Frangible.
You said:
"Sure it was gorgeous, great to fly, lovely to look at, and it was certainly an amazing technical achievement but hang on.... The US looked at it and discovered after sonic bang tests in 1964 that the public would not tolerate them over land: not distant, muffled, blanket-on-the-timpani soft thumps like in the film, but great thunderclaps. We and the French, however, just pretended it wasn't an issue, and ploughed on, heads in the sand, throwing good money after bad, and labelling all sceptics unpatriotic."
You are exactly right on the issue of Americans not tolerating the noise levels of Concorde aircraft! That was certainly a major death nail in the project from the start.
Now, as I am clearly one of the people with my head in the sand, you are possibly in a perfect place to explain how, after the tests, the American public were still happy to have the U.S. SST rival land if it had gone ahead, but that would have been louder than Concorde!
Now from my head in the sand position, it looks to me like the American public had been persuaded that Concorde was an evil or ultra loud aircraft (or you can just read that as 'not built in the U.S'). But that the louder U.S. proposed SST (or their then currently flying but louder aircraft) were OK.
I would also be interested on your take on the current battle between two refuelling tankers proposed for the USAF. It seems that Americans don't like one of the bids in that contest too, and don't want it as it is rubbish (despite the reality of it flying and working already)
