Wow!!! What a wonderfully interesting, gripping, riveting thread. It took me about one week to read it entirely and that was quite fantastic; so thanks a lot to all the main contributors (I'm sure everybody knows who I'm talking about)
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Unfortunately, I never had the opportunity to take a ride on the beauty but I really felt in awe of her as soon I as I sarted to look at her more closely. This plane is a lot more than just a plane; to my eyes, it is simply one of (if not THE) the biggest achievment of mankind so far and something that inspires wonderment and sadness at the same time, a huge step forward in aviation history that sadly ended up in a huge step backward. I had a look at the video of the final concorde going out of Filton in 1979 posted earlier in this thread (
BBC - Bristol - The story of the final Concorde) and keep in mind the faces of the 2 guys looking at the production line starting to be demolished... Heartbreaking!
Of course, I have many questions to ask to the experts here so let's just start with a serie of questions regarding the birth of the beast:
The 1962 treaty talks about an equal share of work and expenditure between Fr and UK... That sounds very political and not very realistic! A more pragmatic way would have been to take the best each country had to offer. But, in the end, was the share really fair for everybody? Did this treaty lead to some redundancies in terms of R&D or manpower and to an increase of the total cost of the project?
Also, was there really a technical need to build 6 a/c before the entry in service?
I ould really appreciate if one the living concorde bible in this thread give me an answer and, BTW, keep this thread alive.