My Concorde story: I flew a Cessna 172 into JFK twice about 30 years ago. On one of those flights while on base leg to 13R, I heard a controller instruct an Air France Concorde to hold short for landing traffic. Sure enough, there it was on the taxiway at one o'clock. I was mildly amused by the thought of all those very fast rich people waiting an extra minute for me to land my little four banger. I did my best to make it short and quick, using about one-tenth of the runway to hop off to the GA terminal on the left. Just courtesy. Fond memory.
one day i was at hatton cross station when a concorde took off from runway 09R, passing very close to hatton cross station. the engine noise (well, technically it was the jet noise) triggered many car alarms. the concorde left a brown trail of nitrous oxides. i have never seen such a trail behind any other airliner. another time, also at hatton cross, it was dark so i could see that the exhaust gas was so hot it was actually glowing during takeoff and climbout. i don't remember seeing mach diamonds, though. there is a museum in germany where they have a concorde and a tupolev 144. right next to each other.
@Repent-and-believe-in-Jesus And WTF does that religious bullshit have to do with anything? Are you really ok with being part of a cult that lies to you all the time?
Loved that story, thanks for sharing! On my way to get my PPL-A, maybe I'll be like you in the future, with a supersonic NASA jet waiting for me on the tarmac :)
@@its_chris_cross postscript: the Port Authority police drove me in their van to the airline terminal where we picked up my passenger. They flipped on the flashing cop lights to get his attention. Beyond VIP treatment. I guess I was an oddity that day. Good luck with your flying career.
I'm confused by that though, how could you see the curve? in order for that to happen, the earth had to be a cylinder. probably misunderstanding something here
@@existenceispain_geekthesirenit's a sphere, and you still see the curvature of spheres, it's just a bit different than a cilinder because it not only curves to the side, but also away from you. take a soccer ball as an example and look at it from really close, you still see the curvature. The concord gets high enough that you can see that curve of the earth.
@@AL-fl4jk yyyyesss? it would still look flat, just lower down. do they mean as in, like, a circle below you? not the horizon curving? because that would make no sense
The Concord had a second noisy characteristic. At takeoff, it was three or four times louder than any other plane. From a house in Somerville, Mass,, where you never hear the planes taking off and landing at Logan, The morning of the Concord's grand tour before beginning service,, the roar as it headed down he runway , even as far away as Davis Square, was stunning !! It sounded like I was standing at the end of the runway, not six miles away in town. Loud, really loud.
I lived in Manassas Virginia when the Concorde landed at Dulles IAD, and it was remarkably loud. A jumbo jet landed close in time, providing a clear comparison in volume. I remember the discussions in the news reports at the time, trying to downplay the issue of noise. My personal perception did not match the claimed volume then reported. It was a noisy beast.
That personal anecdote at the end got me tearing up in a public library...such a heart warming story. I love the optimistic note you put in all your videos Cleo :)
NASA propaganda is back how to get public funda for BANKING CARTEL BIS-MIF-FED power house super computer AI and more satelites. As always its for military complex and wars those organizations should not exist for their crime and fraud. For ever conquering aerospace without produce evidenc from the trip😂😂😂😂 what a shambolic scamers and stupid public gets on bord TAX money need quick!! Build new studio to fake until you make sent more satelites technological race.
NASA propaganda is back how to get public funda for BANKING CARTEL BIS-MIF-FED power house super computer AI and more satelites. As always its for military complex and wars those organizations should not exist for their crime and fraud. For ever conquering aerospace without produce evidenc from the trip😂😂😂😂 what a shambolic scamers and stupid public gets on bord TAX money need quick!! Build new studio to fake until you make sent more satelites technological race.
I think one of the reasons Cleo's videos are so great is because she approaches topics with a child-like curiosity that we all wished we still had, and through these videos we get to experience it for a while. Thank you so much
As a speed freak, I flew on it in 1992 and also travelled on the speed trains in Japan and China. From concorde, the height above sea level was more impressive than the actual speed.
That and fuel efficiency. The majority of fighter jets have to use afterburner to go faster than the speed of sound. This means it's only sustainable for a handful of minutes. While there ARE fighter jets that can "Super cruise" above the speed of sound without afterburner, its a very small but growing list.
1:50 A correction and an important clarification. 1) The fastest train, the maglev Chuo Shinkansen, operates at 505 km/h but has reached 603 km/h in testing. The fastest wheeled train was a French TGV that reached 575 km/h. 2) The speed of sound depends on the temperature of the of air. The colder it is, the lower the speed of sound is. At 20 °C the speed of sound in air is 1235.556 km/h. This is why if you divide the Concorde's top speed of 2172 km/h by Mach 2.04 you only get 1064.7 km/h: it travelled at just over twice the speed of sound, but it did so way up in the lower stratosphere where the air temperature is -56 °C.
About no. 2. Sound travels faster depending on density, not temperature, although temperature affects density . That is why everything is louder at night, as it gets colder the air becomes more dense. At the lower stratosphere the air is just not dense.
@@philiphartman2785 It is the other way around. "In gases, adiabatic compressibility is directly related to pressure through the heat capacity ratio (adiabatic index), while pressure and density are inversely related to the temperature and molecular weight, thus making only the completely independent properties of _temperature_ and _molecular structure_ important (heat capacity ratio may be determined by temperature and molecular structure, but simple molecular weight is not sufficient to determine it). Sound propagates faster in low molecular weight gases such as helium than it does in heavier gases such as xenon. For monatomic gases, the speed of sound is about 75% of the mean speed that the atoms move in that gas." The temperature of a gas is just the mean kinetic energy of the molecules/atoms, so the mean speed in a monoatomic gas defines its temperature (since the mass of every atom or molecule - depending on the element we are working with - is the same, the kinetic energy boils down to just their speed). Of course the atmosphere is not monatomic so the composition at a particular altitude also affects the speed of sound, but given how well mixed the atmosphere is - at least the parts of it we fly in - the difference it contributes is very very small. If the composition was _very_ different the speed of sound would also depend on its frequency. Some gases (eg. CO₂) cause acoustic dispersion (the equivalent in optics is light undergoing chromatic dispersion when it passes through a prism) and some do not (eg. N₂ and O₂).
@@NicksStuff They're both correct; the medium the sound is travelling through is effected by the density/elasticity and energy(temp/vibration) of the particles the medium is made up of. So temperature will affect it somewhat due to the higher energy in the particles allowing them to bump into eachother more rapidly spreading the noise. Density will also in turn affect the speed because the particles in the medium will also bump in to eachother faster if it's denser. This is why sound travels significantly faster through water, and solid objects, than through air, and doesn't travel at all in a vaccuum.
“How do we get these planes in production?” I mean, they already exist. But even if you mean making new ones, the point is clearly made that regulations and laws hold back super sonic travel, not engineering. “Nobody needs to travel that fast.” LOL clearly speaking for yourself, with no need to go any where. I travel around the world as a performer for different jobs, and reducing flight speed would improve quality of life and working efficiency for anyone who flies long distances, not “rich” people as you imagine.
Vote for Biden, because Trump will probably continue to defund NASA. (Disclaimer: I'm Canadian and can't vote for either.) Speaking to "they already exist"- well, they don't really. Yes, we have supersonic aircraft, but the fuel cost to move more than a couple of people and a dozen bombs faster than sound is exorbitant and prohibitive. Even the military stays subsonic most of the time, just because of the fuel needs. Even ignoring the regulations, just building a new Concorde would result in another plane that costs 12,000$ and a literal ton of fuel *per person* to make a round trip across the Atlantic. (So a round trip on the Concord for one passenger would be dumping 3 months worth of 2022 carbon emissions into the atmosphere in seven hours.) The planes that we can build *right now* are just not acceptable on either a monetary or environmental cost basis. So, there *is* a huge engineering challenge to solve, and the point of the video is that NASA is trying to solve at least part of it. As for the "only used by rich people" - Concorde definitely was that, especially for Air France after the "no overland supersonic flight" rules came in, simply because of the sheer cost of fuel. Ticket prices were insane. Whether new planes like Boom's end up that way will depend on how much the aircraft cost to build and operate, really. If an airline can offer seats on a supersonic plane for similar prices to a subsonic one, then supersonic aircraft could easily replace subsonic on all long-haul routes. And the truth is none of us have anything approaching enough information to judge how much the tickets are likely to cost.
So I'm Canadian, but I've been living in Taiwan for going on 20 years now. I try to get home to visit my family and friends every year or two, but travelling from Taipei to Ottawa and back again SUUUUUCKS. Cutting that travel time in half would be an absolute gamechanger. I cannot wait for this technology to be available to schmucks like me!
I have been on the Concorde. In the cockpit as well. It was diverted from JFK due to traffic and one of the few airports on the east coast that had a runway long enough for it to land was NAFEC at the Atlantic City airport. This was not a full plane but one that was returning to service. A friend of my mother's was the airport manager and so I got to go on the empty plane and see it. It was pretty amazing. 🙂
@@JasonGeoffrey People can't believe on anything nowadays, you do know that choosing to believe this is a lie without knowing it actually is just shows how deeply corrupted your mind is by social media ? anyways i hope you have a better day cause holy shit i could not live thinking everyone in the internet is lying 100% of the time.
You need to check the syntax of your statement. Do you know what syntax is? Check your errant reply and come back with something structured in the correct way, then I will believe you are not a bot. Cheers. Talk about a corrupt mind, have a look at your own, maybe your mind is not so much corrupted but uneducated to the point that you can't even construct a correct sentence, let alone comprehend it!@@DrakyHRT
@@JasonGeoffreyit's a big world out there with people doing all kinds of little things and great things. Unfortunately, you have to leave your basement to experience them.
Cleo, it is very important to add that Gulftream Aerospace, a US based company, had partnered with NASA to develop Quiet Spike. This led to the aircraft you are looking at in this video. This has been in development since around 2006.
And Lockheed Martin is the primary contractor on the X-59. NASA hasn’t really done anything in the development of the aircraft other than outline requirements.
I worked in Twickenham near Heathrow Airport in the 1990's. Concorde flew twice daily to JFK, London. The first left at 10.30 each morning, flying directly overhead. What an utterly beautiful plane it was in flight. Like nothing else on Earth.
I used to work at a company called Fieldtech that was on the old Bath Road just outside the LHR perimeter - when Concorde was taking off on 28R (yeah, it was 28R then, which gives you an idea how long ago this was) you could go into the car park and watch the takeoff. At the right time of the year, you could also see the shock diamonds in the exhaust. Sadly, despite seeing it so many times I only got to fly on it once.
"Like nothing else on Earth" I'm guessing, you haven't seen an SR-71 take off or land have seen an F-15 accelerate vertically? Now THOSE are breathtaking!
Contrary to what they say, the governments love burning fuel, you don't have to look too far to see what I mean, outsourcing manufacturing to China to freight everything in on ships, around the clock military exercises on the ground and in the air and at sea....all burning millions of gallons of fuel a day, they love it. The Concorde had engines that were much more fuel efficient and faster which meant that if that tech caught on and was able to become mainstream, there would be a lot less demand for kerosene (jet a1) and they didn't want that.@@livenfree
Sometime the entertaining personality can be overbearing/contrived. _"just stick to the facts"_ motif then enters. Not implying it's here. I don't need a kids friendly TV video.
Yeah REALLY misplaced excitement on THIS topic because the only people that would benefit from this is billionaires who buy their own private jets. No airliner wants these because the tickets will cost too much because the cost to build and operate supersonic planes is STILL a lot more expensive and solving a problem with a sonic boom, about the only thing she talked about doesn't solve the economics of supersonic flight, or the inefficiency compared to the standard jet engines that are very large which are about to get even more efficient which is what the airlines need. This started out as a project between Boeing and NASA (the US govts. way to sneak in subsidies for the R&D), but Boeing has no customers for a supersonic plane and instead have customers for more fuel efficient engines and Boeing has publicly said they aren't going to develop a new plane until next decade, and this coincides with engines being ready that can replace what they use now.
@@johndoh5182 Exactly, makes absolutely no sense to bring this technology back in todays world with the environmental issues that we are already facing
@@johndoh5182 Private jet flights are usually purchased individually, so if you can afford to buy one flight, you can probably also afford to pay for a supersonic flight that arrives in under half the time. It's a very niche market, but it's there. And for the rest of us, there's probably also a small market for same-day package delivery. I wouldn't expect a quieter supersonic jet to sell much better than the Boeing 717, but it's absolutely wrong that only billionaires who could afford to buy the jet outright would benefit from it. As for Boeing, this project isn't a supersonic version of the 787 or even 737. It's being built by Lockheed, and a production version would compete with Gulfstream, Cessna, etc.
"Hmmmm... how can I buy more LEGO sets, yet write them off as a business expense? A-HA!" 😂 Great video, as usual. Thanks for covering this! (Also, I love the symmetry of you carrying your granpa's NASA pin, then you getting one of your own. I'm sure he's looking down and smiling.)
I worked at Cessna from 1999 to 2014. There ALREADY EXITS the potential for supersonic passenger flights in the US. Your flight covers a longer distance, over the ocean. Examples: Miami to NYC, but curving out over the Atlantic. Also, San Diego to Vancover (over the Pacific) Lastly, longer transoceanic routes. The problem is the engines needed for supersonic flight are VERY loud (low bypass ratio). The exhaust gases have to be capable of greater speed than the airframe. They are loud (DEAFENING) on takeoff.
As a Brit who loved his aircraft, I was there at Heathrow when Concorde was officially retired 20 years and just over a month ago. Seeing three of them landing consecutively, and also seeing the nearby traffic come to a standstill on this momentous day was quite something. Probably the last of a long line of iconic aircraft Britain built, though we ended up having to collaborate with the French when the costs spiralled.
@@PrograError Yes, but I was bemoaning the British aviation industry. Concorde was the last aircraft fully envisioned by us, things got expensive so we brought the French in, and since then Britain hasn't had a design all of its own.
One thing I do miss about not working in Mojave anymore is the sonic booms where I became something of an aficionado, able to recognize the type of aircraft from its boom. T-38s gave quick but low amplitude ba-bangs, F-15s were more authoritative, and the SR-71 gave good a strong one that was often just as staccato as the littler birds because it was so fast. But the Space Shuttle was the granddaddy of them all, providing a powerful slow-paced Ba-BOOM that could knock hardware off our stock shelves. Protecting the shelves from earthquakes to keep them from falling over by attaching struts to the roof made for excitement when the Shuttle bounced the roof like a trampoline. Once after showing some guests the Ez-Rocket in our flightline hangar, I saw a contrail coming our way quickly. "Hey, we might get a sonic boom in a couple minutes," I warned, and they scoffed until we got a nice boom right on cue. Another day at my desk I heard a good loud boom and struggled to identify it. Hmmm, it wasn't bombing on the range at China Lake to the north, nor was it from blasting at the cement plant's quarry three miles away to the west, and it didn't have the usual ba-boom of a sonic boom, what could it be? Then it came again and I realized it was just plain old thunder- it rained so rarely there that when I heard hoofbeats I always thought "Zebras!"
My uncle was a test pilot in WWII and had many amazing stories to tell, including crashing an early jet fighter and walking away. I still have one of his type logs. As a child, his first flights were in bush biplanes. Before he retired from the military, he tested a supersonic fighter. He would love this segment. Thanks!
😂what if after it is built, someone say that it came from self evolution? (Someone is a guy who think it is a bird just like owl of falcon, and say as owl came from evolution, this new bird (supersonic plane) came from evolution)😂😂 So, Lets agree that there's a creator that created us (human or the whole Life or living creatures). Quran, the ultimate guidance book that was revealed on Prophet Muhamad (PBUH) describes that god, named Allah and gives the final messages of Allah after his messages on earlier prophets like Jesus, Moses, Adam etc. Let's explore our creator, and why he created us, and what is after this life?
The Concord was terrifically inefficient at sub-sonic speeds due to its wing design. The swept-back design is optimal for supersonic travel, but not helpful when the vehicle is any slower than that. Some cool ideas have gone over wings that can move out and back, and even a really interesting single-wing rotating design that throws symmetry out the window. I'm very excited to see the wacky wild planes of the future.
the sonic boom is not the only problem. you also have very high fuel consumption due to the nature of the engines. a concorde consumed more than 4 times as much fuel per passenger (relative to distance, not flight time) than a 747. that is one reason why concorde tickets were so prohibitively expensive. edit: and let's not forget the noise which is a direct result of the very high exhaust speed required for supersonic flight. there's not much they can do about that.
The supersonic jet companies are partially bankrolled by Saudi Aramco as a means of inflating oil demand. The high fuel consumption they can't avoid is a feature, not a bug.
@@cestycinou The X-59 is intended to reduce _sonic boom_ noise, not engine noise. Like the OP said, there's not much they can do about that. Concorde used to take off and climb out over my home in south-west London and it was _incredibly_ loud; vastly louder than any other airliner.
After learning that the Saudi Arabian government is including supersonic airliners among its proposals to drive up fossil fuel demand via influence campaigns, I'm very skeptical of any sudden organized effort to bring them back. Even this video popping up on my feed raises my hackles.
Try it bro, you can ride the highest speed train for the first time in Southeast Asia. The highest speed is 350 kilometers per hour, the Indonesian fast train Jakarta - Bandung, the newest, most sophisticated in Southeast Asia, the first,.the way to the beautiful and comfortable and beautiful and cool and cool city of Bandung, thank you sis and Ka..*,
Try it bro, you can ride the highest speed train for the first time in Southeast Asia. The highest speed is 350 kilometers per hour, the Indonesian fast train Jakarta - Bandung, the newest, most sophisticated in Southeast Asia, the first,.the way to the beautiful and comfortable and beautiful and cool and cool city of Bandung, thank you sis and Ka..*,
I lived in Alameda California from 1986 - 1989. My apartment was about 3-4 miles from the Oakland airport. The Concord would occasionally fly out of that airport. It had a very distinctive sound from all the other aircraft, so much so that I would look over to the airport if I heard that sound. I saw it 2-3 times. It was very impressive looking. It was easy to distinguish from other aircraft entering or leaving the airport because the nose cone was angled down during takeoff and landing. Incidentally, the Oakland airport was the last airport from where Amelia Earhart (American aviation pioneer and first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean) took off on her fateful flight, never to be seen again. In 1935, Earhart became the first person to fly solo from Hawaii to California.
Great stuff but what made it for me was your family connection. You now have something to pass on to Your kids just like your father did how cool😎😎😎❤️❤️❤️
A rarely mentioned reason for the retirement of the Concorde is that while it became profitable, it wasn't *as* profitable as selling first class tickets on a jumbo jet. So airlines would rather have those same high paying customers fly first class on a regular flight than fly the Concorde.
@@phillipbailey70 That was a stunt by Virgin. Airbus, who provided the necessary parts and maintenance for continued type approval, had made it quite clear how much it would have cost Virgin to continue running it as a single operator. They were never serious and was just a typical bit of Branson poking BA with a stick.
@@phillipbailey70 Well, only from industry anecdotes, which are all in the public domain. But it was never going to work and Branson must have known that. He's not stupid. For two reasons. 1. The costs of continuing maintenance and parts production by Airbus was considered too expensive by British Airways. Virgin is/was a much smaller airline and simply wouldn't have been able to afford it. 2. British Airways was never going to sell its fleet of Concordes for £1 each to one of its major transatlantic competitors. There were some other reasons and no doubt some political pressure on Airbus by Air France. But in any event, Branson knew he would never get them but carried on his lobbying as a marketing stunt portraying Virgin as the plucky outsider being hard done by just trying to fly the flag.
Flying on a Concord from London to New York was the highlight of my life during the 90's with some celebrities and well known personality lucky enough to be one of them flying in a very tight space and narrow isle plane. Inside its very calm you'll never notice that you're riding on the fastest plane on earth. I'm so proud and delighted being on that flight with my former boss and few people working for him. I was so excited and extatic about the experience. I will never forget this fond memory of mine till my last breath on this planet.😂😂😂
"fastest plane on earth" Not even close! Maybe the fastest commercial plane. Many fighter jets were faster (Mach 2.2- 2.4 at top speed) not to mention the SR-71 Blackbird spyplane.
I'm a military aviation geek, and I'm SUPER jealous that you got to visit the actual Skunkworks compound! I've been fascinated with their work ever since I read the book about how they got started back in the day. This video was awesome!
@@joshweissert8085 Right?! I know it was only for so long and only in one part of the facility, but still. I wonder how long it took them to get clearance, lol.
@@joshweissert8085 Being allowed to see the plane is cool enough and I'm sure that no matter where it is, it'd require all sorts of hoops to jump through to actually see it. But for it to be at the Skunk Works? Feels like that should be impossible.
This was wonderful. I used to do a lot of public speaking on going through the problems of life and comparing it with breaking the sound barrier. I was given a ride through the sound barrier in a Kansas Air National Guard F-105 Thunderchief and later in an F-4 Phantom. I later wrote a paper titled, “Faster Than A Speeding Bullet.” Your video brought back some wonderful memories. Thanks for posting!
Try it bro, you can ride the highest speed train for the first time in Southeast Asia. The highest speed is 350 kilometers per hour, the Indonesian fast train Jakarta - Bandung, the newest, most sophisticated in Southeast Asia, the first,.the way to the beautiful and comfortable and beautiful and cool and cool city of Bandung, thank you sis and Ka..*,
Try it bro, you can ride the highest speed train for the first time in Southeast Asia. The highest speed is 350 kilometers per hour, the Indonesian fast train Jakarta - Bandung, the newest, most sophisticated in Southeast Asia, the first,.the way to the beautiful and comfortable and beautiful and cool and cool city of Bandung, thank you sis and Ka..*,
I'm a very proud child of an Aerospace engineer that worked on the Concorde in the UK. We've got one of them at our local airport now. We even had a Christmas work do in its hanger a few years back.
I've been to see the Concorde at the Edinburgh Museum of Flight, truly spectacular plane, far ahead of its time and a colossal shame that they stopped flying.
I remember a sonic boom over my house in North Seattle when I was a kid. Everyone in the neighborhood was talking about it. I’ve been fascinated with supersonic flight ever since. Thanks for doing this video, and thanks for NASA allowing you to do it. I am hoping that they are successful, and all they do with this. Amazing stuff… Thank you.
Growing up in Sacramento in the 60's we had Mather & McClellan as well as Beale and Travis AFB's all within 50 miles. Sonic booms were fairly common. I kind of missed them when they stopped.
Ditto for me growing up in New Jersey in the early 50s. Hard to remember how often I heard the 💥 boom 💥. But, I have a distinct memory of once hearing a sonic boom, looking up, and seeing a contrail. Excellent video. Thank you Cleo. Thank you NASA for this and all that you do to inspire us 👍.
Believe me if you are seeing it, they have long been in operation. Second, they are already on the next generations of those aircraft at the point that you saw the first!
I don't really see it becoming more environmentally friendly than conventional planes because air drag grows exponentially with more speed, but we'll see
It shouldn't. Supersonic flight will pollute drastically more, both because more energy needed, therefore higher fuel consumption, and because it needs to fly higher for lower drag, where the same emission has bigger and longer lasting effect. Going faster, higher, means specialized very expensive low capacity planes. Therefore, prices and per person fuel consumption will be incredibly high. Even if it's quiet, what does it really achieve? In what situation is this really needed or best solution? Can this be ethical? I would argue that even if airlines make it profitable, this only ever be a toy for the rich, on the environment's dime.
The wealthiest 1% of humanity are responsible for twice the emissions of the poorest 50% of humanity. Introducing a supersonic aircraft again for the wealthiest only increases this problem. Furthermore, it looks like that NASA is spending public money for making something only a small group of people will benefit from.
The high fuel cost was the main reason why the concorde program was cancelled. So I guess, with new technological advancements they can make it more efficient, but never more efficient than normal commercial flights. It is funny to think how some things were more advanced in life when I was younger :D
I flew the concord in the 80s. France to Washington in 3 1/2 hours. Flying home to Austin took over 4 hours. I was allowed to visit with the pilots and learn more about how it flew. Amazing experience!
Try it bro, you can ride the highest speed train for the first time in Southeast Asia. The highest speed is 350 kilometers per hour, the Indonesian fast train Jakarta - Bandung, the newest, most sophisticated in Southeast Asia, the first,.the way to the beautiful and comfortable and beautiful and cool and cool city of Bandung, thank you sis and Ka..*,
Try it bro, you can ride the highest speed train for the first time in Southeast Asia. The highest speed is 350 kilometers per hour, the Indonesian fast train Jakarta - Bandung, the newest, most sophisticated in Southeast Asia, the first,.the way to the beautiful and comfortable and beautiful and cool and cool city of Bandung, thank you sis and Ka..*,
Aside from the sonic boom issue, the Concorde was incredibly loud at takeoff. The engines were just LOUD even at low speed, and it generated endless complaints from people living under its flight path near airports.
Yeah. That's because in order to have enough thrust to punch through the sound barrier, the engines needed AFTERBURNERS. If you've ever been behind a fighter jet at an air show with its afterburner turned on, you KNOW just how incredibly loud those things can get.
@@rogermwilcox I experienced my first airshow this summer. And the first close up afterburners. Even having earplugs in was almost not enough to be completely comfortable. I would imagine people who spend lots of hours in that sort of environment use double protection, plugs and muffs.
Jet engines in general have gotten quieter, though; that's a far more solvable problem for civilian companies. *This* plane is specifically targeting the boom problem, because NASA has the clout to get permit exceptions to the existing supersonic-specific regulations to do the necessary test flights.
Recently gave a speech on the Concorde and the history of supersonic transport for my college class. I had a really good time sharing my knowledge about the wonders of supersonic flight. I’m glad to see that many aviation organizations are working to bring supersonic travel back! (P.S: Loved the fact that you got the same Lego Concorde as I did!)
My Concorde story. In 1974, my father was stationed in Iceland, and that is where they did the test flights and design testing… so… I am one of the first Americans to ever see the Concorde. THat base had F4 fantoms and other supersonic jets and my father was maintenance officer crew chief at the airbase. Watching that plane launch, over and over, flying over the base, just amazing.
As a teenager growing up in Devon, U.K. we lived under Concorde's flight path when it flew to the U.S. We heard the sonic boom, usually in the late afternoon, two or three times a week. It was noticeable when outdoors but was certainly not loud enough to be disturbing, especially when indoors. I did not know, & am surprised to learn that the U.S. banned supersonic flight over land. Here's to NASA for trying again & good luck to them.
It’s not surprising the US banned it, it was a convenient excuse not to have the bluddy English & French showing off their fantastic invention. Protectionism at its finest.
I remember seeing it fly over Gloucester too. My parents eventually got to realise a dream by flying to New York on it. It was really small inside apparently.
@@sprint955st The Tu-144 first went supersonic on 5 June 1969, four months before Concorde, and on 26 May 1970 became the world's first commercial transport to exceed Mach 2.
@@sovietcitizen9450 Ah, yeas, concordski, the real time reverse engineering experiment that went on to became an abject failure and yet another monument of the fragile pride and willingness to cut corners that seems to be ever present in the leading types of homo sovieticus. On the up side, it killed less people than it had the potential to take out.
@@sovietcitizen9450 The Tu-144 flew passengers for less than a year before it was taken out of passenger service, due to reliability issues and crashes.
A lesser known reason of why Concorde failed is that the tickets were so expensive that the people flying on it expected to take off no matter what. So they needed to have an extra plane and crew on stand by for every flight, just in case there was a issue with the scheduled plane or crew. Delays were not tolerated
@@philsurteesagree. The secondary issue was supply chain. Because there weee so few flying AF and BA didn’t order enough spares to make it worth the vendors to make. Even w/o the Paris crash, it was going to fail.
One thing you didn't mention about the concord, it needs a lot more repair and upkeep than a normal plane. The rising fuel cost (it uses maybe 10 times as much fuel per passenger as a regular jet), and the crash were both key factors, but another, that's rarely talked about is evey few flights back and forth, the plane needed a full overhaul. Not just new oil, but parts needed adjustment and sometimes replacement. It became to hard to keep them ready to fly that they airlines started to carry a spare concord in each airport for when service was needed. Now, I get it. The concord was cool. Fuel usage was through the roof, but we live in a world today where the superrich might be willing to pay $15,000 per ticket, so we could see this return. I like the technology. I think a healthy fuel tax would be prudent too, because we can't ignore high fuel users when trying to address climate change. But I understand why Airlines would be interested. Superfast travel and higher flight altitude are cool. People are going to want this, and I think we probably will see a return of supersonic travel in the coming years/next decade or so.
To get the technology required, we may need to burn more fuel at first, but who knows? It all contributes to an increased knowledge base. A new jet engine supplier has pitched an adaptive cycle engine for the F-35 fighter that would mean it could cruise above Mach 1, and use less fuel. We're causing Climate Change with the mass produced things all of us use every day, not really these experimental things.
@@tsubadaikhan6332 "but who knows?" Well, the best knowledge can't beat the laws of physics. It is absurd to assume that we can get technology that is so demanding so efficient, that it doesn't really matter. And while there's truth into the issue of mass production, just on the contrary the fraction of emissions created by the wealthiest percent is rising. The lesser wealthy half of the world population causes less than 10% of emissions.
The U.S. would have had supersonic passenger aircraft had the Boeing 2707 project not been cancelled back in the late 1960s. Lockheed also had a proposed supersonic aircraft which didnt even get as far as the 2707. At that time, the climate pseudoscientists were freaking out about "the coming ice age" before switching to the myth of "global warming".....they have zero credibility.
Ugh, it's tedious to hear uninformed people talk negatively about Concorde. - She only used approximately 4 times the amount of aviation fuel as a thirsty 747 to cross the Atlantic. - Every commercial aircraft in service today goes through regular checks and overhauls to keep them airworthy. - And no, there was not an extra Concorde sitting in each airport as a spare parts plane. Afterall, exactly how many Concordes do you think were made? Why spout nonsense about a subject you clearly have no knowlegde of? Twonk!
OK, First, I said "Maybe 10 times" - which was clearly an estimate (maybe) . . . and I looked it up. It's 5.5 times more fuel per passenger than a 747 (not 4 times). 2nd, you missed the point about having a spare plane - it's not for "parts". Yes, every plane gets checked frequently, but the concords were deemed unfit to fly and in need of repair a hek of a lot more often. THAT'S why they had a spare plane at every airport, not for parts but as an alternate plane, if the one that landed a few hours ago wasn't ready for it's next scheduled flight. It was the only way to prevent long delays at takeoff. So, you're wrong. I invite corrections, but you're wrong about many things and your tone was uncalled for. So, learn somethign first, and then speak with respect. @@michaelc3977
1. It would have been neat to see how much time it was taking you to build the Lego Concorde. 2. It would have been interesting to know more about the crash and other failures of the Concorde.
What an opportunity! Love that these companies are starting to trust you more and more. Your videos are so optimistic, how could they not!? I'm sure your grandfather would be so proud of what you're doing, what a lovely full circle moment ❤
Would love a deep dive on the fuel costs and economics of this. We are all excited about speed, but accessibility is another question perhaps more challenging than the sonic boom.
@@Trinitybolduan That's the fear right. Normal airliner tickets are already verging on unaffordable for many these days. Lets hope the air industry can figure their shit out.
But none of that is COOL. Said another way: The economics and accessibility of supersonic air travel doesn’t make for good RUclips. Recall that in today’s dollars, Concorde travel was $15,000+. Whatever NASA is working on won’t change the economics, and who wants to hear “But YOU will never experience it”?
I think that’s great that NASA is doing this, I hope they share this information with Airbus so we have a rollout much faster than we would with Boeing. I’m 62 and if Boeing has anything to do with it, we won’t see this aircraft manifest itself until 2040.
oh, Cleo, I love your optimistic stories! I am a retired scientist who had wanted to fly since I was ten and finally got my pilot's license in my 50's and bought a plane. This story about bringing back supersonic flight revives the 10 year old in me that loves the idea of flying and stretching the limits. Keep up the good work, you are awesome!
What's less known is how important the engines were, they were developed by Rolls Royce and were highly efficient at maintaining high thrust when supersonic, the Russian 'concordski' (despite having stolen the plans of the UK engine) had to have the engine in afterburner mode the whole time with the result of very high fuel consumption, meaning the 'concordski' had less then half the range of the Concorde despite having bigger tanks.
A friend worked at Rolls Royce for a couple of years. One of the old timers told stories about engineers having to be very careful about document security. All the good stuff was locked away every night. The not so good stuff was left on desks for the Russians.
I remeber watching Concorde take off from Heathrow in the early 1980's from the then roadside alongside the runway. It was just spectacular, but the sound of those four Olympus Gas turbines at full thrust was just out of this world. It is a sound like no other aircraft has ever produced-and probably never will again, as more quiet and efficient engines will be required for this project to "Take off" !! (Fun fact : HMS Ark Royal was powered by Olympus Gas Turbines -marine variant of course !!)
1:57 What? 460km/h for the fastest train? Where did you get this number? The French TGV speed record is at 574,8 km/h, which is the fastest on steel rails, and the Japanese Maglev reached 603 km/h!
@@HowDoYouEatPie Generally when someone is talking about maglev technology they refer to high speed rail as a group, not very precise but not exactly incorrect
@@HowDoYouEatPie The Japanese Maglev is not considered a fully vetted means of transport (Beta stage lol) nor a commercial means of transportation yet. They only do lotteries I believe once a year for people to ride its very short piece of track. It is far from being considered a commercial or 100% human-rated means of transportation.
Apologies. I commented the exact same thing before reading your comment. As someone else said, it's an American thing, as they struggle with proper English.
Cool... Too bad language is fluid and belongs communities and it's speakers everywhere, not just in the UK. Also, Corporate policies shouldn't dictate grammatical accuracy since LEGO's primary interest is in protecting their trademarks. People will say what they will say. Language is fluid. We all understood her meaning so it seems good enough for a RUclips video. 👍
And I've officially subscribed. I'm really glad I accidently came across your channel Cleo. You're going places and doing the stuff in the world I wish I had the privilege to do right now, and for that I salute you.
Cleo, I can only tell you this: your channel, your work, your content, are the reason a platform like RUclips makes sense. You are one of the best content creators out there, and every praise is well deserved. Keep up the great work.
You should totally do more NASA-based videos! So many cool projects that fit into the Huge If True category that we (at NASA) could use some help getting the word out - you should pick one from each center :)
0:57 "what happened to supersonic planes?" Well, part of that is easy: The US banned the Concorde from flying the most obvious airports, like LAX. Had it maintained access to the true long distance ( = real time saving (from CDG and LHR)), there would have been enough customers to keep it going. The seemingly perpetual US fear of competion killed it. My parents flew it and I still have the original pen, notebook and other stuff that came with the ticket. Now flame me 😉
w.e.f.: 15-minute city stay there or else you will own nothing you will have no privacy you will eat indigestible bugs you will be happy or else you're all just useless eaters. / sarcasm, because it's true. duh
Pretty sure that's the Palmdale Lockheed/Skunkworks facility. I live a ten minute drive away. I drive past it pretty regularly while driving down Sierra Hwy between Lancaster and Palmdale. Pretty cool seeing it on a fairly large RUclips channel. Edit - Being so close to Edwards AFB as well, we get sonic booms pretty regularly. Even after more than 30yrs of exposure, they still scare the ever living crap outta me. I could see how some people would want to avoid living below the flight path of a super sonic aircraft at all costs. Especially once they're flying regularly.
Technically, this is fasciniating. But the force of air resistance is directly proportional to the square of the object's speed through the air. Meaning if you double the speed of an aircraft, the air resistance will increase fourfold. So fuel price becomes a huge issue, making a widespread adoption of supersonic flight unlikely.
And then the issue becomes... well then what's the difference between a supersonic plane and a regular passenger plane using the efficiency upgrades to then make their flights cheaper? No matter what advances they make, it can be put on normal planes to make supersonic flight look unappealing.
@@ivancosta so, the wealthy, just like the original concorde? why should i care, then? even if this thing makes it to commercial service (it will not) it'll just be another toy for the rich and the rest of us will still be crammed into basic economy on 12 hour flights
Sadly, even if NASA completed the design today, it would still take at least 20 years until the first commercial example could roll off the line. Likely though, it would never happen since there simply is not a commercial incentive to do it. I got to fly on the Concord as a boy. I cannot recall any feeling of speed. The main thing I remember was that it was cramped and very, very loud inside. Still, it was great to fly to London in less than 7 hours.
The Concord is probably an example of transitional technology. It makes travel marginally better, but at extreme cost and inconvenience. Most likely by the time we figure out how to mitigate the problem of a sonic boom we'll have suborbital commercial flights that completely side step the problem by being in the zone where the air is virtually non-existent and so sound is not an issue. It'll still be expensive and impractical for all but the super rich, but that's who Concord was for anyway.
@@QuintusAntonious You're likely right. The military applications would be more interesting from an actual application point of view. I fly pretty often to the US and Asia and always fly business class. Sometimes first, depending on the airline, but generally the difference in price is not inline with the difference in experience. While it would be nice to get there a lot faster, I don't imagine I would be willing to pay 5 times as much to save a few hours. There may be some people who are willing, but I doubt there is anywhere near the market for this service that Boom thinks there is.
One thing Im sad you didnt talk about was the fuel consumption, because the problem with the supersonic flight is not only the noise but also the insane fuel usage that removes these airplanes from being competitive. The airlines really do care a lot about fuel as even a few percentages of less fuel consumption can increase the revenue of the company... Did NASA talk about that in any way or is that just a problem for later? (If Im wrong and supersonic flight is absolutly fuel efficient please correct me)
Its not as fuel efficient as normal jets, but if they charge a lot more, they can be profitable. Businesses/rich people can afford it, not everyday joes going for holiday.
Fuel consumption wasn't as bad as you think. Concorde only used about 4 times the amount of aviation fuel as a 747 to cross the Atlantic. Take-off was where she was thirtsy. The engines were incredibly efficient at the speeds she achieved and she had to be throttled back when she reached mach 2.0 because she wanted to keep accelerating.
Not for the general public......far to expensive.....only for the rich. The possibility of the plane going into service...near zero. The development cost of the Concord SST was paid by the poor taxpayers. The poor people paying for toys of the rich.
1991 I was flying back to the proper hemisphere, leaving Heathrow, and as we were taxi-ing to our takeoff mark, the pilot said "Passengers on the left of the aircraft, will be able to see one of the Concorde aircraft out of their window. We are leaving the ground in a few moments, heading to JFK. Concorde will be leaving in an hour, and will be on the ground in New York for two hours before we are. That is good, but then the passengers are paying three thousand pounds each for the trip".
Flying on Concorde was one of the most memorable experiences of my life. Not sure I'll manage another supersonic flight on one of the coming aircraft, but I live in hope!
Well done Cleo, and particularly well explained! While I can't compete with supersonic, I can show you the Goddard Space Flight Center.... we have lots of cool stuff.
The craziest fact about the concorde was that it went so fast that friction from air caused it to heat up and cause a ton of thermal expansion that they had to engineer the plane around.
And a resultant fun fact was that "cold" in the hangar it leaked fluids like a 60's british motorbike, and stood there with numerous drip trays placed under it.
Cleo, this is your best episode yet. I’m old enough to remember sonic booms when were outside at recess. The moment the boom was heard, every little kid stopped what they were doing and looked up trying to find the plane. Great memory from my childhood. Thanks.
I had no intention of watching it just came up but I thought give it a view. Fascinating, what a great video, of course I have subscribed and will be going through your back catalogue. I never flew Concorde but my partner Irene did on many occasions. Thank you Cleo, as I am approaching 80 it is probably doubtful I will see the next version but who knows lol?
Your grandfather was one of those slide rule guys that NASA's foundation is built on. They did what most people said was impossible or at least very difficult at the time. The future looks exciting for NASA and our country once again. I remember the sonic booms in the 60's when I was a kid and all of those were from military aircraft. It will be nice to see air transportation returning to mach speeds in the future.
Wow! What a jerk response. My Dad was a slide rule engineer for NASA and I'm proud. He also helped save Apollo 13. Crew cut WWII pilot of B-17. Old school
What I admire the most is those guys is they had to think. Yeah that piece of plastic was an aid, but you had to put the decimals in the right place and know all the constants and you did most of it in your head. In there case they HAD to be right most of the time.
@7:20 Concorde DIDN'T actually have gas-guzzling engines. They were actually about the most efficient aeroengines ever fitted to any commercial airframe, ever. The reason was they got extra compression from the air inlets, as well as from the compressor sections, so they ran extremely hot and so thermodynamic efficiency was world-beating. At low speeds they were still inefficient, but Concorde mostly flew at M2. And the aircraft as a whole was relatively inefficient, but that's because it was a heavy plane, supersonic, and a delta wing. Any new plane can't be expected to become magically more efficient. They'll be better, but not nearly as efficient as subsonic aircraft.
@@MrCaiobrz Nah, they were just turbojets. Actually rockets are jet engines, and not the other way around, because they're propelled by jet propulsion.
This is very interesting. Mainly because where i live (Poland) there was information on the news that they found microscopic cracks on the wings, so the plane was grounded for investigation of the problem. After few monts there was new info that they won't fly anymore because they can't pinpoint the source of the problem and it could be to dangerous to keep them flying.
In addition to the noise, the sonic boom created a sound wave (just like thunder) that would cause vibrations that rattled windows, etc. As a child in the ‘60’s on the east coast we would occasionally hear and feel the effects of sonic booms created by military aircraft.
I got to see the Concorde take off out of NYC and hear the sonic booms and it was truly impressive! It was truly depressing when they got retired and felt like we went backwards as far as aviation goes !
Cleo, one of your many gifts is not only do you pose the learned, sophisticated questions which a trained scientist can ask, but you're also able to articulate the simple queries which have been hanging around in the consciousness of countless shy, modest mortals - like: whatever happened to supersonic airliners? Why oh why did they ... disappear? Will we ever see their like again? As always, a brilliant video. Showcasing your greatest gift: fascinating, full, entertaining answers.
You know, the sonic boom is only one of the problems. Fuel consumption is probably the single biggest problem that needs solving. Air resistance goes up with speed by square and the only way we know to overcome whatever air resistance we cannot eliminate entirely is by adding power - which needs fuel.
the higher up you fly, the less air resistance there is. fuel economy would surely be worse than normal jets, but engines have come A LONG way since concordes were used last time.
"Air resistance goes up with speed by square" is over simplified. The drag coefficient does not remain constant from subsonic to mach 2. The drag coefficient skyrockets as you approach the speed of sound (which is why commercial jets don't fly closer to mach 1), then tapers off significantly as you head towards mach 2.
The other way that "air resistance goes up by the square of the speed" is over-simplified is that most of the drag on an aircraft comes from the wings generating lift -- and for a constant coefficient of lift, the lift also goes up by the square of the speed. More generally, the lift force and the drag force are (very roughly) proportional. Since the amount of lift force you need is constant, the associated drag force is also roughly constant. If that weren't true, commercial jets would fly a lot slower than they already do.
This was really cool and I've been fascinated with flight forever, but that moment at the end with your grandfather's NASA pin and your own new one was so perfect 🥲
Flying from London to New York on Concorde, with the difference in time zones, and Concorde travelling faster than the Earth's rotation, you landed before you took off!
Kudos to NASA for letting this video happen - I think this shows them at their best ..
I think doors would open for her everywhere...
If NASA gets this right, I’m sure this video will blow up in a decade and if it does, it will be well deserved Cleo!
Hi me and anyone else watching this in many years!
not gonna happen
@@TobyIKanoby not with an attitude like that 🤭
I hope so
i mean there are many videos and articles done years ago about this topic
My Concorde story:
I flew a Cessna 172 into JFK twice about 30 years ago. On one of those flights while on base leg to 13R, I heard a controller instruct an Air France Concorde to hold short for landing traffic. Sure enough, there it was on the taxiway at one o'clock. I was mildly amused by the thought of all those very fast rich people waiting an extra minute for me to land my little four banger. I did my best to make it short and quick, using about one-tenth of the runway to hop off to the GA terminal on the left. Just courtesy. Fond memory.
one day i was at hatton cross station when a concorde took off from runway 09R, passing very close to hatton cross station. the engine noise (well, technically it was the jet noise) triggered many car alarms. the concorde left a brown trail of nitrous oxides. i have never seen such a trail behind any other airliner.
another time, also at hatton cross, it was dark so i could see that the exhaust gas was so hot it was actually glowing during takeoff and climbout. i don't remember seeing mach diamonds, though.
there is a museum in germany where they have a concorde and a tupolev 144. right next to each other.
@Repent-and-believe-in-Jesus And WTF does that religious bullshit have to do with anything? Are you really ok with being part of a cult that lies to you all the time?
I remember as a kid going to rockaway Beach in the summers and seeing the Concord screaming into JFK in the afternoons.
Loved that story, thanks for sharing! On my way to get my PPL-A, maybe I'll be like you in the future, with a supersonic NASA jet waiting for me on the tarmac :)
@@its_chris_cross postscript: the Port Authority police drove me in their van to the airline terminal where we picked up my passenger. They flipped on the flashing cop lights to get his attention. Beyond VIP treatment. I guess I was an oddity that day.
Good luck with your flying career.
0:36 flat earthers are triggered.
I'm confused by that though, how could you see the curve? in order for that to happen, the earth had to be a cylinder. probably misunderstanding something here
@@existenceispain_geekthesirenit's a sphere, and you still see the curvature of spheres, it's just a bit different than a cilinder because it not only curves to the side, but also away from you. take a soccer ball as an example and look at it from really close, you still see the curvature. The concord gets high enough that you can see that curve of the earth.
What if it appeares as curved through the dimensional lense of spacetime I'm just really bored
@@existenceispain_geekthesirenaltitude. The further away you get from something the more of it you can see
@@AL-fl4jk yyyyesss? it would still look flat, just lower down. do they mean as in, like, a circle below you? not the horizon curving? because that would make no sense
The Concord had a second noisy characteristic. At takeoff, it was three or four times louder than any other plane. From a house in Somerville, Mass,, where you never hear the planes taking off and landing at Logan, The morning of the Concord's grand tour before beginning service,, the roar as it headed down he runway , even as far away as Davis Square, was stunning !! It sounded like I was standing at the end of the runway, not six miles away in town. Loud, really loud.
Wow, that's wild. Would be a problem ongoingly, yeah.
I lived in Manassas Virginia when the Concorde landed at Dulles IAD, and it was remarkably loud. A jumbo jet landed close in time, providing a clear comparison in volume. I remember the discussions in the news reports at the time, trying to downplay the issue of noise. My personal perception did not match the claimed volume then reported. It was a noisy beast.
Can someone with tech knowledge tell us if this version has a more silent engine?
Well, it had to afterburn, so yeah.
My dad lived in a house that was part of the concord's fligt path, he said it was so loud the house would shake
That personal anecdote at the end got me tearing up in a public library...such a heart warming story.
I love the optimistic note you put in all your videos Cleo :)
+1
kind of grateful that I was in my kitchen, and NOT at work, for the same reason.
My condolences
NASA propaganda is back how to get public funda for BANKING CARTEL BIS-MIF-FED power house super computer AI and more satelites.
As always its for military complex and wars those organizations should not exist for their crime and fraud.
For ever conquering aerospace without produce evidenc from the trip😂😂😂😂 what a shambolic scamers and stupid public gets on bord TAX money need quick!!
Build new studio to fake until you make sent more satelites technological race.
NASA propaganda is back how to get public funda for BANKING CARTEL BIS-MIF-FED power house super computer AI and more satelites.
As always its for military complex and wars those organizations should not exist for their crime and fraud.
For ever conquering aerospace without produce evidenc from the trip😂😂😂😂 what a shambolic scamers and stupid public gets on bord TAX money need quick!!
Build new studio to fake until you make sent more satelites technological race.
I think one of the reasons Cleo's videos are so great is because she approaches topics with a child-like curiosity that we all wished we still had, and through these videos we get to experience it for a while. Thank you so much
The pure, anadulterated giddiness you can see her express is contagious 😊
doesnt hurt that shes drop dead gorgeous lol
Damn... I'm in my early 20s, at what age does the curiosity usually leaves us, and why? :( is this the system we're meant to live by?
@@JuanRamirez-zk9lt when the bills are due LOL
that part!
Is nobody gonna talk about how emotional it was at the end when she was talking about her grandfather that really was gonna make me cry
I got emotional at 13:20 . Imagining the pillows I could comfortably rest on while flying Concorde in the background.
I thought she might cry; I had a tear..
she's such a lovely lady. i cried.
I wasn't gonna say anything, but since you mentioned it: yeah, that was very touching!
As a speed freak, I flew on it in 1992 and also travelled on the speed trains in Japan and China. From concorde, the height above sea level was more impressive than the actual speed.
That and fuel efficiency. The majority of fighter jets have to use afterburner to go faster than the speed of sound. This means it's only sustainable for a handful of minutes. While there ARE fighter jets that can "Super cruise" above the speed of sound without afterburner, its a very small but growing list.
compared to a normal flight how high was it
@@regulardegular5 It cruised around 60k ft. Most planes were more like 30k
1:50 A correction and an important clarification.
1) The fastest train, the maglev Chuo Shinkansen, operates at 505 km/h but has reached 603 km/h in testing. The fastest wheeled train was a French TGV that reached 575 km/h.
2) The speed of sound depends on the temperature of the of air. The colder it is, the lower the speed of sound is. At 20 °C the speed of sound in air is 1235.556 km/h. This is why if you divide the Concorde's top speed of 2172 km/h by Mach 2.04 you only get 1064.7 km/h: it travelled at just over twice the speed of sound, but it did so way up in the lower stratosphere where the air temperature is -56 °C.
I thought those train speeds looked way too low for Japan.
About no. 2. Sound travels faster depending on density, not temperature, although temperature affects density . That is why everything is louder at night, as it gets colder the air becomes more dense. At the lower stratosphere the air is just not dense.
@@philiphartman2785 It is the other way around.
"In gases, adiabatic compressibility is directly related to pressure through the heat capacity ratio (adiabatic index), while pressure and density are inversely related to the temperature and molecular weight, thus making only the completely independent properties of _temperature_ and _molecular structure_ important (heat capacity ratio may be determined by temperature and molecular structure, but simple molecular weight is not sufficient to determine it).
Sound propagates faster in low molecular weight gases such as helium than it does in heavier gases such as xenon. For monatomic gases, the speed of sound is about 75% of the mean speed that the atoms move in that gas."
The temperature of a gas is just the mean kinetic energy of the molecules/atoms, so the mean speed in a monoatomic gas defines its temperature (since the mass of every atom or molecule - depending on the element we are working with - is the same, the kinetic energy boils down to just their speed).
Of course the atmosphere is not monatomic so the composition at a particular altitude also affects the speed of sound, but given how well mixed the atmosphere is - at least the parts of it we fly in - the difference it contributes is very very small. If the composition was _very_ different the speed of sound would also depend on its frequency. Some gases (eg. CO₂) cause acoustic dispersion (the equivalent in optics is light undergoing chromatic dispersion when it passes through a prism) and some do not (eg. N₂ and O₂).
@@philiphartman2785 It *is* the temperature, not the density. Pressure (which changes density) has no impact on the speed of sound in the air
@@NicksStuff They're both correct; the medium the sound is travelling through is effected by the density/elasticity and energy(temp/vibration) of the particles the medium is made up of.
So temperature will affect it somewhat due to the higher energy in the particles allowing them to bump into eachother more rapidly spreading the noise.
Density will also in turn affect the speed because the particles in the medium will also bump in to eachother faster if it's denser.
This is why sound travels significantly faster through water, and solid objects, than through air, and doesn't travel at all in a vaccuum.
3.5 hours from NYC to London? How do we get these planes in production faster? 👀
Nobody needs to travel that fast these days, it will only be used by "rich" people to drink coffee on the other side of the world
“How do we get these planes in production?” I mean, they already exist. But even if you mean making new ones, the point is clearly made that regulations and laws hold back super sonic travel, not engineering.
“Nobody needs to travel that fast.” LOL clearly speaking for yourself, with no need to go any where. I travel around the world as a performer for different jobs, and reducing flight speed would improve quality of life and working efficiency for anyone who flies long distances, not “rich” people as you imagine.
@@windubitably I hope you make an enormous amount of money because you’re going to need it to buy a ticket on this aircraft with its tiny payload
Vote for Biden, because Trump will probably continue to defund NASA. (Disclaimer: I'm Canadian and can't vote for either.)
Speaking to "they already exist"- well, they don't really. Yes, we have supersonic aircraft, but the fuel cost to move more than a couple of people and a dozen bombs faster than sound is exorbitant and prohibitive. Even the military stays subsonic most of the time, just because of the fuel needs. Even ignoring the regulations, just building a new Concorde would result in another plane that costs 12,000$ and a literal ton of fuel *per person* to make a round trip across the Atlantic. (So a round trip on the Concord for one passenger would be dumping 3 months worth of 2022 carbon emissions into the atmosphere in seven hours.) The planes that we can build *right now* are just not acceptable on either a monetary or environmental cost basis. So, there *is* a huge engineering challenge to solve, and the point of the video is that NASA is trying to solve at least part of it.
As for the "only used by rich people" - Concorde definitely was that, especially for Air France after the "no overland supersonic flight" rules came in, simply because of the sheer cost of fuel. Ticket prices were insane. Whether new planes like Boom's end up that way will depend on how much the aircraft cost to build and operate, really. If an airline can offer seats on a supersonic plane for similar prices to a subsonic one, then supersonic aircraft could easily replace subsonic on all long-haul routes. And the truth is none of us have anything approaching enough information to judge how much the tickets are likely to cost.
And faster than 3.5h also. Preferably 1.5h. 👍🏼
So I'm Canadian, but I've been living in Taiwan for going on 20 years now. I try to get home to visit my family and friends every year or two, but travelling from Taipei to Ottawa and back again SUUUUUCKS. Cutting that travel time in half would be an absolute gamechanger. I cannot wait for this technology to be available to schmucks like me!
I have been on the Concorde. In the cockpit as well. It was diverted from JFK due to traffic and one of the few airports on the east coast that had a runway long enough for it to land was NAFEC at the Atlantic City airport. This was not a full plane but one that was returning to service. A friend of my mother's was the airport manager and so I got to go on the empty plane and see it. It was pretty amazing. 🙂
Yeah sure matey, enjoy your dreams
@@JasonGeoffrey People can't believe on anything nowadays, you do know that choosing to believe this is a lie without knowing it actually is just shows how deeply corrupted your mind is by social media ? anyways i hope you have a better day cause holy shit i could not live thinking everyone in the internet is lying 100% of the time.
You need to check the syntax of your statement. Do you know what syntax is? Check your errant reply and come back with something structured in the correct way, then I will believe you are not a bot. Cheers. Talk about a corrupt mind, have a look at your own, maybe your mind is not so much corrupted but uneducated to the point that you can't even construct a correct sentence, let alone comprehend it!@@DrakyHRT
How deeply corrupted is your mind? lol Don't be a fewl your days are numbered@@DrakyHRT
@@JasonGeoffreyit's a big world out there with people doing all kinds of little things and great things. Unfortunately, you have to leave your basement to experience them.
I have an uncle who was lucky enough to ride the Concord multiple times. To this day he still talks about the view out the window. Great video Cleo!
I’m sure the people that believe the earth is flat will tell him he did not know what he was looking at . A round earth ! Hahaaha jk
Cleo, it is very important to add that Gulftream Aerospace, a US based company, had partnered with NASA to develop Quiet Spike. This led to the aircraft you are looking at in this video. This has been in development since around 2006.
And Lockheed Martin is the primary contractor on the X-59. NASA hasn’t really done anything in the development of the aircraft other than outline requirements.
how many billion was it ?
Just don’t let Boeing build it.
You've won the internet for the next 10 yrs! Lol so true
HEY!
be nice to Boeing
What did Boeing do?
I worked in Twickenham near Heathrow Airport in the 1990's. Concorde flew twice daily to JFK, London. The first left at 10.30 each morning, flying directly overhead. What an utterly beautiful plane it was in flight. Like nothing else on Earth.
I used to work at a company called Fieldtech that was on the old Bath Road just outside the LHR perimeter - when Concorde was taking off on 28R (yeah, it was 28R then, which gives you an idea how long ago this was) you could go into the car park and watch the takeoff. At the right time of the year, you could also see the shock diamonds in the exhaust. Sadly, despite seeing it so many times I only got to fly on it once.
Like nothing else on the flat earth lol, how long did it take to get there lovey? Please expand on this "utterly beautiful flight" mr yt bot lol
"Like nothing else on Earth" I'm guessing, you haven't seen an SR-71 take off or land have seen an F-15 accelerate vertically? Now THOSE are breathtaking!
I don't hear anyone complaining about the sonic booms. Why did the government?
Contrary to what they say, the governments love burning fuel, you don't have to look too far to see what I mean, outsourcing manufacturing to China to freight everything in on ships, around the clock military exercises on the ground and in the air and at sea....all burning millions of gallons of fuel a day, they love it. The Concorde had engines that were much more fuel efficient and faster which meant that if that tech caught on and was able to become mainstream, there would be a lot less demand for kerosene (jet a1) and they didn't want that.@@livenfree
I love how enthusiastic and excited you are about everything you talk about. Not every science communicator is like that
Sometime the entertaining personality can be overbearing/contrived. _"just stick to the facts"_ motif then enters. Not implying it's here. I don't need a kids friendly TV video.
Yeah REALLY misplaced excitement on THIS topic because the only people that would benefit from this is billionaires who buy their own private jets. No airliner wants these because the tickets will cost too much because the cost to build and operate supersonic planes is STILL a lot more expensive and solving a problem with a sonic boom, about the only thing she talked about doesn't solve the economics of supersonic flight, or the inefficiency compared to the standard jet engines that are very large which are about to get even more efficient which is what the airlines need.
This started out as a project between Boeing and NASA (the US govts. way to sneak in subsidies for the R&D), but Boeing has no customers for a supersonic plane and instead have customers for more fuel efficient engines and Boeing has publicly said they aren't going to develop a new plane until next decade, and this coincides with engines being ready that can replace what they use now.
@@johndoh5182 Exactly, makes absolutely no sense to bring this technology back in todays world with the environmental issues that we are already facing
@@johndoh5182 Private jet flights are usually purchased individually, so if you can afford to buy one flight, you can probably also afford to pay for a supersonic flight that arrives in under half the time. It's a very niche market, but it's there. And for the rest of us, there's probably also a small market for same-day package delivery. I wouldn't expect a quieter supersonic jet to sell much better than the Boeing 717, but it's absolutely wrong that only billionaires who could afford to buy the jet outright would benefit from it.
As for Boeing, this project isn't a supersonic version of the 787 or even 737. It's being built by Lockheed, and a production version would compete with Gulfstream, Cessna, etc.
Ditto
"Hmmmm... how can I buy more LEGO sets, yet write them off as a business expense? A-HA!" 😂 Great video, as usual. Thanks for covering this! (Also, I love the symmetry of you carrying your granpa's NASA pin, then you getting one of your own. I'm sure he's looking down and smiling.)
Looking for these comments 😂😂
Who says Legos are not a business expense
@@jackthorton10 FYI They are called LEGO, not LEGOS . But agree it's a great way to increase your collection.
Cleo is spoiled and fake.
@@blaynestaleypro?
I worked at Cessna from 1999 to 2014. There ALREADY EXITS the potential for supersonic passenger flights in the US. Your flight covers a longer distance, over the ocean. Examples: Miami to NYC, but curving out over the Atlantic. Also, San Diego to Vancover (over the Pacific) Lastly, longer transoceanic routes.
The problem is the engines needed for supersonic flight are VERY loud (low bypass ratio). The exhaust gases have to be capable of greater speed than the airframe. They are loud (DEAFENING) on takeoff.
As a Brit who loved his aircraft, I was there at Heathrow when Concorde was officially retired 20 years and just over a month ago. Seeing three of them landing consecutively, and also seeing the nearby traffic come to a standstill on this momentous day was quite something. Probably the last of a long line of iconic aircraft Britain built, though we ended up having to collaborate with the French when the costs spiralled.
That would be 20 years now! How time flies.
At least that became the foundation of Airbus, and A380. IIRC the Brits contributed the wings and the tail...
Concorde was retired 20 years ago, not 10.
@@CharlesTysonYerkesOfficial Quite right, thanks for catching that oversight.
@@PrograError Yes, but I was bemoaning the British aviation industry. Concorde was the last aircraft fully envisioned by us, things got expensive so we brought the French in, and since then Britain hasn't had a design all of its own.
One thing I do miss about not working in Mojave anymore is the sonic booms where I became something of an aficionado, able to recognize the type of aircraft from its boom. T-38s gave quick but low amplitude ba-bangs, F-15s were more authoritative, and the SR-71 gave good a strong one that was often just as staccato as the littler birds because it was so fast. But the Space Shuttle was the granddaddy of them all, providing a powerful slow-paced Ba-BOOM that could knock hardware off our stock shelves. Protecting the shelves from earthquakes to keep them from falling over by attaching struts to the roof made for excitement when the Shuttle bounced the roof like a trampoline.
Once after showing some guests the Ez-Rocket in our flightline hangar, I saw a contrail coming our way quickly. "Hey, we might get a sonic boom in a couple minutes," I warned, and they scoffed until we got a nice boom right on cue.
Another day at my desk I heard a good loud boom and struggled to identify it. Hmmm, it wasn't bombing on the range at China Lake to the north, nor was it from blasting at the cement plant's quarry three miles away to the west, and it didn't have the usual ba-boom of a sonic boom, what could it be? Then it came again and I realized it was just plain old thunder- it rained so rarely there that when I heard hoofbeats I always thought "Zebras!"
What a nice story! Thanks for sharing!
Everyone Loves it when things go Boom 💥! :)
Thanks for relating your experiences with variety of sonic booms, @r0cketplumber.
My uncle was a test pilot in WWII and had many amazing stories to tell, including crashing an early jet fighter and walking away. I still have one of his type logs. As a child, his first flights were in bush biplanes. Before he retired from the military, he tested a supersonic fighter. He would love this segment. Thanks!
sorry hes not allowed to watch this video, thanks
Sorry I wasn't clear. He passed away just before COVID.
Ok, in that case he is allowed to watch it
@@doop6995 💀
😂what if after it is built, someone say that it came from self evolution? (Someone is a guy who think it is a bird just like owl of falcon, and say as owl came from evolution, this new bird (supersonic plane) came from evolution)😂😂
So, Lets agree that there's a creator that created us (human or the whole Life or living creatures).
Quran, the ultimate guidance book that was revealed on Prophet Muhamad (PBUH) describes that god, named Allah and gives the final messages of Allah after his messages on earlier prophets like Jesus, Moses, Adam etc.
Let's explore our creator, and why he created us, and what is after this life?
The Concord was terrifically inefficient at sub-sonic speeds due to its wing design. The swept-back design is optimal for supersonic travel, but not helpful when the vehicle is any slower than that.
Some cool ideas have gone over wings that can move out and back, and even a really interesting single-wing rotating design that throws symmetry out the window.
I'm very excited to see the wacky wild planes of the future.
Btw have you watched that video about making slanted wings? I think you'll find it interesting. Btw it's by mustard
@@olbetsy5257 yes the one about oblique wings is really well made.
Like the F14?
single rotating wing? woah, like some kind of helico pter?
Wasn't it inefficient and sub sonic speeds because Concorde used Jet Engines rather than turbo fan jet engines?
the sonic boom is not the only problem. you also have very high fuel consumption due to the nature of the engines. a concorde consumed more than 4 times as much fuel per passenger (relative to distance, not flight time) than a 747. that is one reason why concorde tickets were so prohibitively expensive.
edit: and let's not forget the noise which is a direct result of the very high exhaust speed required for supersonic flight. there's not much they can do about that.
The supersonic jet companies are partially bankrolled by Saudi Aramco as a means of inflating oil demand. The high fuel consumption they can't avoid is a feature, not a bug.
Dude, whatch the video first 😅
@@cestycinou I did.
@@cestycinou The X-59 is intended to reduce _sonic boom_ noise, not engine noise. Like the OP said, there's not much they can do about that. Concorde used to take off and climb out over my home in south-west London and it was _incredibly_ loud; vastly louder than any other airliner.
After learning that the Saudi Arabian government is including supersonic airliners among its proposals to drive up fossil fuel demand via influence campaigns, I'm very skeptical of any sudden organized effort to bring them back. Even this video popping up on my feed raises my hackles.
Turns out the new Top Gun was just a marketing campaign from NASA.
Try it bro, you can ride the highest speed train for the first time in Southeast Asia. The highest speed is 350 kilometers per hour, the Indonesian fast train Jakarta - Bandung, the newest, most sophisticated in Southeast Asia, the first,.the way to the beautiful and comfortable and beautiful and cool and cool city of Bandung, thank you sis and Ka..*,
Try it bro, you can ride the highest speed train for the first time in Southeast Asia. The highest speed is 350 kilometers per hour, the Indonesian fast train Jakarta - Bandung, the newest, most sophisticated in Southeast Asia, the first,.the way to the beautiful and comfortable and beautiful and cool and cool city of Bandung, thank you sis and Ka..*,
There’s a reason you sometimes find Air Force recruiters positioned near cinemas where Top Gun is showing
I lived in Alameda California from 1986 - 1989. My apartment was about 3-4 miles from the Oakland airport. The Concord would occasionally fly out of that airport. It had a very distinctive sound from all the other aircraft, so much so that I would look over to the airport if I heard that sound. I saw it 2-3 times. It was very impressive looking. It was easy to distinguish from other aircraft entering or leaving the airport because the nose cone was angled down during takeoff and landing.
Incidentally, the Oakland airport was the last airport from where Amelia Earhart (American aviation pioneer and first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean) took off on her fateful flight, never to be seen again. In 1935, Earhart became the first person to fly solo from Hawaii to California.
Poor old Fred Noonan.
Great stuff but what made it for me was your family connection. You now have something to pass on to Your kids just like your father did how cool😎😎😎❤️❤️❤️
Boom Supersonic are also working on a commercial airplane
A rarely mentioned reason for the retirement of the Concorde is that while it became profitable, it wasn't *as* profitable as selling first class tickets on a jumbo jet. So airlines would rather have those same high paying customers fly first class on a regular flight than fly the Concorde.
And didn't BA refuse to allow Virgin to buy the fleet? That doesn't even seem like a commercial decision, more one of spite
@@phillipbailey70 That was a stunt by Virgin. Airbus, who provided the necessary parts and maintenance for continued type approval, had made it quite clear how much it would have cost Virgin to continue running it as a single operator. They were never serious and was just a typical bit of Branson poking BA with a stick.
@@ajkgordon Hi there - thanks for the response. Can I ask how you know they were never serious please? Thanks in advance :)
@@phillipbailey70 Well, only from industry anecdotes, which are all in the public domain. But it was never going to work and Branson must have known that. He's not stupid. For two reasons.
1. The costs of continuing maintenance and parts production by Airbus was considered too expensive by British Airways. Virgin is/was a much smaller airline and simply wouldn't have been able to afford it.
2. British Airways was never going to sell its fleet of Concordes for £1 each to one of its major transatlantic competitors.
There were some other reasons and no doubt some political pressure on Airbus by Air France. But in any event, Branson knew he would never get them but carried on his lobbying as a marketing stunt portraying Virgin as the plucky outsider being hard done by just trying to fly the flag.
Flying on a Concord from London to New York was the highlight of my life during the 90's with some celebrities and well known personality lucky enough to be one of them flying in a very tight space and narrow isle plane. Inside its very calm you'll never notice that you're riding on the fastest plane on earth. I'm so proud and delighted being on that flight with my former boss and few people working for him. I was so excited and extatic about the experience. I will never forget this fond memory of mine till my last breath on this planet.😂😂😂
"fastest plane on earth"
Not even close!
Maybe the fastest commercial plane.
Many fighter jets were faster (Mach 2.2- 2.4 at top speed) not to mention the SR-71 Blackbird spyplane.
I know the feeling!
I know the feeling!
@@chaoswarriorbr Hey everyone, it's Pedantic Pamela and her trivia!
@@chaoswarriorbr they obviously meant commercial
I'm a military aviation geek, and I'm SUPER jealous that you got to visit the actual Skunkworks compound! I've been fascinated with their work ever since I read the book about how they got started back in the day.
This video was awesome!
srsly, it’s kinda crazy they allowed it
@@joshweissert8085 Right?! I know it was only for so long and only in one part of the facility, but still. I wonder how long it took them to get clearance, lol.
Which book ?
@@lazyidealist I assume he's referring to Skunk Works by Ben Rich and Leo Janos
@@joshweissert8085 Being allowed to see the plane is cool enough and I'm sure that no matter where it is, it'd require all sorts of hoops to jump through to actually see it.
But for it to be at the Skunk Works? Feels like that should be impossible.
This was wonderful. I used to do a lot of public speaking on going through the problems of life and comparing it with breaking the sound barrier. I was given a ride through the sound barrier in a Kansas Air National Guard F-105 Thunderchief and later in an F-4 Phantom. I later wrote a paper titled, “Faster Than A Speeding Bullet.” Your video brought back some wonderful memories. Thanks for posting!
Any day you can make Legos a tax write-off is a good day
Try it bro, you can ride the highest speed train for the first time in Southeast Asia. The highest speed is 350 kilometers per hour, the Indonesian fast train Jakarta - Bandung, the newest, most sophisticated in Southeast Asia, the first,.the way to the beautiful and comfortable and beautiful and cool and cool city of Bandung, thank you sis and Ka..*,
Try it bro, you can ride the highest speed train for the first time in Southeast Asia. The highest speed is 350 kilometers per hour, the Indonesian fast train Jakarta - Bandung, the newest, most sophisticated in Southeast Asia, the first,.the way to the beautiful and comfortable and beautiful and cool and cool city of Bandung, thank you sis and Ka..*,
I'm a very proud child of an Aerospace engineer that worked on the Concorde in the UK. We've got one of them at our local airport now. We even had a Christmas work do in its hanger a few years back.
I've been to see the Concorde at the Edinburgh Museum of Flight, truly spectacular plane, far ahead of its time and a colossal shame that they stopped flying.
I worked for BAe in Filton, I got to work on the rudder repairs. The aircraft was incredible.
I remember a sonic boom over my house in North Seattle when I was a kid. Everyone in the neighborhood was talking about it. I’ve been fascinated with supersonic flight ever since. Thanks for doing this video, and thanks for NASA allowing you to do it. I am hoping that they are successful, and all they do with this. Amazing stuff… Thank you.
Same growing up in Tacoma. With McChord AFB just to the south, we saw and heard military aircraft all the time. I even saw a rocket blast off once. 🫡
Growing up in Sacramento in the 60's we had Mather & McClellan as well as Beale and Travis AFB's all within 50 miles. Sonic booms were fairly common. I kind of missed them when they stopped.
It's so cool seeing other Washingtonians on the worldwide internet
Eastern Washington here :)
Ditto for me growing up in New Jersey in the early 50s. Hard to remember how often I heard the 💥 boom 💥.
But, I have a distinct memory of once hearing a sonic boom, looking up, and seeing a contrail.
Excellent video. Thank you Cleo. Thank you NASA for this and all that you do to inspire us 👍.
Believe me if you are seeing it, they have long been in operation. Second, they are already on the next generations of those aircraft at the point that you saw the first!
Would love to see how it plays out economically and environmentally
I don't really see it becoming more environmentally friendly than conventional planes because air drag grows exponentially with more speed, but we'll see
It shouldn't.
Supersonic flight will pollute drastically more, both because more energy needed, therefore higher fuel consumption, and because it needs to fly higher for lower drag, where the same emission has bigger and longer lasting effect.
Going faster, higher, means specialized very expensive low capacity planes. Therefore, prices and per person fuel consumption will be incredibly high.
Even if it's quiet, what does it really achieve? In what situation is this really needed or best solution? Can this be ethical?
I would argue that even if airlines make it profitable, this only ever be a toy for the rich, on the environment's dime.
The wealthiest 1% of humanity are responsible for twice the emissions of the poorest 50% of humanity. Introducing a supersonic aircraft again for the wealthiest only increases this problem. Furthermore, it looks like that NASA is spending public money for making something only a small group of people will benefit from.
It will be worse in both cases. Fairly simple economics and physics.
The high fuel cost was the main reason why the concorde program was cancelled. So I guess, with new technological advancements they can make it more efficient, but never more efficient than normal commercial flights.
It is funny to think how some things were more advanced in life when I was younger :D
I flew the concord in the 80s. France to Washington in 3 1/2 hours. Flying home to Austin took over 4 hours. I was allowed to visit with the pilots and learn more about how it flew. Amazing experience!
Try it bro, you can ride the highest speed train for the first time in Southeast Asia. The highest speed is 350 kilometers per hour, the Indonesian fast train Jakarta - Bandung, the newest, most sophisticated in Southeast Asia, the first,.the way to the beautiful and comfortable and beautiful and cool and cool city of Bandung, thank you sis and Ka..*,
Try it bro, you can ride the highest speed train for the first time in Southeast Asia. The highest speed is 350 kilometers per hour, the Indonesian fast train Jakarta - Bandung, the newest, most sophisticated in Southeast Asia, the first,.the way to the beautiful and comfortable and beautiful and cool and cool city of Bandung, thank you sis and Ka..*,
Aside from the sonic boom issue, the Concorde was incredibly loud at takeoff. The engines were just LOUD even at low speed, and it generated endless complaints from people living under its flight path near airports.
Yeah. That's because in order to have enough thrust to punch through the sound barrier, the engines needed AFTERBURNERS.
If you've ever been behind a fighter jet at an air show with its afterburner turned on, you KNOW just how incredibly loud those things can get.
@@rogermwilcox I experienced my first airshow this summer. And the first close up afterburners. Even having earplugs in was almost not enough to be completely comfortable. I would imagine people who spend lots of hours in that sort of environment use double protection, plugs and muffs.
Whaaat, people who buy houses near airports and then complain about airplane sounds. I can't believe that could ever ever happen ☠
Imagine for a moment you had a home near a highway and suddenly cards 10x the volume appear on the road.@@ParaquatSC
Jet engines in general have gotten quieter, though; that's a far more solvable problem for civilian companies. *This* plane is specifically targeting the boom problem, because NASA has the clout to get permit exceptions to the existing supersonic-specific regulations to do the necessary test flights.
Recently gave a speech on the Concorde and the history of supersonic transport for my college class. I had a really good time sharing my knowledge about the wonders of supersonic flight. I’m glad to see that many aviation organizations are working to bring supersonic travel back! (P.S: Loved the fact that you got the same Lego Concorde as I did!)
My Concorde story.
In 1974, my father was stationed in Iceland, and that is where they did the test flights and design testing… so… I am one of the first Americans to ever see the Concorde. THat base had F4 fantoms and other supersonic jets and my father was maintenance officer crew chief at the airbase.
Watching that plane launch, over and over, flying over the base, just amazing.
... F-4 Phantoms*
As a teenager growing up in Devon, U.K. we lived under Concorde's flight path when it flew to the U.S. We heard the sonic boom, usually in the late afternoon, two or three times a week. It was noticeable when outdoors but was certainly not loud enough to be disturbing, especially when indoors. I did not know, & am surprised to learn that the U.S. banned supersonic flight over land. Here's to NASA for trying again & good luck to them.
It’s not surprising the US banned it, it was a convenient excuse not to have the bluddy English & French showing off their fantastic invention. Protectionism at its finest.
I remember seeing it fly over Gloucester too. My parents eventually got to realise a dream by flying to New York on it. It was really small inside apparently.
@@sprint955st The Tu-144 first went supersonic on 5 June 1969, four months before Concorde, and on 26 May 1970 became the world's first commercial transport to exceed Mach 2.
@@sovietcitizen9450 Ah, yeas, concordski, the real time reverse engineering experiment that went on to became an abject failure and yet another monument of the fragile pride and willingness to cut corners that seems to be ever present in the leading types of homo sovieticus. On the up side, it killed less people than it had the potential to take out.
@@sovietcitizen9450 The Tu-144 flew passengers for less than a year before it was taken out of passenger service, due to reliability issues and crashes.
Let’s all have a moment of silence for the cool Lockheed Skunkworks guy’s hit he took from his superiors for allowing Cleo in there. Lol
So 10 years down the road and it still makes a boom. Physics. They dont change
A lesser known reason of why Concorde failed is that the tickets were so expensive that the people flying on it expected to take off no matter what. So they needed to have an extra plane and crew on stand by for every flight, just in case there was a issue with the scheduled plane or crew. Delays were not tolerated
Complete nonsense. That's a lesser-known reason because it wasn't a reason _AT ALL._
@@philsurteesagree. The secondary issue was supply chain. Because there weee so few flying AF and BA didn’t order enough spares to make it worth the vendors to make. Even w/o the Paris crash, it was going to fail.
@@philsurteescompletely agree. Sounds like some entitled ***holes to me, dictating to the pilots. SMH
Cleo embodies the best of RUclips, and i'm all here for it.
One thing you didn't mention about the concord, it needs a lot more repair and upkeep than a normal plane. The rising fuel cost (it uses maybe 10 times as much fuel per passenger as a regular jet), and the crash were both key factors, but another, that's rarely talked about is evey few flights back and forth, the plane needed a full overhaul. Not just new oil, but parts needed adjustment and sometimes replacement. It became to hard to keep them ready to fly that they airlines started to carry a spare concord in each airport for when service was needed.
Now, I get it. The concord was cool. Fuel usage was through the roof, but we live in a world today where the superrich might be willing to pay $15,000 per ticket, so we could see this return. I like the technology. I think a healthy fuel tax would be prudent too, because we can't ignore high fuel users when trying to address climate change. But I understand why Airlines would be interested. Superfast travel and higher flight altitude are cool. People are going to want this, and I think we probably will see a return of supersonic travel in the coming years/next decade or so.
To get the technology required, we may need to burn more fuel at first, but who knows? It all contributes to an increased knowledge base. A new jet engine supplier has pitched an adaptive cycle engine for the F-35 fighter that would mean it could cruise above Mach 1, and use less fuel. We're causing Climate Change with the mass produced things all of us use every day, not really these experimental things.
@@tsubadaikhan6332 "but who knows?"
Well, the best knowledge can't beat the laws of physics. It is absurd to assume that we can get technology that is so demanding so efficient, that it doesn't really matter. And while there's truth into the issue of mass production, just on the contrary the fraction of emissions created by the wealthiest percent is rising. The lesser wealthy half of the world population causes less than 10% of emissions.
The U.S. would have had supersonic passenger aircraft had the Boeing 2707 project not been cancelled back in the late 1960s. Lockheed also had a proposed supersonic aircraft which didnt even get as far as the 2707.
At that time, the climate pseudoscientists were freaking out about "the coming ice age" before switching to the myth of "global warming".....they have zero credibility.
Ugh, it's tedious to hear uninformed people talk negatively about Concorde.
- She only used approximately 4 times the amount of aviation fuel as a thirsty 747 to cross the Atlantic.
- Every commercial aircraft in service today goes through regular checks and overhauls to keep them airworthy.
- And no, there was not an extra Concorde sitting in each airport as a spare parts plane. Afterall, exactly how many Concordes do you think were made?
Why spout nonsense about a subject you clearly have no knowlegde of? Twonk!
OK, First, I said "Maybe 10 times" - which was clearly an estimate (maybe) . . . and I looked it up. It's 5.5 times more fuel per passenger than a 747 (not 4 times).
2nd, you missed the point about having a spare plane - it's not for "parts". Yes, every plane gets checked frequently, but the concords were deemed unfit to fly and in need of repair a hek of a lot more often. THAT'S why they had a spare plane at every airport, not for parts but as an alternate plane, if the one that landed a few hours ago wasn't ready for it's next scheduled flight. It was the only way to prevent long delays at takeoff.
So, you're wrong.
I invite corrections, but you're wrong about many things and your tone was uncalled for.
So, learn somethign first, and then speak with respect. @@michaelc3977
1. It would have been neat to see how much time it was taking you to build the Lego Concorde.
2. It would have been interesting to know more about the crash and other failures of the Concorde.
What an opportunity! Love that these companies are starting to trust you more and more. Your videos are so optimistic, how could they not!? I'm sure your grandfather would be so proud of what you're doing, what a lovely full circle moment ❤
Would love a deep dive on the fuel costs and economics of this. We are all excited about speed, but accessibility is another question perhaps more challenging than the sonic boom.
It’s not for you and I… it’s for the 1%
@@Trinitybolduan That's the fear right. Normal airliner tickets are already verging on unaffordable for many these days. Lets hope the air industry can figure their shit out.
@@nickalfonso8616cheaper than it’s really ever been
@@kookcity5626 Yeah idk what bud is on about, airliner tickets are getting cheaper and cheaper by year.
But none of that is COOL. Said another way: The economics and accessibility of supersonic air travel doesn’t make for good RUclips. Recall that in today’s dollars, Concorde travel was $15,000+. Whatever NASA is working on won’t change the economics, and who wants to hear “But YOU will never experience it”?
Missing one's grandfather lands right in the feels. Awesome work, CA.
I think that’s great that NASA is doing this, I hope they share this information with Airbus so we have a rollout much faster than we would with Boeing. I’m 62 and if Boeing has anything to do with it, we won’t see this aircraft manifest itself until 2040.
oh, Cleo, I love your optimistic stories! I am a retired scientist who had wanted to fly since I was ten and finally got my pilot's license in my 50's and bought a plane. This story about bringing back supersonic flight revives the 10 year old in me that loves the idea of flying and stretching the limits. Keep up the good work, you are awesome!
Big respect to a man who finishes his childhood dreams. Fly safe captain
What's less known is how important the engines were, they were developed by Rolls Royce and were highly efficient at maintaining high thrust when supersonic, the Russian 'concordski' (despite having stolen the plans of the UK engine) had to have the engine in afterburner mode the whole time with the result of very high fuel consumption, meaning the 'concordski' had less then half the range of the Concorde despite having bigger tanks.
A friend worked at Rolls Royce for a couple of years. One of the old timers told stories about engineers having to be very careful about document security. All the good stuff was locked away every night. The not so good stuff was left on desks for the Russians.
... less than* half
I remeber watching Concorde take off from Heathrow in the early 1980's from the then roadside alongside the runway. It was just spectacular, but the sound of those four Olympus Gas turbines at full thrust was just out of this world. It is a sound like no other aircraft has ever produced-and probably never will again, as more quiet and efficient engines will be required for this project to "Take off" !! (Fun fact : HMS Ark Royal was powered by Olympus Gas Turbines -marine variant of course !!)
Concorde isn’t an only child, you should remember her brothers :/
1:57 What? 460km/h for the fastest train?
Where did you get this number?
The French TGV speed record is at 574,8 km/h, which is the fastest on steel rails, and the Japanese Maglev reached 603 km/h!
I think she wasn't talking about speed records but the average speed a vehicle could achieve daily
@@georgempacosta even in that case it would be incorrect. That Japanese maglev is set to have an operational speed of just above 500 km/h.
@@HowDoYouEatPie Generally when someone is talking about maglev technology they refer to high speed rail as a group, not very precise but not exactly incorrect
@@HowDoYouEatPiewhich route?
@@HowDoYouEatPie The Japanese Maglev is not considered a fully vetted means of transport (Beta stage lol) nor a commercial means of transportation yet. They only do lotteries I believe once a year for people to ride its very short piece of track. It is far from being considered a commercial or 100% human-rated means of transportation.
The plural of LEGO is LEGO not LEGOS. I emailed them with this question and they have confirmed this.
Only Americans say it. Sounds so funny.
Apologies. I commented the exact same thing before reading your comment. As someone else said, it's an American thing, as they struggle with proper English.
Cool... Too bad language is fluid and belongs communities and it's speakers everywhere, not just in the UK. Also, Corporate policies shouldn't dictate grammatical accuracy since LEGO's primary interest is in protecting their trademarks.
People will say what they will say. Language is fluid.
We all understood her meaning so it seems good enough for a RUclips video. 👍
And I've officially subscribed. I'm really glad I accidently came across your channel Cleo. You're going places and doing the stuff in the world I wish I had the privilege to do right now, and for that I salute you.
Cleo, I can only tell you this: your channel, your work, your content, are the reason a platform like RUclips makes sense. You are one of the best content creators out there, and every praise is well deserved. Keep up the great work.
You should totally do more NASA-based videos! So many cool projects that fit into the Huge If True category that we (at NASA) could use some help getting the word out - you should pick one from each center :)
0:57 "what happened to supersonic planes?" Well, part of that is easy: The US banned the Concorde from flying the most obvious airports, like LAX. Had it maintained access to the true long distance ( = real time saving (from CDG and LHR)), there would have been enough customers to keep it going. The seemingly perpetual US fear of competion killed it. My parents flew it and I still have the original pen, notebook and other stuff that came with the ticket. Now flame me 😉
w.e.f.:
15-minute city
stay there or else
you will own nothing
you will have no privacy
you will eat indigestible bugs
you will be happy or else
you're all just useless eaters.
/ sarcasm, because it's true. duh
@@2hcobda2bro what
Yes, they killed it.
Pretty sure that's the Palmdale Lockheed/Skunkworks facility. I live a ten minute drive away. I drive past it pretty regularly while driving down Sierra Hwy between Lancaster and Palmdale. Pretty cool seeing it on a fairly large RUclips channel.
Edit - Being so close to Edwards AFB as well, we get sonic booms pretty regularly. Even after more than 30yrs of exposure, they still scare the ever living crap outta me. I could see how some people would want to avoid living below the flight path of a super sonic aircraft at all costs. Especially once they're flying regularly.
This video managed to *land* perfectly into my page! This was definitely one of my favorite videos so far. Keep it up!
Technically, this is fasciniating. But the force of air resistance is directly proportional to the square of the object's speed through the air. Meaning if you double the speed of an aircraft, the air resistance will increase fourfold. So fuel price becomes a huge issue, making a widespread adoption of supersonic flight unlikely.
And then the issue becomes... well then what's the difference between a supersonic plane and a regular passenger plane using the efficiency upgrades to then make their flights cheaper? No matter what advances they make, it can be put on normal planes to make supersonic flight look unappealing.
It's not intended for widespread use. It has its own niche market.
The power requirements go up with the cube of velocity, so the fuel cost gets even worse than that.
@@ivancosta so, the wealthy, just like the original concorde? why should i care, then? even if this thing makes it to commercial service (it will not) it'll just be another toy for the rich and the rest of us will still be crammed into basic economy on 12 hour flights
About air resistance increasing fourfold, true at similar altitude, not if you fly higher in thinner atmosphere...
I love this glimpse into one of NASA's projects. NASA should share even more - this is so cool.
And yet they are a space agency?
Competition, duplication, rivalry, state security etc.... These are the things that make projects like these private everywhere..
Leave it to youtubers to create the videos though. Nasa sucks at making entertaining content
It's abhorrent if NASA is involved with this nonsense.
@@karlwithak.
I hope you're correct and this chick just massively got that fact wrong. Why the F would NASA be involved in this?
Sadly, even if NASA completed the design today, it would still take at least 20 years until the first commercial example could roll off the line. Likely though, it would never happen since there simply is not a commercial incentive to do it.
I got to fly on the Concord as a boy. I cannot recall any feeling of speed. The main thing I remember was that it was cramped and very, very loud inside.
Still, it was great to fly to London in less than 7 hours.
The Concord is probably an example of transitional technology. It makes travel marginally better, but at extreme cost and inconvenience. Most likely by the time we figure out how to mitigate the problem of a sonic boom we'll have suborbital commercial flights that completely side step the problem by being in the zone where the air is virtually non-existent and so sound is not an issue. It'll still be expensive and impractical for all but the super rich, but that's who Concord was for anyway.
@@QuintusAntonious You're likely right. The military applications would be more interesting from an actual application point of view.
I fly pretty often to the US and Asia and always fly business class. Sometimes first, depending on the airline, but generally the difference in price is not inline with the difference in experience.
While it would be nice to get there a lot faster, I don't imagine I would be willing to pay 5 times as much to save a few hours. There may be some people who are willing, but I doubt there is anywhere near the market for this service that Boom thinks there is.
Congratulations on getting to see that plane under development! 🎉 Thanks for bringing us along!
One of the VERY FEW RUclipsrs where I hit the Like button before even watching the entire video.
One thing Im sad you didnt talk about was the fuel consumption, because the problem with the supersonic flight is not only the noise but also the insane fuel usage that removes these airplanes from being competitive. The airlines really do care a lot about fuel as even a few percentages of less fuel consumption can increase the revenue of the company... Did NASA talk about that in any way or is that just a problem for later?
(If Im wrong and supersonic flight is absolutly fuel efficient please correct me)
Its not as fuel efficient as normal jets, but if they charge a lot more, they can be profitable. Businesses/rich people can afford it, not everyday joes going for holiday.
NASA doesn’t really care about business viability,, but then again it’s not a nasa project anyway.
It's much more likely that if this gets off the ground it'll be private jets, not commercial airliners.
Fuel consumption wasn't as bad as you think. Concorde only used about 4 times the amount of aviation fuel as a 747 to cross the Atlantic. Take-off was where she was thirtsy. The engines were incredibly efficient at the speeds she achieved and she had to be throttled back when she reached mach 2.0 because she wanted to keep accelerating.
Love your videos - keep it up!
As a DCS player I really appreciate this video. Going Mach 1 is magical and all I can hope is that I can fly at that speed in real life one day.
3:54 Crazy Rocket Man Robert Maddox cameo! 🔥 Awesome! 😎✌️
Amazing 🫶
A plane twice the speed of sound is damn fast!
Not for the general public......far to expensive.....only for the rich.
The possibility of the plane going into service...near zero.
The development cost of the Concord SST was paid by the poor taxpayers. The poor people paying for toys of the rich.
Small correction @1:57, the fastest train (running on conventional tracks) is 574,8 kph by an Alstom TGV in France.
It was a special AGV/TGV hybrid. Not a "production model".
@@Bellabong - So what? Jealous? Yep, French engineering is generally quite a bit ahead of that in the exceptional country.
1991 I was flying back to the proper hemisphere, leaving Heathrow, and as we were taxi-ing to our takeoff mark, the pilot said "Passengers on the left of the aircraft, will be able to see one of the Concorde aircraft out of their window. We are leaving the ground in a few moments, heading to JFK. Concorde will be leaving in an hour, and will be on the ground in New York for two hours before we are. That is good, but then the passengers are paying three thousand pounds each for the trip".
Flying on Concorde was one of the most memorable experiences of my life. Not sure I'll manage another supersonic flight on one of the coming aircraft, but I live in hope!
Well done Cleo, and particularly well explained! While I can't compete with supersonic, I can show you the Goddard Space Flight Center.... we have lots of cool stuff.
The craziest fact about the concorde was that it went so fast that friction from air caused it to heat up and cause a ton of thermal expansion that they had to engineer the plane around.
And a resultant fun fact was that "cold" in the hangar it leaked fluids like a 60's british motorbike, and stood there with numerous drip trays placed under it.
Not NASA, but Lockheed Martin. NASA provided the funding and some guidance. Lockheed Martin designed and built this aircraft.
Cleo, this is your best episode yet. I’m old enough to remember sonic booms when were outside at recess. The moment the boom was heard, every little kid stopped what they were doing and looked up trying to find the plane. Great memory from my childhood. Thanks.
I absolutely love that you put a Koenigsegg animation for the fastest car. Great job as always.
That was a Koeniggsegg jesko Absolute, wasn't it?
That was a Koeniggsegg jesko Absolute, wasn't it?
I had no intention of watching it just came up but I thought give it a view. Fascinating, what a great video, of course I have subscribed and will be going through your back catalogue. I never flew Concorde but my partner Irene did on many occasions. Thank you Cleo, as I am approaching 80 it is probably doubtful I will see the next version but who knows lol?
If you should ever come to Germany to the Technik museum Sinsheim, you can see and even enter the Concorde and its sister Tu-144.
Cleo, I love your energy! As a part of the X-59 team, I really enjoyed your content!
Your grandfather was one of those slide rule guys that NASA's foundation is built on. They did what most people said was impossible or at least very difficult at the time. The future looks exciting for NASA and our country once again. I remember the sonic booms in the 60's when I was a kid and all of those were from military aircraft. It will be nice to see air transportation returning to mach speeds in the future.
dont tell me what my grandfather was, you didnt know him!
Wow! What a jerk response. My Dad was a slide rule engineer for NASA and I'm proud. He also helped save Apollo 13. Crew cut WWII pilot of B-17. Old school
What I admire the most is those guys is they had to think. Yeah that piece of plastic was an aid, but you had to put the decimals in the right place and know all the constants and you did most of it in your head. In there case they HAD to be right most of the time.
@7:20 Concorde DIDN'T actually have gas-guzzling engines. They were actually about the most efficient aeroengines ever fitted to any commercial airframe, ever. The reason was they got extra compression from the air inlets, as well as from the compressor sections, so they ran extremely hot and so thermodynamic efficiency was world-beating. At low speeds they were still inefficient, but Concorde mostly flew at M2. And the aircraft as a whole was relatively inefficient, but that's because it was a heavy plane, supersonic, and a delta wing. Any new plane can't be expected to become magically more efficient. They'll be better, but not nearly as efficient as subsonic aircraft.
You could have summed this up byu simply telling what they really were. Air-breathing rockets.
@@MrCaiobrz Nah, they were just turbojets. Actually rockets are jet engines, and not the other way around, because they're propelled by jet propulsion.
@@BooBaddyBig As the son of a Concorde engineer it's great to hear someone else correcting the false information surrounding this video. Bravo.
And now we have to believe that you just email NASA and they just responded that easy ? Hahahahaahhaahh
Extremely cool! Thanks to you, and your grand-dad. Keep up the good work!
This is very interesting. Mainly because where i live (Poland) there was information on the news that they found microscopic cracks on the wings, so the plane was grounded for investigation of the problem. After few monts there was new info that they won't fly anymore because they can't pinpoint the source of the problem and it could be to dangerous to keep them flying.
oooh
Goosebumps, feels like it's uniting humanity in our common quest to explore and reach beyond what was previously thought possible
I used to hear sonic boom sound almost monthly as a kid in Phoenix AZ. The air force base nearby and sissies didn't cry about the sound then
I love how excited you get talking about this stuff, it makes it soo incredibly fun to watch!
In addition to the noise, the sonic boom created a sound wave (just like thunder) that would cause vibrations that rattled windows, etc. As a child in the ‘60’s on the east coast we would occasionally hear and feel the effects of sonic booms created by military aircraft.
I got to see the Concorde take off out of NYC and hear the sonic booms and it was truly impressive! It was truly depressing when they got retired and felt like we went backwards as far as aviation goes !
Cleo, one of your many gifts is not only do you pose the learned, sophisticated questions which a trained scientist can ask, but you're also able to articulate the simple queries which have been hanging around in the consciousness of countless shy, modest mortals - like: whatever happened to supersonic airliners? Why oh why did they ... disappear? Will we ever see their like again?
As always, a brilliant video. Showcasing your greatest gift: fascinating, full, entertaining answers.
You know, the sonic boom is only one of the problems.
Fuel consumption is probably the single biggest problem that needs solving.
Air resistance goes up with speed by square and the only way we know to overcome whatever air resistance we cannot eliminate entirely is by adding power - which needs fuel.
the higher up you fly, the less air resistance there is.
fuel economy would surely be worse than normal jets, but engines have come A LONG way since concordes were used last time.
"Air resistance goes up with speed by square" is over simplified. The drag coefficient does not remain constant from subsonic to mach 2. The drag coefficient skyrockets as you approach the speed of sound (which is why commercial jets don't fly closer to mach 1), then tapers off significantly as you head towards mach 2.
The other way that "air resistance goes up by the square of the speed" is over-simplified is that most of the drag on an aircraft comes from the wings generating lift -- and for a constant coefficient of lift, the lift also goes up by the square of the speed. More generally, the lift force and the drag force are (very roughly) proportional. Since the amount of lift force you need is constant, the associated drag force is also roughly constant.
If that weren't true, commercial jets would fly a lot slower than they already do.
This was really cool and I've been fascinated with flight forever, but that moment at the end with your grandfather's NASA pin and your own new one was so perfect 🥲
Flying from London to New York on Concorde, with the difference in time zones, and Concorde travelling faster than the Earth's rotation, you landed before you took off!
GTA V at 2:28