Concorde question

[NHerby]

Thanks so much

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).
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.

[CliveL]

NHerby

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?

WOW! Talk about asking the 64000$ question up front!

It would take a book to answer your questions properly. Luckily someone has already written it - try to get hold of Ken Owen's "Concorde New Shape in the Sky" ISBN 0 7106 0268 5. It is an excellent account of the genesis and development of the machine that drove my life for 25 years.

You are right - it was a political agreement, but politics after all the art of agreeing what is possible, and we are talking of the UK and France of the 1950s. No way that either of those two proud countries was going to let the other have the lion's share of the kudos and fun of developing and flying the world's first supersonic airliner. Fun? yes, exciting, challenging, exhausting but definitely fun. and no way it was going to be other than an equal split.

But one can easily argue that it was arranged so that each country contributed the best it had to offer. The actual split was 50/50 on total costs, but arranged so that the UK had 60% of powerplant and 40% airframe. At the time, France had nothing to compare with the Olympus as an engine suitable for supersonic cruise, so that was logical. Out of our 40% on airframe we had responsibility for the intake and for powerplant/airframe integration. But when it came down to brass tacks Onera had a more flexible intake design than anything we Brits had to offer, and later in the project the "TRA" nozzle also came from France. We can take a lot of credit for melding these into a very successful powerplant, but I think it fair to say that each country did, in fact, contribute the best it had to offer.

As for fair shares for all, well all I can say is that there was more than enough work to go around

[john_tullamarine]

No point asking Clive .. he's an aerodynamicist and, hence, only talks in slugs/cubic foot.

[CliveL]

No point asking Clive .. he's an aerodynamicist and, hence, only talks in slugs/cubic foot.

That's because of my age not my profession - real aerodynamicists get around all that by using non-dimensional quantities like CL and Cd.

IIRC, the drawings were dimensioned in both units, but all threads etc were metric. Dude would know that better than I though. There was never any real difficulty with it.

[NHerby]

CliveL

Thanks a lot for this answer.

try to get hold of Ken Owen's "Concorde New Shape in the Sky" ISBN 0 7106 0268 5. It is an excellent account of the genesis and development of the machine that drove my life for 25 years.

Added to my list, just below the "The Wind Beneath my Wings" by John Hutchinson.

we are talking of the UK and France of the 1950s. No way that either of those two proud countries was going to let the other have the lion's share of the kudos and fun of developing and flying the world's first supersonic airliner.

That makes me bounce back to the last question of my previous post. Just regarding the 2 prototypes, since they were built simultanuously, I assume that, from a technical point of view, they were identical. And I assume also that the reason to build 2 identical prototypes was mainly to respect this principle of fair and equal share between the 2 countries; am I right?

[CliveL]

And I assume also that the reason to build 2 identical prototypes was mainly to respect this principle of fair and equal share between the 2 countries; am I right?

To use a well known French technical response: "Oui, mais..."

Partly out of equal shares, but there was also more flight test development work than could be handled by just one aircraft in a reasonable timescale, and each partner had their own sphere of responsibility to cover so if you have to have two airframes it made some sense to have one each.

[ozaggie]

Concorde.

Ummm....... Dunno! Just wanted to keep the thread on the front page, I guess?

[Ranger One]

Originally Posted by galaxy flyer

Four engine flameout is a very unlikely event, unless one runs into a volcanic cloud.

GF

Hah.

I'm pretty sure my memory isn't betraying me too far when I say I seem to remember a case, in the dim and distant past, of a management pilot (no less) taking a Concorde sector and... mismanaging things... badly. In fact they came so close to a four engine flameout (with no volcanic cloud in sight) that the thing was unable to be disembarked after landing for... CoG reasons... if you take my meaning!

Someone confirm?

R1

[gordonroxburgh]

The 2 prototypes weren't prototypes in today's meaning of the word, they were essentially experimental supersonic passenger aircraft, in mid 1960s when their design was frozen a lot of work needed to be done before you had a mature SST.

The next 2 per-production were nearer today what we would call prototypes for a design, much much closer to the final spec of systems and design.

The 2 first production aircraft, after re work and re certification could have been sold on to operators should the market have been there.

The pre production set could have been dropped in many peoples view, but due to the way the design was maturing the EIS would have been delayed a few years, and there was simply a requirement to allow the next stage of testing to move on.

Very much like the NASA moon programme, they could have taken a delay and flown more apollo missions and completely dropped Gemni, but at that point in time they needed to be flying to get the data.

[gordonroxburgh]

Ranger one, the fuel incident has been discussed on here

[Shanewhite]

I have a query about the thrust of Concorde's engines. The quoted static thrust of the Olympus 593 is 32,000lb, but it has been frequently stated that in supercruise, the majority of the thrust was provided by the intakes. That being so, how much thrust was actually produced overall at Mach 2, and how was this measured (if indeed it ever was)?

[TURIN]

Already discussed on this thread Shane.

Try a search.....

[garylovesbeer]

Just received my copy of "Concorde New Shape in the Sky".

Ex library copy.

Big stamp on Contents page saying "Smithsonian Libraries"! Score!

Looking forward to a nice, long read!

Thanks for stoking the addiction everyone here.

-Gary

[NHerby]

@CliveL

Partly out of equal shares, but there was also more flight test development work than could be handled by just one aircraft in a reasonable timescale, and each partner had their own sphere of responsibility to cover so if you have to have two airframes it made some sense to have one each.

Thanks again CliveL

A few pages earlier on this thread some of you have posted some of their favourite photos of Concorde. Here are very sad, chocking and rare photos:

This is 211 (F-BVFD) after "Air France's special treatment" (shame on them). The photos were taken in 1994. More photos of this can be seen here: Maripa : Documentation photographique.

To compensate, here's one of my favourite:


Most of those photos were taken at Toulouse (we saw a lot from Filton in this thread but very few from France). The caption of the top left picture says it is 102 (F-WTSA) and 201 (F-WTSB) in the background. The image comes from a french website (Concorde dans la presse de 1965 à 2003) gathering hundreds of articles about Concorde. Very interesting but in French only.
I particulary like this last serie of photos because it shows the process of a dream turning into reality, the beginning of such a beautiful adventure and the symbol of a time where national pride and technical achievment had more importance and value than the basic investment/profitability ratio that rules the world today! And now, more than 40 years later, not only we are not able to build a SST but we are also not able to make a SST flying again.
And this leads to a new question (maybe another 64000$ one):
As we can see in those photos and as I have seen in photos from Filton, several pre-production and production airframes were built at the same time. Did the fabrication of pre-production or production a/c had to be stopped at some point to wait for in flight test results? Similar question: did the early flights revealed unforseen problems that needed to be sorted out before the program can move on?

[CliveL]

Did the fabrication of pre-production or production a/c had to be stopped at some point to wait for in flight test results? Similar question: did the early flights revealed unforseen problems that needed to be sorted out before the program can move on?

Can't say I remember the production line being stopped to wait for flight results, but then the production rate wasn't that spectacular anyway and most of the changes (not all of them) came from wind tunnel and design developments.

All flight tests reveal unforeseen problems! This could result in a pause in the prototype/pre-production flight test programme whilst the test aircraft was being modified, but this didn't delay build of later vesrions.

[Gnato]

Engine rating modes

This is a repost, but I'm not sure if the question was missed by people with knowledge, or ignored, so I put it up again.

Welcome everyone. I am new to this forum and thread but must confess that I have read all the pages of this amazing topic. I am an aviation enthusiast flying on different planes in FS9. One of them is SSTSIM Concorde. My question concerns engine rating modes in general with Concorde in mind.

AFAIK (and this is a perfect time and place to fix my knowledge) engine rating modes on ordinary turbofan engine are:

- TO- dictated by safety - full power in order to get obstacle clearence/ GA
- CLB - cut down in power for engine prolonged life, but still high to get to fuel efficient altitude ASAP
- CRS - for economic and long, stable flight

Concorde is not an airplane, so things look quite different, huh?
We have a pair of switches, one is take off - flight, second climb- cruise, so we have:

1. Take off with TO and CLB
2. Climb with FLT and CLB
3. Cruise with FLT and CRS
4. Descent with FLT and CLB
5. Approach with TO and CLB

Can somebody explain, what really engine rating modes change in the work of the engine, why we have CLB again for descent (when they work close to idle) and why there are two systems overlapping?
I don't need strict numbers, just general idea confronted with ordinary planes. Thank you in advance.

Dan

[phil@LFPG]

the best thread ever on the net and so polite.

all those technicals and in deep infos.

i never flown myself the Concorde but my dad made one CDG DKR RIO and one CDG JFK and as others mention he was smiling back from those flights even the flights were for work.

i had the chance to see the Concorde at night in the AF maintenance at CDG it was called Airbus-Concorde division and despite i was more on the other side : the 747 division i loved to stay around and just watching that wonderful Bird waiting to fly the next morning.

alas when moving to Canada we lost all the pictures and souvenirs of those days but they re back with you.

thank you Lady and Gentlemen.

and Bravo, merci.

[booforty]

Wow, what an amazing thread which I have only recently found.

Congratulations to all for a fascinating read

Although I never got the opportunity to fly on Concorde, I will never forget seeing her fly some charters from Filton in the late 1990's. On one occasion I was stood at the wire fence at the end of runway 27 and watched Concorde taxi directly towards me, do a 360 degree turn and line up for takeoff. Concorde was only around 100ft-150ft away from me when the throttles were opened. Luckily I was holding tightly onto the fence and got a face full of dust as the reheats kicked in! The noise, power and heat I felt from those Olympus engines was phenomenal. She looked stunning as she rotated amongst the heat haze and the slender delta climbed steeply away towards the Bristol Channel. What an aircraft!

My grandfather worked on the Olympus 593 engines at Rolls Royce in Filton, so I will always hold Concorde close to my heart. I have been onboard Foxy at Filton when she was open to the public and I have visited 002 at Yeovilton and 101 at Duxford. I live quite close to Delta Golf at Brooklands and have been onboard her about 4 times now (including a sit in the cockpit) and recently flew the fantastic Concorde simulator with Captain John Eames and First Officer Ian Smith which is a day I will treasure. Opening up the throttles for take-off on 31L at JFK and tackling the checkerboard landing at Kai Tak were experiences I will never forget.

Keep up the great postings everyone!

[LTCTerry]

Words almost fail me...

I am on page 49 of this amazing thread about an incredible aircraft. I have spent many "unproductive" hours at my desk – when I should be defending the free world – reading here.

I must say, this is an incredibly brilliant (in the US sense of "intellect" rather than the British "cool/great") people. The history; the technology; and, most importantly, the people here make this a thread beyond compare – more alive than any book on the topic could hope to be.

Sometime, roughly ~1987?, I was driving from Norfolk, Virginia, to Washington, DC. As I drove by the Wilmington, Delaware, airport I saw an unusual looking tail rising above a building. I thought, "That looks like Concorde, but she wouldn't be here. Several seconds later the building no longer blocked my view, and it was indeed Concorde!

I had previously seen the a/c on display at the Musee de l'air in Paris and have since seen the one in Sinsheim, Germany. Wilmington, though, was the only time I actually saw one in service.

Long into, now to my question:

A few pages back I read about "left rudder" on takeoff because "engine number four was at 88% thrust." I understand the need for rudder based on asymmetric thrust, but why was the thrust asymmetric in the first place?

I need to push on through the next 40 pages to get the answer to my question!

[Bellerophon]

LTCTerry

...but why was the thrust asymmetric in the first place?...

Allow me to direct you to my colleague M2dude's answer here.