How the Concorde Worked

The concorde was a wonderful thing, a super fast commerical airliner that got you across the pond in half the time. But it was small and cramped, noisy and a big money loser. Climb aboard and get ready for Mach 1. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles W Chuck Bryant, There's Jerry over there, Frank
the chairs in here, my thick tongue, Chuck's haircut, Chuck's beard,

(00:23):
Chuck's hat, Jerry's glasses, Jerry's on the phone, not knowing
what's going on. Everybody's right with the world. Oh, I've
been spelling this wrong all these years, by the way,
we've been spelling out like Flight of the Concords between
that and Concord with no E and all my writings

(00:45):
on the Concorde. Well you have that blog Concorde days. Yeah,
but yeah, and I noticed there's no E on it,
and I spelled days day z as you did. Chuck.
We share a mind sometimes because I was about too
had I not been taking a sip of coffee, I
would have said that at the same time d a Z. Yeah. Well,

(01:06):
I was waiting on you to take a sip so
I could steal that thanks to uh. In fact, I
tried to get a And we're gonna talk a little
bit later about the experience of flying on the the
famed and fabled Concord Jet airliner. That's what we're talking about.
But I tried to get in touch. I know a
person who made that trip. Uh, Justin's mom. I don't

(01:27):
know Justin, Well, imagine Justin but mother. Ok. Yeah, Justin's
mom carry from England, and she made a like since
I've known her, so I guess one of the one
of the last trips early two thousand's. Yeah, that would
have been I think it's two thousand three, October two

(01:47):
thousand three when it was decommissioned. Yeah. So I hit
her up on Facebook and it was like, Carrie, you know,
let me know what it was like. But she's in
a hurricane ravage North Carolina, so she's probably like buzz off, chuck,
everything all right with her. Yeah, Yeah, they're good. They
went inland. Shout out to all of our peeps who
were who had to go through Florence. Yeah, my sister
was there right in the middle of it. She okay, yeah,

(02:08):
she's good. Trees down in the area, but like minimal
house damage and they're high on you know, they sit
higher up, so it's not like they're not flooded. That's
good because a lot of the area is yeah, and
she was also I mean, she said it's bad, but
she said the news is always just so sensationalized. She's like,

(02:29):
this is not like Hurricane Katrina or anything. Did you
see that UM clip of the Weather Channel? Dude? No,
I didn't, So what was he just like making stuff
like no, leaning into the wind like he was about
to be blown over? And then in the background, two
guys just strolled by and like shorts and flip flops,
not even I mean, like I don't even think their
hair was blowing. That's shameful. It is shameful, and I'm

(02:50):
so glad that that made the round because that's ridiculous.
It is, you know, especially for a weather event where
there's genuine fear and like you could incite panic. Like
I think that there's a lot of a lot wrong
with that. So let's shake on it. Okay, alright, So concords.
So we're talking concords today. I never got to fly

(03:12):
on one. You didn't, because go ahead and assume Jerry
didn't UM, And I don't know anybody who did, but
I would have loved to have. And I think I've
stepped on board one. There's one at the Smithsonian Air
and Space Museum by Dullus. I thought you met you
boarded a flight and they're like, sir, you're on the
wrong plane. Back when you could do that, Sir, you're

(03:33):
asleep right now. This is a drink. UM. I can't
remember if they actually let you step on it or not. Um.
Where was this Dulless Dullis Airport that the Smithsonian Air
and Space Museum? Is there one still there? Yes, it's um.
It's called the Stephen f Udvar Hazy Center. I just

(03:56):
call it the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum at Dulless.
It really nice. They have like a a stealth Um
black Hawk, No, not black Hawk, Blackbird SR. Seventy one Blackbird.
Did you know that those things are built so that
when they're on the ground, the plates that hold them
like that make up the plane, they have gaps in

(04:19):
between them. The reason is because that thing flies so
fast and gets so hot that the plates expand and
it becomes solid when it really counts. But on the ground,
apparently when it's taking off, it would just leak fuel
everywhere because it doesn't have like a solid plate to
to speak of. That's like us basically becomes solid when
it counts anyway. At the Seran Space Museum at Dullus,

(04:41):
which is frankly worth flying to Dullus just to go
to it's that good. Is a concorde I think it's
an Air France concorde Um, one of the last ones
that was ever flown. Yeah, I'm a fan of air
and space museums. You you would love this one, man.
I wouldn't. I wouldn't say I'm like an aviation uh
how owned, But I know people that are, well you

(05:03):
you don't have to be to appreciate this. Yeah, sure
for everybody. And there's a space shuttle there too. Yeah,
I'm gonna have to check that out. Yeah for sure.
I used to go to the one in Pennsyl Pensacola,
the Naval Air Museum. They're growing up, and I just
thought it was cool, you know, walk around looking at planes.
You're gonna love this. Well, all right, so let's go
back in time to uh the swinging sixties in England. Yeah,

(05:26):
which was pretty swinging. It was, in fact very quickly.
I want to recommend that Michael Caine documentary my generation.
I haven't seen it. It's not just about Michael Caine.
He's sort of like the host of what London was
like in like the late sixties, so pretty cool, the
whole Alfie thing, Alfie and the Rolling Stones and Marry
and Faithful and he and Albert Finney and just like

(05:47):
saying to the class establishment, yeah, we're young and also
super rich. Well eventually sure, but anyway, in the sixties,
this is the early sixties, so and quite as winging.
Then the British and the French government's got together and
they say, hey, let's uh, let's build a really fast

(06:08):
plane together. Yeah, because it turned out that the British
and the French, we're both building what's called the supersonic
transport plane s s t S. And they weren't the
only ones doing it either. It was the Soviets and
the Americans, the British and the French were all working
on their own supersonic transport plane at the same time,

(06:29):
which is weird until you think about jet. Jet airliners
were really really new, and so everybody was all about
jet airliners, which made them think, well, what goes even
faster than that? Supersonic planes that travel faster than the
speed of sound. So everybody was working on them at
the time. Yeah, I'm surprised that it was that early

(06:51):
in airline travel when they thought, hey, maybe we can
go really fast. That seemed like it would be like
a thirty years on developed it. I think there was
a lot more like inspiration and ent, let's shoot for
the stars to burn. Sure, um, who cares about the
environment kind of thing. Yeah, but I I really get

(07:14):
that that sentiment because I think about it, four different
nations working on the same kind of pie in the
sky project. That's impressive. So they built a couple of prototypes, um,
and then the very first flight of the Concorde was nine.
Together they made about twenty or they made twenty not

(07:35):
about this is actually something where they know the number.
Although I did see sixteen and fourteen production models, but
every place I've seen sixteen sixteen was in more places,
so not no production models. So like I guess prototypes
and stuff don't count, like sixteen that actually flew commercially. Gosh,
what did they do with the prototypes and his trash

(07:57):
them or something? I don't know. Maybe that's the dullest
or No, that was probably a production model. Yeah, it
definitely was, because you got you want seat stains on
display and all their glory. This one smells like Gerard Depard.
Oh God, not that guy. Uh. Alright, so you talked
about the Soviets they built and this is hysterical. But

(08:17):
they built something called the t U one, the tupa left,
and they nicknamed it with a K, the Concorde Ski. Right.
That seems like a joke, I think, well, I think
the Brits and the French nicknamed it, and kind of
derisively too, because the Soviet what the Soviets came up
with looks an awful lot like what the Brits and

(08:38):
the French came up with. And it makes you wonder
one of two things was there, like espionage going on
on one side or the other one one group was
spying on the other group. I would say, yes, probably,
Or is it just that the Concorde follows these aerospace
principles that any highly skilled, well trained aerospace engineer would

(08:59):
fall low and come up with on their own. Probably
that too. I wonder that makes more sense though, because
Concorde Ski was so hysterical. It seems like something from
like the Benny Hill Shower or something. Right, So, so
by this time I can laugh just hearing Benny Hill
Shaw Yeah. By this time, the French and the British
are coming up with their own concord, the Soviets have

(09:21):
come up with their own, and the Americans are like
war out. I think Congress funded a report just saying
like how much is this singing and cost? By the way,
and um got back the bill and we're like, no,
we're not doing this anymore. And they scrapped the boeing,
which is the oh seven Oh is that what it
was going to be? And I think they made hey

(09:42):
about the sound and the noise of the sonic boom.
That's supposedly why there aren't super sonic planes anymore. They're
going to be that their kin though, I think, well,
we would have to repeal a law in the United
States that you can't have overland sonic booms from commercial airlines,
and you got the same law in Europe. So there's
two huge continental markets that are just you can't service

(10:05):
anymore because it's illegal to fly over I'm in a
supersonic plane. And that, from what I understand, is the
true reason why there's not concords any longer. Really just
the boom, not just the boom they're really expensive in
but the boom killed it and it's kept it from
coming back. Have you ever heard of sonic boom? Yeah?

(10:26):
I don't think it's that bad. It depends on the
sonic boom, right, I guess it depends on how big.
I guess you wouldn't want one, you know, eight times
a day over your neighborhood. Well that's the thing is like, Yeah,
you know, if if everybody was flying supersonic, think about
how many planes fly overhead of you know a place
that's a place where you live by the airport. Imagine
each one having a sonic boom. No, that would get old.

(10:48):
But I'm saying, like, if I'm at the beach and
there's like an F sixteen I hear the boom, I'm
kind of like, oh that's awesome. Yeah, you like toast
him with your beer. I love it when those guys
buzz the beach like sending reything tumbling. It's fun stuff.
Uh boy, should we take a break already? Sure? All right,
let's do it. We'll describe what these things were. I

(11:09):
right after this, sorry, Chuck, before we describe the concorde,

(11:38):
I'm kind of excited about. We should say what happened
to the Soviets Um Concorde SKI, so it very publicly
um flamed out and crashed at a play's air show,
killed everybody on board and killed several I think eight
people on the ground at this air show, which air
shows are super dangerous to begin with, but apparently, and

(11:59):
I saw footage of it, the Soviet pilot was basically
flying a concorde like a stunt plane and overstressed it
and it came apart in the air and just crashed. Yeah,
that's not a good idea, No, it's not. It seems
like I mean, these things were definitely agile, but they
seemed the best use was to fly straight and fast
and high right, and their their performance at the air

(12:20):
show followed the either air I guess the air France
concorde um, which just took off, did its thing and
then came back down like a normal flight, and the
Soviets were trying to one up it because again it's
the Cold War and France was friends with the US.
This would get back to the Americans. Well, maybe we
should talk about the other famous crash too, because that

(12:42):
had a lot to do with its ultimate demise, Like
combined with many other factors that will get to like
you're saying the expense in the boom. But had it
not been for the crash on July thud of an
Air France concord flight from Paris to New York, it
may not have been killed all as quickly. So this one,

(13:03):
it was flight ninety. It was a charter that I
think had a bunch of mainly German tourists headed to
a cruise to depart from New York. And about five
minutes before this thing hit the runway, there was a
Continental jet that took off left behind a piece of
metal that was about sixteen inches long and about three

(13:24):
inches wide, very small. No one caught it. Uh. And
then this concord runs over this thing at like three
hundred and seventy miles an hour or something, yeah, which
I mean, we'll get to that. But those things were
fast when they were taken off. Yeah, so who knows
if it would have happened on on a regular flight. Uh.
And this thing popped up and it blew out of

(13:45):
tire and disturbed the fuel tank. Yeah. Well the tire
blew the debris into the engine and blew out one
of the engines. Yeah, and it ruptured the fuel tank. Too,
so fuel just comes spewing out of it, Okay, And
there's a very famous picture of that concorde taking off
with just a trail of flames coming out of it,

(14:06):
and you see it and you're like, wow, the concorde
was cool looking, and then you realize it's not supposed
to look like that at all. Yeah, two hundred feet
of flames. So we'll talk in a minute here about
the the weird fuel distribution in this thing. But uh,
it was about eighteen hundred pounds overweight at time of takeoff,
and they said that didn't necessarily have anything to do

(14:28):
with the wreck, but because it was overweight, they had
one of the fuel tanks full, where otherwise it might
have been a little redistributed, So that was most of
the fuel at the time. Again, it probably wouldn't have mattered,
like any fuel on fire is not good. But what
struck me was that it was on fire before they
took off, Like they told them, you're on fire and

(14:52):
you're still on the ground. But apparently they were going
so fast that it was too dangerous, like you couldn't
stop the plane. Well, the reason that I saw that
the pilot um tried to take off even though he
knew he was on fire. Was because he figured he
could put the fire out just from the thrust up
in the air, starving it of oxygen and basically blowing

(15:12):
the fire out from the engine. See. I saw that
he couldn't stop because he was going almost four miles
an hour and they had to go somewhere. Um. I
also saw that had they not had more fuel than
what they should have had, had they not been overweight,
they probably could have gotten aloft right, And I think

(15:32):
the flight engineer also shut down one of the engines inexplicably,
So now they were down two of their four engines,
and they just crashed into a hotel, right, which is
remarkable that more people in a hotel didn't die, but
I think only one person in the hotel was critically injured,
and then everybody on board died the plane. Yeah, which

(15:54):
I mean, did it blow up into a fireball or
something like that. I don't think they're just going that fast. No,
think they just crashed. I mean I'm sure there was
a lot of fire involved. Uh, clearly from that photo. Yeah.
So Continental and one of Continental's mechanics were actually found
guilty of manslaughter. But then it was later overturned. The Yeah, interesting,

(16:17):
um with the get they were exonerated in two thousand ten.
That really that that, yes, that piece of metal did
start the series of events. But had it just been
the piece of metal and nothing else, they probably would
have survived. They would have taken off and then been
able to come back in for a control. I wonder
if the airport was sued. I don't know, because it's

(16:39):
not the continental planes fault necessarily. From what I understand,
France sues everybody when there's a plane crash that has
to do with France. They might sue us maybe about this, right,
all right, so you want to talk about all right,
that was a tragedy. Well that so that that, combined
with the memory of what happened to the Soviet concourse,

(17:00):
really shook people's faith. But as we'll see later on,
there were a lot of people who were involved in
this project who if they canceled it would lose a
lot of face that I think hopped on the opportunity
to be like, yep, concords aren't safe. We tried, We'll
just scrap it. How about that? Interesting? Yeah, this is

(17:20):
a movie totally for the movie with any alright, so
let's let's just talk about the plane and what made
it different and special. A normal seven forty seven Boeing
seven forty seven goes about five D sixty miles an
hour at just cruising speed at about thirty five thousand

(17:41):
feet the concord, it's cruising speed was about hundred and
fifty miles an hour at almost twice the altitude between
sixty and seventy thousand feet, which is faster than the
speed of sound. Yeah, by a long shot. I think
Mack one is the speed of sound. This thing would
fly mocked two cruising cruising speed and sixty feet. That's

(18:04):
eighteen thousand three D above sea level. Yeah, that's ridiculously high.
You're basically kissing the edge of space right there. Yeah,
it's not quite suborbital, but you're flirting with it. Right.
So I was like, gosh, I guess it's about where
Felix bomb Gardner jumped for that one stratosphere jump. Remember
when he did that. He jumped at twice that height

(18:25):
and I think twenty eight thousand feet. Yeah, that's insane.
That guy jumped out of a platform skydive from that height. Yeah,
that's almost so high. That it's like, what's the difference
between that and yeah, maybe you know, I don't know.
And he lived, He did live, and he really pulled
out because remember he started to spin and they were worried.

(18:47):
He blacked out and he was done for I bet
he's not finished. No, I'm surprised he hasn't done anything recently.
It's been long enough. Yeah, all right, so let's talk
about the design of this thing, because you can't just
like soup up an engine on a seven seven and
say all right, now you can fly faster and higher,
like this plane had to be completely designed for this purpose. Yeah,

(19:11):
because again seven, which flies pretty fast, we just totally
break up if you could somehow get it to the
speed of sound, because the speed of sound itself is
really really fast, and it's a different type of flying
just from the friction and everything in the air. But
also to get to the speed of sound requires um

(19:32):
a lot of effort on your planes part. Do you
ever read the right stuff? Now? I never read that.
The Tumbults did a great explanation of Chuck Yeager being
the first person to break the sound barrier, like no
one knew what happened beyond this wall. Of sound that
forms or wall of air that forms that the nose

(19:53):
of the plane, and Yeager was like, it's gonna like
it felt like the plane was just gonna break the pieces.
But he just knew, just knew that if he just
got on the other side of it would be smooth sailing, right, absolutely, right. Yeah,
supersonic sailing or supersonic flight is smoother than subsonic flight. Um,
and it's definitely smoother than flying just below the speed
of sound. But it's just this beautiful description of what

(20:16):
you're doing it that's awesome. Yeah, But the point is
is to fly at super sonic faster than sound speeds,
you have to have a specialized plane, I think, is
what you're trying to say, like five minutes ago. Sure,
So we're gonna go through each one of these sort
of design features and uh, one by one, starting with

(20:36):
the fact that it was streamlined to begin with, and
it's designed so like you were talking about that wall
of air. Uh, in order to help punch through that,
you have to streamline your plane. And the Concorde had
very famously it just looked cool, but it had a
very specific purpose. That needle like nose on the front
that's to punch through that wall of air. Yeah, it

(20:57):
wasn't to look cool, no, but it did look pretty cool,
that's just aside beside benefit. And the plane itself was
very sleek and in um needle like too. Yeah, for sure.
The the wings it had a uh what's called a
sweatback delta wings, so the wings were triangular and connected

(21:18):
to the fuselage all all along. So it wasn't just
like a rectangular wing coming off you know, you've seen pictures.
It's just like a big folded napkin, like a big triangle, yeah,
kind of. And and for those of you not in
the know, a fuselage is like the main body of
the plane where the passengers go, that's right, and not
many of them in the case of the Concorde, no,

(21:38):
because it was much smaller um width wise than a
seven forty seven seven sevens like twenty ft across. This
is half that, and so it would fit about a
hundred passengers in two rows of two with an aisle
going down the middle. It was not a big plane.
It was small, no, And apparently there was a bathroom

(21:59):
in the middle, so it sort of divided into two sections,
but they weren't different like one wasn't first class and
one was business. They were all identical. But I have
pulled some quotes from writers and one of the guys
was like, but you still felt better if you were
in the front, like you were a better person, I guess,
which is crazy because you will die sooner. Um, did

(22:20):
we determine that at one point you're slightly more likely
to survive in the rearver plane crash in the middle
of the two really not the front though, to take
that first class snobs. Uh, yeah, so not in a
half feet wide, um two and two feet long, So
it's a little shorter than a seven forty seven, but

(22:42):
not much, not much. So it's just it's just narrower
and more streamlined, like a little dark just punch him
right through the air. Yeah. Uh. The other thing is
the fuselage, like you said, the body. Uh, in the
wing there was there was no space, like I mentioned,
It was all just attacked in the and the engine
mounted not on struts but directly to the wing. So

(23:04):
that was very different. Yeah, it's That's one of the
things that's like so iconic about the Concords design is
that it was it appeared to be like all one piece,
Like the body just kind of moved out into the wing.
The wings like dropped down to to produce the engines
and then dropped back and then went back up into
the wing. It just looked super cool, and I'm sure

(23:27):
a lot of it was aesthetics, but even more so
it was this thing has to have as few separate
pieces as possible, because more pieces means they could break up.
You want to just basically be one solid plane. Yeah,
and because of that wing design, it meant uh, not
only did you have reduced drag and better lift for

(23:47):
takeoff and landing, but there we was there was no
horizontal stabilizer on the tail. So when you look at
a regular jumbo jet, you see like the horizontal piece
of the tail goes up, then you have the two
little tiny wings on that they don't They didn't have
those tiny wings, so again just kind of streamlined right exactly.
Um the nose itself too. So the wing that's a

(24:09):
pretty significant aerospace design. I didn't realize that until it
started popping up like and researching this again and again
that like it's one thing to design a wing that
can you know, cut through the air at supersonic speeds.
But you aren't gonna land or take off at supersonic speeds,
so that wing has to do double duty. It has

(24:31):
to be able to keep you aloft at supersonic speeds.
It also has to keep you aloft at subsonic speeds. So,
from what I understand, the wing on the Concorde was
like a triumph of engineering. Yeah. I don't know about you,
but I don't get scared to fly. But sometimes still
when I look out and I see the wing wobbling
and kind of flapping, I think, Man, I wish more

(24:53):
of that was connected to the plane. Yeah, it just
looks like more stable, it looks like it's trying to
flap its way. Yeah, that always is dis concerting to me.
I have to say, I have come so far with
fear of flying, and I've thanked her before and I'm
going to thank her again. Thank you to you me
for getting me over my fear of flying, because my
life would be so much worse if I were still

(25:15):
scared to fly. Well, yeah, she was probably like, dude,
I want to go places right with you. You're gonna
have to get over this, buddy. Yeah, I remember the
days when you were the what was it the dark
Night of the sky or the black Ghost and the sky. Oh,
I'm glad you brought that up, Joshua, were a blanket
completely over his head while you flew, so it could
be the black Ghost, of the red Ghost of the

(25:36):
gray ghosts, depended on the color of the blanket, Chuck.
To my great dismay, I found recently that they washed
those blankets maybe once every four flights, over once every
eight flights. Did you think they washed them between every flight?
I thought it was new every time that I wouldn't
have put it over my head if I had known that,
Like God knows, who did wide into that blanket? Did

(25:58):
you know? I thought they were either single serve and
then they like donated them, or if they did rewatch
them that it certainly was not every flight. I wish
you would have brought this up because I can still
like taste old blankets in my mouth. Now I think
I'm hallucinating, but I can still taste it. It's the same.
It's real to me, all right. So I believe before

(26:21):
we got sidetracked a minute ago, you were about to
say something about the nose tilting and moving. So what's
the deal there? Okay, So the angle of attack. If
a plane's flying straight, we'll call that a horizontal angle
of attack. I call it getting there. What is this
ninety degrees? What are you talking about? So what angle

(26:44):
is this? Well, you're not saying an angle, You're just
you just have your arm out straight. Okay. So let's
say a plane is flying completely horizontal parallel to the ground,
but it's flying forward, so it's if we pop it
up so the nose is up, it's flying at a
steep angle of attack. I think if it's coming down
really fast, it's also a steep angle of attack. But

(27:06):
the concorde is meant to come in so that its
nose is popped up way higher than like a seven
or forty seven when it lands. The angle of attack.
The problem is is because of that long needle like nose,
if you're a pilot, you can't see past that when
you're flying or taking off because the angle of attack
is so steep. So they actually designed the nose too

(27:27):
basically elevate downward to get out of their view when
the plane was taking off her landing, and then before
it went into sub or supersonic speeds, it would pop
into place so that it was a pointy needle. Yeah,
so it actually awesome. Yeah, it moved in flight and
you can and it also had a little visor on
it because you're going so fast too. I guess just
to break that wind over the window or that bird guy,

(27:51):
can you imagine what that thing did? The birds are
in into Yeah, no bird, No, like a Randy Johnson fastball. Yeah.
Do you ever see that Big Unit? Wow? Look at you.
It's like it's almost like when Emily throws out of
sports fact every now and then. That was alive in
America the nineties. Everybody knew who the Big Unit was. No,

(28:15):
that's true. She was talking one time about she said
something about Eli Manning. It's like, how do you know
Eli Manning? She's like, I know the Manning guys. She's
like one of them wears the the orange outfit and
when whears the blue outfit. At least she didn't say
costume costume outfit. You know who's got me and Emily

(28:36):
combined beat is hodgment. Oh for sports? Yeah, he's just
willfully ignorant of sports. Yeah, although he has gotten into
a thing here in his middle age where he will
go to a sporting event if someone offers him the chance,
because he just was almost more like a sociological experiment,

(28:56):
not like oh I want to go root for the
giants or whatever, just like, oh, well, this is fascinating
to observe. Count the number of hot dogs that are
eaten by Hodgman, No, just by everyone around him. Um,
all right, where were we the visor and killing birds?
So now let's talk about the engines. Okay, So those

(29:18):
engines on a concorde where there were four engines, two
on each wing. Yeah, Rolls Royce, how do you say
the other company taking a stay up at it? I
would say the s S silence. So I'm just gonna
go the Necma Olympus or Snecma. I would have gone
with Snecma. All right, maybe it's Snecma. It sounds like
a skin condition, it does. So the Rolls Royce Necma

(29:41):
engine we're capable of eighteen points seven tons of thrust each,
which I have reference. It does sound like a lot.
And if it doesn't sound like a lot to you,
prepare for this. The four engines aboard the concorde um
combined burned six thousand, seven hundred and seventy one gallons

(30:03):
of fuel per hour, and not only that. Yeah, that
sounds like a ton. It was. Well, supposedly it took
a ton of fuel per seit that was the rule
of thumb for the Concorde, Like literally a ton of
fuel per passage, that's what I read. Um. And the
the fuel they used was kerosene, which is so redneck

(30:23):
for like a British Airways air France joint thing. They
were burning kerosene hank Kill City. Yeah, well that was propane,
but still that's right. Um alright. So, like we said before, though,
these engines were attached directly to the underside of the wing.
There were no struts. I know, when you're in a
plane now and you just look at a normal jumbo jet,

(30:44):
it looks like that engine is attached to the wing,
but it's or part of the wing, but it actually
is attached with these metal poles called struts, right, which
is fine for sub sonic flight. Um. Again, though the
engines for the Concorde are basically part of the wing
so that they wouldn't come off U and then the

(31:04):
after burning that is probably the coolest part of this
whole thing to me. The Brits called it reheating or
having a wet engine. Yeah, but after burning is like
what an F sixteen will do. Uh. If you want
extra juice, you mix raw fuel, you know how you
see like the red flame coming out of the back

(31:24):
of an engine. You actually mix raw fuel with that
after it's been burned once, just to juice you even more. Yeah.
Like the whole reason they have um uh tests of
your cars emission systems is because you're you don't burn
all of the gas that you're trying to burn in
your engine, some of it escaped, unburned or partially burned.

(31:48):
What the what an after burner engine does is it
captures that exhaust and puts it through a second burner
to get as much of that that what would have
been lost energy from being lost and just giving it
that extra boost. That is how it would reach supersonic speeds.
Um and the it was it would be so loud

(32:09):
in there apparently when the afterburners were on. But in
the in the British French Concord you didn't have to
have after burners on all the time. In the Soviet
Concord Sky you had to have the afterburns on the
whole time, So it was like unodly loud in the
cabin the entire flight. That was another mark against it. Well,
that's crazy because afterburners are for like even in fighter jets,

(32:33):
it's like for minimal use. But when you're like on
the highway to the danger zone, that's when you kick
in the afterburners. Yeah, it's just like every now and
then to get more thrust. That's that is crazy. It's
only meant to be for short bursts. Right from what
I saw. They had to have the afterburners on the
whole time to maintain supersonic flight in the t U one.

(32:54):
Is that right? Yeah, that's yeah. The concord sky that
is nuts. Well, no, wonder it didn't work. Um, should
we take another break? Sure? All right, we'll talk more
about fuel and paint right after this things chop cho Sorry, alright,

(33:34):
fuel and paint. What's the deal with the fuel? Seventeen
fuel tanks, thirty almost thirty two gallons. Yeah, that's a
lot of fuel. Yeah, and I think it does. I
did see a ton of seat, which we'll find made
the concord really expensive to operate. Yeah, so that fuel

(33:56):
against kerosene, which just blows me away. Um, they they
had it designed really ingeniously because again, when you fly supersonic,
all sorts of different things happen, and one of the
things that happens is the balance of the plane. That
what you would call like the center of gravity shifts backwards.

(34:17):
And when that happens, like it's tough to imagine because
you think the opposite is going to happen. But imagine
you have like a little doul, a little stick balanced
on your finger. If you move your finger further back
along the dowell, you'll notice that the front of the
doull goes down because the center of gravity is further back.

(34:38):
It's balance is further back. So that would happen when
you hit supersonic speeds in the concorde. Yeah, so in
motion that's called the aerodynamic center. Um, I like center balance,
but that's well, I think that's the same thing, but
in motion, Okay, I might be wrong, and aerodynamically speaking,
uh yeah. So they had what they call they had

(35:01):
three auxiliary or trim fuel tanks. If you've ever been
on a boat, a boat has a way to trim
the the motor. You might have trim tabs on it,
or you might have a little button that makes your
boat motor go up and down and that's to keep
you know, that's how you don't you're not cruising along
through the water with your nose way out of the water.
You you trim that thing and then it'll lower the

(35:23):
nose a little bit. I had no idea that's what
that was. Yeah, trim. So it's the same thing in
this plane. But they used fuel that they would shift
backward and forward to level this thing out to find
its aerodynamic center balance, right, they would they would if
the if the aerodynamic balance center balance was that what

(35:43):
it was, aerodynamic center like, they could pump just as
much fuel as it took to these empty tanks to
balance the plane out and make it fly perpendicular or
horizontal parallel to the ground again like they wanted to.
And then when it was coming out of sub sonic speeds,
the opposite would happen, that the center would move towards

(36:04):
the front and the back would go up, so they
would pump gas back to the other tank and level
it out again. Really ingenious stuff. Yeah, I just think
of a see saw. Yeah. And how however many little
kids you would need to put on there to equalize me? Yeah,
because you're moving the full frum from different places Yeah,
that's just great, pretty cool man, way better than my

(36:24):
stupid Dowell on your finger idea. Uh, well, imagine me
on that doll, same thing, broken doll. Uh. And that's
when I mentioned earlier when it had that famous crash
in two thousand of its fuel because of you know,
they had to have it in a certain place for takeoff.
It was all concentrated right there where that fire was

(36:44):
so bad news. Yeah, that's just bad luck. And then
the paint was special paint even because crazily enough, this
thing got super hot, right, they came up with a white,
a shade of white that's like four times more reflective
than the white you see on no plane, which apparently
look at the concorde and blind you on the spot. Um. Yeah,

(37:06):
Presian white sounds pretty nice, man, um. But they would
do this to reflect heat, and they were they wanted
to reflect heat because they needed to get rid of
as much heat as they possibly could, because this thing
would get really hot at the speeds it was going,
just because of the friction it's going through the air,
the air molecules in the air, and the faster you go,

(37:28):
the harder you run into these air molecules. The hotter
things get and that the Concorde would actually you could
touch the windows from what I saw, and they would
be warm to the touch and the flight, whereas if
you touch a window on a forty seven, you're freezing
because it's like negative sixty degrees fahrenheight out there. It
would get up to like two hundred, like positive two
hundred and sixty degrees fahrenheight on this out the outside

(37:51):
of the nose in particular of the Concorde. And that's
despite the air temperature which would be even lower higher
up right right, like negative sixty. Yeah. So in the end,
the paint was about double twice as reflective as any
other jet. So that's solved that problem. Yeah pretty well.

(38:11):
Uh all right, so I guess let's talk about flying
on this thing. Like we said, can only hold a
hundred people, right, a hundred wealthy, wealthy people. Yeah, Like
round trip was ten to twelve grand And I don't
know if we said this, Like the lure of the
Concord was not just that it was it looked cool
and it went like really fast. It cut the time

(38:33):
to get from London to New York or Paris to
New York virtually in half, which is huge, Like if
you've ever made that trip, it's just long enough to
be we started to get pretty uncomfortable. Um so half
the time, like three and a half hours basically from
London to New York. That was a really valuable thing

(38:56):
that people would be willing to pay for. And you
had to pay a lot to get on the Concorde.
I saw upwards of twelve thousand dollars round trip, which
correct me if I'm wrong, But if that's like nineteen
eighty money, that's like thirty two grand today. Yeah, and
that's for sitting in what amounts to like a bucket seat. Um.

(39:18):
Apparently the meals were very nice and the service was impeccable, sure,
and you felt special and the lounges were Did they
have lounges, Yeah, they had special Concorde lounges. See, I
didn't see anything but seats in a in a bathroom.
They well no, no, I'm sorry. At the airports they
had special lounges just for Concorde passengers. Yeah, they had
to gus see it up. I guess I got like

(39:39):
a foot massage. Yeah, but I mean, if you're talking
thirty two tho dollar round trip tickets, like you were
sitting there rubbing elbows with like the world's elite and celebrities,
And on one particular day in ve Um, one of
the people you might have been sitting next to was
none other than Phil Collins. That's right. Do you want
to tell them about Phil Collins in the concorde? Uh? Yeah,

(40:02):
all right, I remember because I was watching Live AID
at the time and as if Live AID wasn't a
big enough awesome thing to do on a I can't remember.
It was Saturday or Sunday afternoon. Tell the kids what
Live AID was. Oh, jeez, we should do a Live
AID episode. Yeah, we should. Live AID was a benefit concert,

(40:22):
and not the first benefit concert, but the first huge
um multicontinental benefit concert. There was a led Zeppelin reunion.
It was that big, the first ever back when they
hadn't been broken up for that long, which is crazy.
Um USA. For Africa, wasn't that what it was called? Uh?

(40:44):
I don't know if it was. If Live AID, I'm
not sure if you say for Africa was different, but
it was. They're basically trying to alleviate the um the
droughts famines in in Western Africa, right, headed up by
Bob who very famously portrayed Pink in um The Wall
of the movie The Wall and was you've seen that right, Yeah,

(41:08):
but I didn't know that was Bob Geldo. Yeah, that's
Bob Geldo in the movie. The character's name is Pink.
Not in real life. Everyone I know that. Uh. And
he was the singer for you know, he had the
big hit for the boomtown Rats. No idea. I don't
know why. I don't like Mondays. No. I thought that
was an Elvis Costello song. No boomtown Rats. It sounds

(41:29):
just like Elvis Costello, doesn't it. It sort of does.
I never thought about that. I always thought that's who
it was. Yeah, okay, alright, So we got Bob Geldof
put on this huge concert to help fund to help
fund um this charity for Africa, which we've mentioned before
was actually like a terrible move. It went straight to
the war lords, remember, yeah, it did. I think in

(41:49):
our Famine's episode we talked about this good one. But um,
it was such a huge concert that it took place
at the same time in Europe and North America. Yea,
Like this concert spanned the Atlantic wasn't it in Philly, Yes, Philly,
and I believe London, right, So that's the stage. It's

(42:10):
the hugest thing ever. That's where Queen very famously just
brought down the house at Wembley Stadium. Uh and one
of the great performances of all time. Many many performers
did so. Uh. And Phil Collins, as if that wasn't
big enough, was like, here's what I want to do.
I want to play on both continents. I want to

(42:31):
do both of these shows. So he did. He did
a show at Wembley Stadium. From what I understand, it
went pretty well, and then he went to the I
think he throw and hopped on in British Airways Concord
and flew from London to New York, took a helicopter
from New York to Philadelphia, and I think he went
on stage at one or two pm in London, and

(42:54):
he made its Philadelphia on time to take the stage
and I think two pm in Philadelphia. Time travel, yes,
because that was the thing. The concorde got you there
so fast that it was less than the time difference
between the East Coast of the United States in London
or Paris, and so it was actually like a four
hour trip, but there's a five hour time difference, so

(43:16):
you could actually travel back in time figuratively speaking with
the concorde. And that's what Phil Collins did. So he
went off a stage in London and then came on
stage in Philadelphia. It was pretty thanks to the Concorde.
It was amazing. And then they had a camera crew
following him and stuff. I remember seeing like he's at
the airport now and he's getting on the helicopter. It
was a big deal. Yeah, and apparently Share was on

(43:38):
the concorde. It was Share with Phil Collins and it's like, hey,
what's going on? And Phil Collins like, oh, we got
this live AID thing. She's like what is that? And
he told me. She was like do you think I
could come? And he's like, yeah, I sure, just show up.
I don't know if she did show up or not,
but she didn't know about Live ABE. Maybe she joined him.
She was probably like, why wasn't I invited? Kind I

(43:58):
would say that if I were Shared, well, wrong with me.
She would have been like snap out of it to
Bob Gelda. Alright, so Phil Collins is on this plane. Um,
through his eyes, this is what it looks like. You
take off, nose down thirty eight thousand pounds of thrust
to get you going from zero to two miles per
hour in three seconds. That is mind boggling. Yeah. Like

(44:22):
you feel a little bit of like push you back
in your seat on a regular plane, but not much.
This is like you're sitting normally. You're back in your
seat like at the snap of a finger from what
I gather. Okay, so Phil collins face is like smashed
off under the seat behind him, and he's like, what
have I done? All right? I should have never left Genesis.

(44:43):
I don't know about that. I don't know that he
left Genesis now, he just did his own thing. Yeah,
that's right, great solo career. That's a good documentary too.
There was a Genesis stock out a couple of years ago. Yeah,
like it covers starts with the Peter Gabriel years. That's
good stuff. All right. So you're back in your seat.
Phil Collins is drinking his um vodka cranberry slashing all

(45:06):
over his face. They reached cruising altitude very fast and
past the sound barrier. The noses up now and inside.
This is very clever. They had a displace on on
what mock you were flying so everyone could see, Yeah,
mock and altitude pretty cool. Yeah, and again like the
the in flight service was just bar none like the cutler.

(45:27):
He was amazing. The food was amazing, the wine on
board was amazing, the service was amazing. Like when you
were on the Concorde, apparently they would you would leave
with a signed certificate saying that you've been on the Concorde.
That's pretty cool. Like that's how important it was, even
like the super rich and famous and um, the whole
presumption was is that the super rich and famous would

(45:48):
pay to go on this flight and everybody else would
just fly sub sonic. Um. But it was just too
expensive even for the super rich and famous. Yeah, and
but we didn't mention even before where you took off.
I think the pilots made a bit of a show
of it, and they told everyone, like, prepare yourself. What
you're about to experience is not like a regular flight.

(46:09):
You're gonna be pushed back into your seats. We're gonna
be going this fast this soon. And everyone's getting all
jazzed up, you know, because like, hey, this is awesome.
We're all super rich and we're all going super fast. Uh.
Then once you get up there and you look out
the window, what do you see? Apparently you can see
the curvature of earth. That's crazy. There would not be
any flat earther's had everybody written on the concorde. If

(46:31):
there were still around, right, you'd be like, no, it's around.
And apparently you don't really feel the speed um even
when you're hitting. Yeah, like even when you hit the
speed of sound, it doesn't feel much different. Although I
did see it was very noisy in the plane because
of the afterburners. Yeah, I mean this one dude, I
got a bunch of quotes from people. He said it

(46:53):
was more like office chairs, bucket seeds, very small windows,
very noisy, extremely noisy. But I challenge anybody it didn't
have a smile from ear to ear when they got
on it, it looked like the seats looked like the
bucket seats of a Ferrari. Yeah, like an expensive sports car.
They were a polster that way there. They looked like
a sports car, very nice sports car seats, but it

(47:16):
was a plane fall of them. It was really cool looking. Yeah.
This one guy, Fred Finn, international businessman, apparently took seven
hundred and eighteen flights on the Concorde. I saw that
he holds the record, right, he's got to Yeah, he
has seven eighteen signed certificates that he was on the
concod So they definitely made it special for that price tag.

(47:38):
About two and a half million people flew flights on
the Concords. That's a lot for how expensive it was,
and the fact that it really just ran from ninety
two thou three. Yeah, that's a lot of that's a
lot of people. But it just like you said, it
wasn't affordable, right, No, So from the outset, apparently the
Brits were like, oh my god, what have we gotten

(47:58):
ourselves into? And I saw it compared to the Brexit
of the time, that the politicians all knew that this
was a terrible idea. It was just a huge money
was a huge money pit, but they pretended in public
like it was going to do great things for Britain.
And I think this is right before the European Union started,

(48:19):
and I believe the Concorde actually was probably one of
those projects that helped foster the European Union at the time,
because Europe was not that many decades away from being
ravaged by World War Two, and again the Marshall Plan
came along. And by the way, I have to say,
in the Think Tanks episode, apparently I said that the
Marshall Plan was based on the New Deal, which is

(48:39):
totally wrong, and I know it's wrong. But some listener
wrote in and said you were really wrong, and I
was like, I didn't say that, and apparently I did,
but I know that that's not the case. But the
Marshall Plan rebuilt Europe and at the same time it
brought Europe together and helped foster the EU. But I
think the Concorde was a project that helped bring the
EU along, but it was a money losing project and

(49:01):
the reason the Brits stayed in it was because they
were afraid the French were going to sue them for
even more money if they backed out. I love history, man, yeah,
and I think I think. I think that was a
money suck, even at full capacity, but like when you
started having like half full flights, we only have fifty

(49:22):
people on a plane. Um, it was just blowing through money.
Plus also, nowadays, if if the Concorde were still around,
there would be huge issues with it because it burned
so much gas kerosene, sure, but it just burned through
so much and created so much greenhouse gas. It was

(49:43):
just such a just a polluting monster that if we
had gone just too supersonic planes, that would be an
issue by now for sure. But yes, expense the sound,
the sonic boom, um definitely got rid of it. But
I think also um, British Airways and Air France the
only reason they took these planes on it because they
got them for free from their governments. Um. Yeah, they

(50:06):
bought like boughtom for a dollar or something. And there
was this there was this point where, you know, in
the seventies and I think again in like the early nineties,
where it really seemed like supersonic passenger travel was this
nut that we were going to crack, and it just
went away. And the reason why, like Reagan actually wanted

(50:26):
NASA to work on a transport plane that basically went suborbital.
I could get you to Tokyo in two hours. It
is crazy, but it's basically what Elon Musk is talking
about with SpaceX. I think he says he could get
you from New York to Tokyo in thirty nine minutes.
But again, the environmental impacts just the wastefulness of the fuel.

(50:47):
It's just mind boggling how how inefficient it actually is. Yeah,
and there's something about building something just for the super
rich that it's not like it's not a great time
for that. I think he said he could do it
for about more than an economy class ticket on a
plane though, Yeah, which would be pretty amazing because he's

(51:07):
a magician. He is. Did you see the dear Moon?
Announced me last night. Oh dude, he's building a rocket
that it's a it's a transport like passenger rocket that
will go past the moon, like it's a tourist um
trip past the moon. And this Japanese artist, now he's
a Japanese entrepreneur, I can't remember his name. Um, he

(51:31):
bought the whole he bought all the seats, and he
is going to over the next like five years, I
think before the flight, invite an artist from like nine
different fields to come with them. Uh, just on the
premise that they go back and make something that that
they were inspired to make from the trip. It's like
his gift to humanity. Um, this art project that he's

(51:55):
basically kind of clumping onto. Elon Musk's BFR rocket. Well, sir,
I think a podcast eloquently describing that trip would be
a great contribution. So podcasting is in art. Yeah, why
not choose the most downloaded podcast in iTunes history to

(52:16):
do that. Yeah, he'll be like, okay, sure, but you
guys have to choose which one goes. Oh you could go, Oh,
we'd flip a coin. We'd leave it to UM to
Javier bar down to this sign who gets the plug
through the head. Uh. So we had the famous wreck
in two thousand and then finally in April two thousand three,

(52:37):
UM Air France president Jean Cyril Spinetta said, one, we're
shutting it down. And then I think on June twelve
they delivered to Dullest that that one Air and Space Museum,
that very first production Concorde that was delivered to Air

(52:58):
France and UM. I believe October two thousand three was
must have been the last British Airways flight. Then yeah,
I guess they stuck around a little bit longer, you know,
the Brits. Uh. You can also go to the Aerospace
Bristol Museum. That one. You can definitely get on board
really wander around. Yeah. I saw a video of that
in France. The Museum Air in Space Paris Leborge uh

(53:23):
Intrepid Sea Air and Space Museum in New York apparently
has one that has a space shuttle too. Auto and
Technic Museum Sunshine in Germany. In the Museum of Flight
in Seattle, I think has one nice all worth visiting
for sure. It's net and you don't have to be
like an aviation buff. You can just be inspired by

(53:44):
that kind of thing. Yeah, I can't wait to hear
back from Carrie and see her firsthand insight. Maybe I'll
read that as a listener mail. Oh, that's a good idea.
She'll probably say the same thing, which is like so loud,
so loud and cramped, and there were a bunch of
snobs on board. Phil Collins was crying so so scary it. Uh, Okay,
Well that's Concords and it's done for now. Who knows,

(54:04):
maybe they'll make a comeback and we'll do a follow up, agreed. Uh.
If you want to know more about Concords, type that.
We're in the search part how stuff works dot com.
And since I said that, it's time for listener mate,
I'm gonna call this one one I found in a
stack that I meant to read a while ago. So sorry.
Sorry to Stephen if you've been waiting on this. Hello,
my name is Stefan. I'm twenty three years old and

(54:27):
I'm from Stuttgott, Germany. I started listening to your podcast
because I want to improve my English for my bachelor's degree.
That isn't that's hats off to Stefan. So I searched
at Spotify for English podcasts and I found a playlist
with some of your podcasts. I found out that they
were from two thousand nine. It was so much fun
to listen to these. They were about castles and Ninja's

(54:49):
and hiccup uh. And after listening to these episodes, I
thought they are from two thousand nine. I don't think
Josh and Chuck do these podcasts still today? Wrong? But
I search and I saw that you still make podcasts,
and I was very happy. That's the story how I
started to listen to you two guys, and I found
nothing that changed from two thousand nine to today. You

(55:10):
make the same podcast the same way. So great, the greatest.
It's true. I really like this guy. I hope you
read my email. Would be very glad with the best regards,
Stephen Stephen from Stott I love it man, Thank you, Stephen.
That's really awesome. That was great. It was really well written. Yeah,
you're doing great with your English. Coherent everything about it

(55:32):
couldn't have done anybody on myself. Yep, we understood that
more than we understand Jerry on most days. Uh. If
you want to get in touch with this like Stefan
did and let us know how great we are and
how good we're teaching you English, is that correct? Sure?
You can write to us, well, you can hang out
with us on social media. Go to our website. Uh,
stuff you should know dot com and you'll find all

(55:54):
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Just send it off to Stuff podcast how stuff works
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