital computer in Concorde, I think it was the engine/intake controller that prevents the unstart problems that the Blackbird suffered from but I don’t remember TBH.

[scoopertrooper]

> Well it set a precedent for Cross-European collaboration and presumably a whole bunch of engineers from Britain and France all started talking to each other sharing ideas, learning each other’s language and cultural differences in the early 1960’s.

Maybe. Hard to say. But, if the 'Concord' was a project to build a wide body subsonic passenger jet, then the outcome would have been much the same, with the exception of a genuinely useful aircraft being produced.

> The engineers that worked on the Concorde programme would have started to become available to begin work on the A320 in the late 70’s/early 80’s.

Again, perhaps. Maybe, they were employed more on military jets? Who knows? European aeronautical engineers knew how to build passenger jets before Concord and not every European aeronautical engineer worked on Concord.

> Also there is at least one digital computer in Concorde

Probably, they had pocket calculators before that bird took off for its first flight. I don't really see how that matters.

Generally, the problem with these X is justified because it preceded Y arguments is that they overlook the fact we could have directly applied our efforts toward reaching Y.

[notahacker]

I agree, indirectly it lead to another company being hugely successful, which was probably a net win in terms of indirect tax revenues for the government (less because of the tech innovation and more because despite writing off £3bn on the project itself they also see returns from Airbus and every other domestic aerospace supply chain company that came afterwards, and all profitable airline operations, and all businesses aided by more available, cheaper flight)

But if Boom did likewise their investors won't see a penny. Viewed from that perspective, Boom only succeeds if they make and deliver aircraft at a profit (or get strategically acquired by Boeing or Airbus).

[panick21]

> But it jump started Airbus, a hugely successful aircraft manufacturer

Yes but that was also very, very lucky. Claiming this is some inevitable legacy of Concord is nonsense.

Airbus almost failed like so many other British-French-German partnerships of the time.

Using Airbus to claim Concord is a success is a huge strech.

[ClumsyPilot]

"$3bn was spent developing an aircraft they hoped would be the next generation of flight"

When we compare money spent on development, commercial projects will always win because they get to offload infrastructure, prerequisites and fundamental research onto the government.

The first iPhone offered navigation but didn't have to foot the bill for GPS satellites. In the advent of personal car, car companies didn't pay for highways (but train companies do).

The current crop of Fusion start-ups are benefiting from decades of research, and training spend on scientists - they would have no-one to hire!

[hef19898]

So basically numbers any tech company can get multi-billion dollar IPO nowadays?

[Tuna-Fish]

> Concorde was profitable

Only because the planes were sold to the carrier for a nominal (£1, iirc) price. If you consider the development and construction costs, the Concorde is billions in the hole.

[rbanffy]

> Concorde is billions in the hole.

This is the role of governments. From this R&D hole, aerospace jobs were maintained, people were trained, technologies were developed and a whole lot of other side benefits to both countries involved.

It’s not unlike NASA’s space program - if you look at the market value of the equipment built, it’s just an enormous money sink. We all know it’s not.

[DaiPlusPlus]

NASA and JPL and other ostensible civilian employers of rocket-scientists and other aerospace engineering experts has a nice side-effect of effectively giving the government a strategic-reserve of highly-skilled experts who can be reassigned to ASAT, ICBM and bomber weapons development at short-notice - and also means those same experts aren't employed by any rival or potential rival superpowers.

...kinda like how the US's civilian nuclear fusion programs were/are a way to keep people who-just-so-happen to be nuclear weapons experts gainfully employed and handily available after the cold war ended. Y'know... just in case!

[Sebb767]

But it didn't refresh its fleet, either. The Concorde itself might've been successful, but supersonic flight mostly died with it.

[rbanffy]

Politicians are notoriously impatient people with short attention spans that seldom go beyond a term. Concorde 2, which was more efficient, was cancelled while the planes we can think of prototypes were put in commercial service.

[MomoXenosaga]

Mass tourism began in the 1970s. Airliners needed something that could carry 350 tourists to Spain or Hawaii cheaply.

[rbanffy]

A supersonic transport can carry twice as many passengers per day as a subsonic widebody.

[mikro2nd]

How does cost per passenger-km compare?

[rbanffy]

Ticket should cost anything between 2 to 4 times a normal one. If it works, it’ll capture a lot of business and first class tickets from normal airliners