alternatehistory.com
Eclipse chasing
And now something entirely different... not only space will be impacted. How about supersonic transportation ? This is only a introduction to a much bigger chapter I've polished for weeks.
I grew up with my parent Mike Olfield vinyls and I wanted that pop ballade in my TL. Hope you'll enjoy it !
The last time ever she saw him
Carried away by a moonlight shadow
He passed on worried and warning
Carried away by a moonlight shadow.
Lost in a riddle that Saturday night
Far away on the other side.
He was caught in the middle of a desperate fight
And she couldn't find how to push through...
...
At precisely 10:08 am on the morning of June 30, 1973 the four twin-spool Olympus 593 engines under the Concorde’s sweeping white wings powered up to full afterburner and launched “prototype 001” down the runway of Gran Canaria's Las Palmas airport. Thousands of miles to the east, the shadow of the moon was already racing across the Atlantic at over 1,200 mph, tracing a path eastward from South America toward the African coast.
Two minutes after take-off, the aircraft hit Mach 1, or about 707 mph at altitude, and headed southeast toward the moving shadow. Climbing up into the stratosphere at an altitude of 56,000 ft., test pilot André Turcat pushed the aircraft to Mach 2.05, more than twice the speed of sound. Even after a couple of test flights the atmosphere on board was tense—the timing and the equipment had to work perfectly. Helped by Concorde’s two onboard inertial guidance systems, the crew guided the aircraft along the carefully-mapped trajectory and met the eclipse within 1 second accuracy of the planned rendezvous.
The most epic eclipse chasing in history was on.
The trees that whisper in the evening
Carried away by a moonlight shadow
Sing a song of sorrow and grieving
Carried away by a moonlight shadow
All she saw was a silhouette of a gun
Far away on the other side.
He was shot six times by a man on the run
And she couldn't find how to push through
In 1973, a small group of astronomers from around the globe had a secret weapon for seeing a longer eclipse than ever before: a prototype Concorde, capable of chasing the eclipse across the Earth at twice the speed of sound. The plan seemed deceptively simple. Closing in at maximum velocity, Concorde would swoop down from the north and intercept the shadow of the moon over northwest Africa. Traveling together at almost the same speed, Concorde would essentially race the solar eclipse across the surface of the planet, giving astronomers an unprecedented opportunity to study the various phenomena made possible by an eclipse: the ethereal solar corona, the effect of sunlight on the darkened atmosphere, and the brief red flash of the chromosphere, a narrow region around the sun that’s usually washed out by the much brighter photosphere.
Concorde chief test pilot André Turcat was impressed. He pitched the idea to his bosses at Aérospatiale, who gave a tentative green light, and agreed to assume the cost of the mission. Turcat and chief navigation engineer Henri Perrier got to work on all the details, factoring in weather patterns and even ground temperatures in the places where Concorde could take off from, which would affect the fuel load.
After deciding on Gran Canaria as a good starting point, the team planned a route south and then east along the eclipse line. Turcat and Perrier looked into which runways in Africa would be able to handle the 200-foot long aircraft, which didn’t exactly stop on a dime. They pushed as far west as possible, to N’Djamena in Chad, with Kano in Nigeria as a back up. The actual rendezvous would take place over Mauritania, which agreed to close its airspace to commercial air traffic at midnight the night before.
I stay, I pray
See you in Heaven far away...
I stay, I pray
See you in Heaven one day.
“Alone in the Mauritanian sky,” as a French film about the flight poetically put it, Concorde 001 hurtled east along the path of totality. With the eclipsed sun high over ahead, Turcat switched on the night-time navigation lights in the midday darkness. Paintings and stamps issued by various African countries would depict the epic, sci-fi sight, and Turcat would later deliberate about whether to file the flight as a day or night one.
Four A.M. in the morning
Carried away by a moonlight shadow
I watched your vision forming
Carried away by a moonlight shadow
A star was glowing in the silvery night
Far away on the other side
Will you come to talk to me this night
But she couldn't find how to push through...
"I did have time to glance out of the side window at one point” Turcat said “and see the edge of the umbra, the penumbra and the daylight beyond. From the height we were at I could actually see the curvature of the earth, so it was pretty incredible. I was also able to gaze up at the corona and, as the limb of the moon slowly occulted the solar disk, I saw the chromosphere, which flashed out in bright red alpha light. As the limb of the moon slowly occulted the solar disk, I saw the chromosphere, which flashed out in bright red alpha light.”
Alas the landing site in Chad was coming up fast. Each astronomer team wrapped up their observations and managed to steal a few moments gazing out over the sands of the Sahara at a sight few get to witness. In all, the experimenters observed the totality of the eclipse for a record 74 minutes.
Turning south out of the darkness, Turcat began lining up for the approach. “I would have 10 tonnes of kerosene upon arrival,” he later wrote, giving him “forty minutes’ wait, and the right to a missed approach.” In any event, the aircraft landed smoothly.
Caught in the middle of a hundred and five
Far away on the other side.
The night was heavy and the air was alive
But she couldn't find how to push through
The aircrew and the astronomers arrived to a surreal scene, having descended from the stratosphere at supersonic speed in one of the world’s most advanced aircraft only to emerge under the strange half-light of the African sun, still partially eclipsed. An attempted coup d’etat (possibly timed to coincide with the eclipse) meant that armored vehicles mingled with people on the street who were using smoky glass to gaze up at the sun.
In one flight, Concorde had given astronomers more eclipse observing time than all the previous expeditions last century—generating three articles in Nature and a wealth of new data.
I stay, I pray
See you in Heaven far away...
I stay, I pray
See you in Heaven one day.
Carried away by a moonlight shadow
Carried away by a moonlight shadow
Far away on the other side.
I grew up with my parent Mike Olfield vinyls and I wanted that pop ballade in my TL. Hope you'll enjoy it !
The last time ever she saw him
Carried away by a moonlight shadow
He passed on worried and warning
Carried away by a moonlight shadow.
Lost in a riddle that Saturday night
Far away on the other side.
He was caught in the middle of a desperate fight
And she couldn't find how to push through...
...
At precisely 10:08 am on the morning of June 30, 1973 the four twin-spool Olympus 593 engines under the Concorde’s sweeping white wings powered up to full afterburner and launched “prototype 001” down the runway of Gran Canaria's Las Palmas airport. Thousands of miles to the east, the shadow of the moon was already racing across the Atlantic at over 1,200 mph, tracing a path eastward from South America toward the African coast.
Two minutes after take-off, the aircraft hit Mach 1, or about 707 mph at altitude, and headed southeast toward the moving shadow. Climbing up into the stratosphere at an altitude of 56,000 ft., test pilot André Turcat pushed the aircraft to Mach 2.05, more than twice the speed of sound. Even after a couple of test flights the atmosphere on board was tense—the timing and the equipment had to work perfectly. Helped by Concorde’s two onboard inertial guidance systems, the crew guided the aircraft along the carefully-mapped trajectory and met the eclipse within 1 second accuracy of the planned rendezvous.
The most epic eclipse chasing in history was on.
The trees that whisper in the evening
Carried away by a moonlight shadow
Sing a song of sorrow and grieving
Carried away by a moonlight shadow
All she saw was a silhouette of a gun
Far away on the other side.
He was shot six times by a man on the run
And she couldn't find how to push through
In 1973, a small group of astronomers from around the globe had a secret weapon for seeing a longer eclipse than ever before: a prototype Concorde, capable of chasing the eclipse across the Earth at twice the speed of sound. The plan seemed deceptively simple. Closing in at maximum velocity, Concorde would swoop down from the north and intercept the shadow of the moon over northwest Africa. Traveling together at almost the same speed, Concorde would essentially race the solar eclipse across the surface of the planet, giving astronomers an unprecedented opportunity to study the various phenomena made possible by an eclipse: the ethereal solar corona, the effect of sunlight on the darkened atmosphere, and the brief red flash of the chromosphere, a narrow region around the sun that’s usually washed out by the much brighter photosphere.
Concorde chief test pilot André Turcat was impressed. He pitched the idea to his bosses at Aérospatiale, who gave a tentative green light, and agreed to assume the cost of the mission. Turcat and chief navigation engineer Henri Perrier got to work on all the details, factoring in weather patterns and even ground temperatures in the places where Concorde could take off from, which would affect the fuel load.
After deciding on Gran Canaria as a good starting point, the team planned a route south and then east along the eclipse line. Turcat and Perrier looked into which runways in Africa would be able to handle the 200-foot long aircraft, which didn’t exactly stop on a dime. They pushed as far west as possible, to N’Djamena in Chad, with Kano in Nigeria as a back up. The actual rendezvous would take place over Mauritania, which agreed to close its airspace to commercial air traffic at midnight the night before.
I stay, I pray
See you in Heaven far away...
I stay, I pray
See you in Heaven one day.
“Alone in the Mauritanian sky,” as a French film about the flight poetically put it, Concorde 001 hurtled east along the path of totality. With the eclipsed sun high over ahead, Turcat switched on the night-time navigation lights in the midday darkness. Paintings and stamps issued by various African countries would depict the epic, sci-fi sight, and Turcat would later deliberate about whether to file the flight as a day or night one.
Four A.M. in the morning
Carried away by a moonlight shadow
I watched your vision forming
Carried away by a moonlight shadow
A star was glowing in the silvery night
Far away on the other side
Will you come to talk to me this night
But she couldn't find how to push through...
"I did have time to glance out of the side window at one point” Turcat said “and see the edge of the umbra, the penumbra and the daylight beyond. From the height we were at I could actually see the curvature of the earth, so it was pretty incredible. I was also able to gaze up at the corona and, as the limb of the moon slowly occulted the solar disk, I saw the chromosphere, which flashed out in bright red alpha light. As the limb of the moon slowly occulted the solar disk, I saw the chromosphere, which flashed out in bright red alpha light.”
Alas the landing site in Chad was coming up fast. Each astronomer team wrapped up their observations and managed to steal a few moments gazing out over the sands of the Sahara at a sight few get to witness. In all, the experimenters observed the totality of the eclipse for a record 74 minutes.
Turning south out of the darkness, Turcat began lining up for the approach. “I would have 10 tonnes of kerosene upon arrival,” he later wrote, giving him “forty minutes’ wait, and the right to a missed approach.” In any event, the aircraft landed smoothly.
Caught in the middle of a hundred and five
Far away on the other side.
The night was heavy and the air was alive
But she couldn't find how to push through
The aircrew and the astronomers arrived to a surreal scene, having descended from the stratosphere at supersonic speed in one of the world’s most advanced aircraft only to emerge under the strange half-light of the African sun, still partially eclipsed. An attempted coup d’etat (possibly timed to coincide with the eclipse) meant that armored vehicles mingled with people on the street who were using smoky glass to gaze up at the sun.
In one flight, Concorde had given astronomers more eclipse observing time than all the previous expeditions last century—generating three articles in Nature and a wealth of new data.
I stay, I pray
See you in Heaven far away...
I stay, I pray
See you in Heaven one day.
Carried away by a moonlight shadow
Carried away by a moonlight shadow
Far away on the other side.
- Archibald
- Word Count: 1.2k