Could Concorde get Cancelled

kernals12

Banned
Anger over rising costs and fears about environmental effects caused the US congress to end funding for the Boeing 2707 SST. Why didn't voters in France and Britain cause their governments to do likewise with Concorde? There were large opposition campaigns in both countries. See this full page ad in the Times of London
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Too much sunk costs and Concorde was more of a political project than a commercial one. The companies involved were all nationalised and it didn't matter if it turned a big profit, if it hadn't been for the 1973 oil crisis they may well have sold a fair number of them and/or leased them to various airlines. Whether it would have made any real money though as a commercial programme is a bit of a more difficult question.
 
Does anyone have a rough estimate on how many need to be sold to break even? Mostly I see about 21 or so being sold without 1973's oil shock, maybe closer to 30 as the various airlines buy a few for the obvious routes? And what was the real cost per seat to operate it? Would it, even as a premium service, get enough passengers to expand a few on every route by each airline? Or does it just cannibalize itself on the few justifiable routes?

All told I think Airbus was the better option to get back into commercial air for Europe as a whole, what if the USA went SST and instead Europe built the politically relevant Airbus focused on a 727 replacement likely 737 sized jack of all trades?
 
There was the pride element to consider. An SST to match the best American one would be something to be proud of--an SST where the Americans have none? How could that be cancelled?

Subsonic with better economy is clearly the path of profit--we know now, in retrospect, in part because there were two ventures to develop SSTs in the '70 and both failed to do more than be an outlier capability that never came close to a real profit maker. But profit for the sake of profit is inglorious--in the long run, when your sensible firm is still standing and your rival is bankrupt and gone, and nothing challenges your far more economic subsonic planes in the realm of speed, you may smirk. But for a while there, you are being boring and they are being cool.

Perhaps indeed the key would be for Boeing to keep going, or give the US SST contract to Lockheed, or something.

A couple technical matters--Concorde was designed around Mach 2, and this was the maximum speed at which the major airframe could still be aluminum with only a minority of critical parts make of titanium or high temperature steels. Playing this glory game, the US taxpayer subsidized Boeing plane was supposed to both be larger, and achieve Mach 3 cruising speeds--had it been feasible to do that, clearly the Concorde would be relegated to secondary markets while the faster and larger American plane would take over the plum routes.

It might have gone in another direction--Barnes Wallis suggested first developing a somewhat slower than Mach 2 plane, somewhere around 1.5-5/3 or so, such that full shock heated stratospheric temperatures would be well below those that soften aluminum, say in the comfortable human temperature range, 30 C or so. If that were the never-exceed maximum then it would be possible to make the whole plane out of traditional materials--for a variety of other reasons too the basic task would be easier. Engines would be closer to those already available off the shelf for instance; air intakes easier to design, etc etc. Such a plane would be significantly faster than the best subsonic plane (Convair made the fastest of the first generation planes of the basic 707 layout, along with the DC-8, but never managed to sell many). But it would be far easier to develop than the Concorde, much much easier than the American 2707. It could operate on shorter runways. It could get to market much earlier than either of the more ambitious models. Probably such a "modest" project would not be sufficiently exciting to be the basis of a trans-Channel project, and either British firms or French, or possibly both in hot competition, would pursue it--indeed that was happening on paper in the period the two firms allied. Again the fear was, make a plane that works at Mach 1.65 and then when someone comes along with a Mach 2.4 version you are screwed--the perception was that the latter would be along in six years or so.

So--maybe if the Americans were more gung ho but also chose a slightly more modest target--say Boeing still gets it but the goal is "merely" Mach 2.3 or something like that, but bigger than Concorde. They get started on it and seem to be making progress while the Concorde deal is still being negotiated; the Europeans look at Boeing overtaking them and shudder and back out, going their separate ways. No Concorde because they are scared off. Then around 1967 or so it becomes evident that the Boeing project is actually not going that well. It turns out to be a lot more expensive to do Mach 2.3 than they thought and they consider whether to trim back to Mach 1.9, double down on R&D costs and bull through, or pack it in.

The longer they keep dithering and sending good money after bad, only to be finally shut down by the sonic boom protestors, the longer European firms are deterred and maybe forced into the weary, stale, flat and profitable fields of subsonic improvements, then around 1970 a bunch of accumulating economic woes leave darken all investment horizons and leave the western world with no SST. It is an interesting sideline whether Tupolev develops their entry or not.
 
Plus the Olympus engines built for the TSR-2 were looking for an airframe. A lot of money/time was spent on those alone.

Ric350
 

kernals12

Banned
There was the pride element to consider. An SST to match the best American one would be something to be proud of--an SST where the Americans have none? How could that be cancelled?
What is it with all these bad decisions Britain and France made for the sake of "national pride"?
 

SsgtC

Banned
What is it with all these bad decisions Britain and France made for the sake of "national pride"?
Look at the time period. Most were within 20-25 years of the end of WWII. France and the UK had gone from being two of the most powerful, if not the two most powerful, nations on earth to also-ran status. Both being almost totally eclipsed by the US and USSR. The "national pride" projects were attempts to prove to themselves and the world that they were still Great Powers and should be respected as such.
 
What is it with all these bad decisions Britain and France made for the sake of "national pride"?
Thank you @SsgtC!

Also, are you saying it was "bad" just for the economic bottom line, because actually Airbus kicked ass on that. What about Apollo and the Moon landing--good decision or bad?

Man does not live by bread alone, nor even by the quarterly profit statements. There is a spiritual dimension to consider. Concorde was glorious; it was as Ursula LeGuin's Odonians might have put it "excremental" in a number of ways, but also had magnificence. So did Apollo. So did our poor screwed up Shuttle program, at least versus having no crewed spaceship to call our own national one--I now look forward to a new American spaceship with hope. But we could hold our heads up with the Shuttle in a way that we haven't been able to this past 7 years.

Magnificence and glory are a thing. Especially in France!
 
Don't underestimate national pride. I remember British and English-speaking-French coming to the Intrepid and taking the Concorde tour just so they could board Alpha-Delta.

And boy would it get fun if they were both on the same tour.
 
Thank you @SsgtC!

Also, are you saying it was "bad" just for the economic bottom line, because actually Airbus kicked ass on that. What about Apollo and the Moon landing--good decision or bad?

Man does not live by bread alone, nor even by the quarterly profit statements. There is a spiritual dimension to consider. Concorde was glorious; it was as Ursula LeGuin's Odonians might have put it "excremental" in a number of ways, but also had magnificence. So did Apollo. So did our poor screwed up Shuttle program, at least versus having no crewed spaceship to call our own national one--I now look forward to a new American spaceship with hope. But we could hold our heads up with the Shuttle in a way that we haven't been able to this past 7 years.

Magnificence and glory are a thing. Especially in France!

Just so happens I was re-reading The Dispossessed yesterday. Maybe the opposite of excremental is incremental, as in 'let's make things a little better with what we already have.'

The mood of the 50s and 60s was very different, and the optimism about scientific and technological advance was fuelled by the Cold War. People were desperate to 'turn swords into ploughshares' - to find any possible civilian use for inflated defence spending. Magnificence is - magnificent - but only if it is freely chosen, and it will only be freely chosen if it makes some kind of sense.

In the end the only justification for Concorde was 'C'est magnifique - et ce n'est pas la guerre!'
 
Let's say that Concorde was cancelled in 1972 and the planes built were turned into research planes that kept flying until around 1980. I personally think what would have happened is that to save face, the then-forming Airbus consortium would do the research into the Joint European Transport (JET) project at least by early 1973, and something akin to the A320 would be announced by 1977 for production start in the early 1980's, powered by the then-new CFM56 engine. In short, instead of 1989 deliveries of the first A320, something akin to the A320 would be in service by the early 1980's.
 
Anger over rising costs and fears about environmental effects caused the US congress to end funding for the Boeing 2707 SST. Why didn't voters in France and Britain cause their governments to do likewise with Concorde? There were large opposition campaigns in both countries. See this full page ad in the Times of London

There was a considerable political and economic dimension.

Throughout the '60s there were attempts to cancel it, but the money was helping supporting industries in both the UK and France. As the objective was to "leapfrog" the Americans and get into service first, there was an economic argument to keep going - whether you agree with it or not.

It was also difficult to stop, as the project wasn't just a government-backed commercial agreement; it was based on an international treaty. Neither Britain nor France could pull out alone without incurring heavy penalties to the other, and it was only eventually abandoned once both sides agreed. By that time, development was complete, and studies were done showing that the cost of improving and selling any more of them would be greater than the cost of stopping the project. Even then, the additional cost to produce a few serviceable examples was small, hence the planes that made it into service (and there was still a dim hope that sales might pick up).
 
It was also difficult to stop, as the project wasn't just a government-backed commercial agreement; it was based on an international treaty. Neither Britain nor France could pull out alone without incurring heavy penalties to the other, and it was only eventually abandoned once both sides agreed.
IIRC these clauses being inserted at the insistence of the British who were worried that the French would withdraw part way through the programme. Somewhat ironic since this came back to bite them on the arse when a number of government members advocated pulling out due to the worsening financial situation in the 1970s, only to be informed that it would save little money and lose any benefits from the programme.
 
That depends on how much of the Tu-144 was the result of industrial espionage.
Does anyone know?
It is (ahem) alleged that there was deliberate dissemination of disinformation to the Soviets of certain basic assumptions used in the aerodynamics of Concorde. The result was that the Soviets did a sterling job of working these into a workable supersonic craft but it was a classic example of the right answer but to the wrong question. The Tupolev Tu 144 was entirely Soviet designed but used this flawed data instead of researching their own data.

It has (far more implausibly) alleged that the USA obtained secret data on the Tu 144 and passed that on to Boeing who used it to save time and cost to probably the same effect. Personally I doubt this one.
 
It has (far more implausibly) alleged that the USA obtained secret data on the Tu 144 and passed that on to Boeing who used it to save time and cost to probably the same effect. Personally I doubt this one.

That's unlikely. American industry was basically competing with itself to keep up with stolen designs.
 
Part of the UK's reason for joining the Concorde project was to show themselves to be 'good Europeans' and curry favour as an element of their efforts to join the European Economic Community, none of which did them any good as de Gaulle still said 'Non'. Do people think they would still have gone ahead with it if they had already been members, say by having signed the Treaty of Rome in 1957?


So—maybe if the Americans were more gung-ho but also chose a slightly more modest target...
IIRC the reason they chose a cruising speed of Mach 3 was that they did a study and calculated that it was the speed required to compensate for the increased construction and operating costs, with anything below that speed destroying the economic case for the aircraft.
 
On British side they try allot of thing to cancel the Concorde program (around 1968 i think)
Unfortunately they got Gorge Pompidou as French President, who was modernist and Nationalist, he consider the Concorde as National pride for France
and defended it, it even went so far that french government threatened to got at international court in Den Hague and sue the British government for Concorde treaty violation...
 
...IIRC the reason they chose a cruising speed of Mach 3 was that they did a study and calculated that it was the speed required to compensate for the increased construction and operating costs, with anything below that speed destroying the economic case for the aircraft.

Given the cogency of Barnes Wallis's argument though I have to wonder, did that parametric study go all the way down to Mach 1.2 or so? At just a few tens of percent above sonic speed you might think the benefit is almost nothing, but it is not nothing, particularly on a long range flight such as across the Pacific--even transAtlantic is pretty much of a haul so shaving an hour or two off of it, or even just a half hour, can be attractive enough to guarantee getting most of the business if the ticket prices are the same, or doing well with premium paying passengers if the premium is modest enough. Hah, says the study, you aren't facing how much more expensive an SST is...but that was Wallis's point. An aggressive SST is pushing the limits and requires highly sophisticated new engines, use of high temperature metals, scientific investigations into variable speed air inlets, and blah blah blah. But going only modestly supersonic, the ram air temperatures in the stratosphere are comparable to surface air temperatures; aside from the savings in the form of designing and constructing with standard subsonic craft aeronautical materials, entire categories of special measures needed to keep a faster SST habitable are superfluous. At low supersonic Mach factors air intakes do not require the fancy variable geometry needed for higher Mach factors approaching 2; a fixed geometry will do. Various Air Forces have experience operating large aircraft with fancier requirements in the low supersonic ranges; data for the design is pretty extensive, so advanced research models are probably not so necessary. Wind tunnel tests can be better arranged in the lower supersonic ranges, and so on. There is good reason to presume that the extraordinary costs involved in designing a fast SST are tremendously reduced, making the overall design cost only modestly greater than for a subsonic jetliner.

That being the case, the modest utility increase if one cruises at Mach 1.4 or so might easily overtake the expense of the design. Not only will passengers be attracted by shorter travel times, the turnaround time of the airplane is quicker, so the same airframe can deliver more revenue-miles in a given time span. Whether fuel costs per mile rise is dependent on engine design--each mile is covered in a shorter time so there is some margin for higher fuel consumption rates over time. With good engine design--and military jets have a demand for performance over the high subsonic to low supersonic ranges, so a lot of designers are familiar with the general issues in this flight regime, so a number of good choices probably already exist--per mile fuel consumption is not so bad.

Thus I suspect an honest parametric study taking all this into account would show that between Mach 1.2 and 1.4 cruise speeds, a marked dip in the design, construction and maintenance costs would become evident, operational costs will be close to ordinary subsonic jets, whereas potential revenues are raised significantly so that the aircraft promises equal or superior relative to subsonic jetliners. The key is to keep costs low while still gaining a significant advantage over the standard issue aircraft.
 
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