SPACE.com -- Concorde: Near-Spaceship or European Relic?

More than 100 Dead In French Concorde Crash

Concorde -- An Uneconomic Triumph

Aerospace Companies Beat Wall Street Projections

Pact to Make Aerospace Loans Obtainable


	Concorde: Near-Spaceship or European Relic? By Thomas A. Heppenheimer Special to SPACE.com posted: 05:24 pm ET 25 July 2000

Designed in the 1960s, the Concorde remains to this day the nearest thing to a spaceship for non-astronauts

Designed in the 1960s, the Concorde remains to this day the nearest thing to a spaceship for non-astronauts. Test pilots know that above 50,000 feet (15,200 meters), all flight feels like spaceflight and that is where the Concorde soars.

The sleek, delta-wing jet looks remarkably like the spaceliner in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. Its powerful engines give rocket-like acceleration; a digital Machmeter shows its speed in multiples of the speed of sound.

Out the window is the velvet-purple sky, brightening to a light-colored band above the horizon. If you look closely, you can see the curvature of Earth.

The coastlines of Cape Cod or southwest England will appear as distinctly as they would on a map. Of course, the trip round the world lasts fewer than four hours and there is no weightlessness. But compared to the cost of a space shuttle, a Concorde round-trip fare of $8,148 is a bargain. And when you get off the plane, you won't be arriving at a cramped lunar base or austere space station. You're often in Paris.

European relics

Even so, the Concorde remains a relic of an era when European plane builders designed airliners largely to please themselves.

During the 1960s, the Concorde program drew strength from Charles de Gaulle, France's highly nationalistic leader. He resented America's domination of commercial aviation and was eager to challenge what he called "America's colonization of the skies." Concorde, flying at twice the speed of sound, was to be his instrument.

But with room for only 128 passengers, it was too small and too costly. Only 15 Concordes ever entered service, all with national airliners Air France and British Airways. Pan Am and TWA declined to make purchases early in 1973, with the chairman of TWO noting the Concorde's "dismal economics."

Those quickly became more dismal with the massive oil-price hikes of the 1970s. The designers of the Concorde had felt free to ignore the demands of the market, for they had received lavish subsidies.

The same was true at Britain's firm of De Havilland Aircraft, which built the three-engine Trident. It was designed for one airline and one man -- Lord Sholto Douglas, chairman of British European Airways (BEA).

The plane was small and short in range, and could have flow well with only two engines. But BEA and De Havilland had their own subsidies, which allowed His Lordship to take a very comfortable view: "They don't change one hair of that airline without my permission."

Getting it right?

Since 1975, however, the Europeans have been getting it right. Airbus Industrie, a French-led consortium, started by offering something new: widebody twin jets, the Airbus A-300 and A-310. These had large cabins that passengers preferred, along with only two engines. Building on their popularity, Airbus Industrie went forward to make a powerful bid for leadership in the worldwide realm of airliners. Today it offers aircraft in virtually every combination of size and range that a major airline would want to operate.

Yet even Airbus may be falling prey to the same old trap by building an airliner that is technically impressive but that fails to meet the needs of the market. This consortium currently is placing its hopes on a new and immense plane -- the Airbus A-3XX, with a development cost of $12 billion to $15 billion.

It is to be the world's largest airliner, carrying up to 656 passengers on two full-length decks and entering service in 2005. By contrast, the Boeing 747 carries 421.

Boeing, Airbus's competitor, remains unimpressed. Its executives assert that there is no major demand for such a behemoth. Moreover, they are prepared to offer a new and larger 747, again with two full decks and at a much lower development cost. If they are right, then the A-3XX may resemble the Concorde, as a superb technical achievement that nevertheless sells in only limited numbers, and that fails in the market. In turn, their 747s may continue to rule the skies.