It starts off slow with a technical question, but gradually pulls in some of the plane's designers (and even a flight attendant) discussing every aspect of the plane's design and operation. One of the most amazing aviation threads on the Internet.
It was fascinating to see the prototype drawings on the wing designs on this thread, plus many other design aspects of the Concorde. Thanks for sharing.
The Concorde is one of those early implementations that is just big enough to barely work, yet never really succeeds, while also sucking all the air out of the room for any other ideas. The aviation fan side of me would love to see the Concorde fly again but my gut says that trying to resurrect the Concorde will only delay any chance of regular supersonic flights in the future.
There's nothing about Concorde that ruined it for anyone else. The problems that killed SST programs—high fuel costs and noise—remain unsolved. The plane was a pretty remarkable piece of engineering given the physical constraints.
One more thing that shut down the Concorde was the post-9/11 increase in security procedures at airports, greatly diminshing the relative advantage of supersonic flights. If getting on the plane takes an extra (unpleasant) 45 minutes on each end, then the percentage time savings from supersonic flight is reduced.
The other thing for the super-rich is fractional jet ownership. If your flying to dinner in London from NYC, Your concierge experience at Teterboro to hop in a Gulfstream with nominal security is way more pleasant than facing the masses of wannabe VIPs at the big airport.
Is that it, though? I was under the impression that the rich flew private for time savings not because they actually enjoy the flight that much. Put me in a cattle car for an hour over a private jet for seven hours any day.
What do delays at the arrival end of your trip have to do with 9/11? Customs screening for international flights has always existed; only security on the departure side has gotten slower, and this is a problem you can solve with not very much money by enrolling in pre-check.
Your air travel experience will be much more pleasant if you exclusively do carry-on. I've never needed more than a backpack and a suitcase. Most destinations have laundry machines.
My understanding is that weather, taxi gridlock, and under-provisioned gates are the primary drivers of slowness in airports.
From memory at LHR Concorde had dedicated check in and lounge (this was in 2003). I'm pretty sure we went through dedicated security for Concorde (might have been VIP) I certainly don't remember hanging around much.
Can't say what JFK on the way was back like as I flew to Barbados, where facilities were a little more basic.
There are still ways to get faster through security, London City airport always feels fast when I fly through it and one day I will do the BA001 flight (Concordes old number) to JFK where again I suspect time spent in security theatre will be small.
Are post-9/11 security times really longer? Security screening actually seems pretty efficient (i.e. quick) to me. Even before 9/11 we had baggage x-ray and passenger metal detection. These measures were introduced in December 1972.
Adding to what the other comments say, these days a lot of the time through security is wasted on the multiplicity of items that have to go through the scanners.
Instead of just chucking your hand luggage on the conveyor belt, you have to take out your laptop and tablet, you have to take off your jacket, belt and shoes, and assorted metal things (keys, etc.) -- I usually end up having to use four trays for all my stuff when traveling internationally.
I remember the 90s well, when the security gate took less than 20 seconds -- you walked through the metal detector and then waited for your bag. Since the queue wasn't jammed up with people, your bag usually came out at the same time that you were done walking through the detector. Occasionally something set off the detector, of course, but then they just made you go through again without the offending item.
I've never spent more than ~30 seconds actually being screened. The delay, if there is one, is waiting to get to the front of the line to be screened. This is an embarrassingly parallel problem and security at every airport could be trivially brought down to 60 seconds maximum by operating more lanes.
Uh, yes? Versus literally just walking from the taxi at the drop-off curb to your gate, it is quite a bit longer. As you mention, there were some checks added over the years, but it was lightning fast compared to the current system.
Ever notice how older airports don't have the huge snarled lines of TSA checkpoints worked into their design? Instead they have disabled escalators that the line snakes down or a ton of stanchions forming waiting areas down side hallways and such. It's because there were no huge snarled lines at a few choke points when they were designed.
Not only that, but the checkpoints didn't even start until just in front of the boarding area. I remember the huge stink (although it may have been pre-911) when O'Hare decided that no one would be allowed in the concourse unless they had a ticket. Whereas I remember my mom taking a couple flights to my grandma's back in the mid 80's, and watching her board the plane and watching it take off from the terminal window.
The baggage screeners just plowed bags through and looked for a guns, cartoon style time bombs and knives. I recall rushing my aunt to JFK as a kid and literally getting to the terminal 5 minutes before takeoff -- and she made it! Consultants who had to swap gigs for whatever reason would physically exchange tickets at the airport, no problem.
Given the discussion about Concorde (and the fact that it practically had two routes), it's probably worthwhile to point out that the UK has long had a very strong distinction between landside and airside, and airport security didn't change anywhere near as much here as it did in the US after 9/11: the risk of terrorist attacks on aircraft had long been around in the UK. The big change was not being allowed sharps in the cabin, from memory.
Security didn't deter from the LHR–JFK route before with security at the UK end, and I doubt it'd deter from it at the US end.
At London Gatwick you know first have to present your boarding pass at a first set of gates. They're horrible - travelling with children you easily get in a position where your child is on one side of the gate, and you can't get to them. Last time the gate refused to open for me after I'd sent my 6 year old through, and I had to walk off to the side with a supervisor while my son was alone on the other side, for the security guy to check my boarding pass details and let me through manually (the reason they refused to open, apparently, was that my son stood too close to the other side; my boarding pass was then marked as having been used to pass the gates, even though the gates never opened, so next try it was being rejected regardless)
Then there's the baggage x-ray and metal detection, after which my son routinely (this has happened every time at Gatwick) gets pulled aside for extra screening, which involves x-raying his shoes, and passing him through an extra scanner, and then patting him down. I usually don't have to, but if I don't it means I won't be able to accompany him through a process he already finds uncomfortable and scary.
Nobody has been able to explain why he always gets pulled aside, and it doesn't happen on the return journey from Oslo (most of our foreign trips are to visit family in Norway).
(Meanwhile we routinely forget to take bottles of water or juice out of our carry on, and nobody has ever noticed it until I've realised afterwards; in other words, the fluid restrictions only work on people who voluntarily hand it over and doesn't put it in their bags.)
So while security can be quite efficient now, for a substantial number of passengers it's gotten to be a real pain, and it's pretty much unpredictable enough that you have to plan for it to take time just in case.
It's $85 for 5 years, and realistically, yes, most of that money just goes to line the pockets of the politically connected. On the other hand, you can pretty consistently go from curb to club in 5 minutes, and you bypass the nude-o-scope.
I'm all for standing up for principle, but this one is already lost. TSA doesn't care if 10 ppm of the traveling population opt out. Google "managed inclusion" if you want to understand why organizing an opt-out protest on Thanksgiving (or generally encourage people to opt out) won't change anything.
The paper you referred to doesn't make any claims with regards to ionization - the effects considered are mainly having to do with the molecular dynamics behaviors of DNA.
Some airports have special priority lines for the business and first-class passengers. There are no security wait times if you have the money to skip the lines.
A background check and your fingerprints, because ..?
I recently landed in Heathrow after a looong time staying in Europe (yes, England's not Europe) only. I was literally shaking when I saw all the people going through a random scanner, looking into a camera, providing their fingerprints.
Ignoring that the system didn't even work half the time while I was watching and that it needed a supervisor that reset everything, brought the people back out of the 'check zone' to .. turn it off and on again: That's insane.
This is the amount I'm willing to pay to a crappy government to go easy on me:
This is the list of governments that are allowed to take my fingerprints outside of a criminal investigation(* ):
Again, I really really hope you were just kidding and making fun of a bad situation.
*: The next time my German ID runs out I _might_ have to do that for my own home country - and I still try to figure out ways to avoid that/let the ID run out (illegal) without a renewal etc. And I try to vote for the parties that aren't insane.
I can't speak for the poster, but I have global entry and share the same sentiment without sarcasm. The government didn't "take" my fingerprints, I gave them to it in exchange for skipping most of customs and domestic security screening. The interview was probably the most noninvasive interaction I've had with CBE. If you don't feel like s worthwhile for you, then don't do it. If the government gets a hard on for framing me, they have much more surefire and efficient methods than planting my fingerprints. Until they start making the normal screenings worse to try and force people into it (which I don't think is the case, the TSA has gotten a lot easier to deal with in the last few years) I don't see it as a miscarriage of justice.
My GE interview was a joke. The only question I was asked was about my move from Atlanta to SF. For some inexplicable reason, I was asked three or four times if there was any gap between living in the two cities, to which the answer was no: I moved directly from an apartment in one to an apartment in the other.
That was the full extent of the questioning, which lasted maybe 5 minutes.
Not sure if there are multiple models. The ones I saw had a gate (red/green, i.e. 'you can come in now' lights), and had you to put your hand down in a designated area / look into a camera.
Since I wasn't exactly able to move over and inspect the device from up close I admit that I just _assume_ that the hand thingy compares your fingerprints - I wouldn't know what else it could look at otherwise. Maybe it's just a bible and you have to solemnly swear not to be a terrorist, on camera. Looked weird from 10m away, everyone putting down their (right?) hand on the device, looking into the camera and waiting for the machine to say 'You are good to go'.
I don't plan to visit the US, ever. Personally I can easily state that I my desire to see some (probably) cool places over there isn't high enough to put up with the BS, professionally I am able to dodge any and all suggestions to go there so far - and will try to keep it that way (but that's the loophole: I won't sit on my hands and flat out refuse if my company forces me to go there. I will complain loudly and make sure that my unwillingness to go is heard though).
This does sound insane, and a bit different from my last experience, albeit 2007:
Get off plan, walk for a long way following signs towards arrivals exit, spot sign for UK residents/nationals, no queue, a sleepy fellow looks at my passport and face, then I walk through to the arrivals area and try to find the underground station.
It's those from outside the EU/EEA who have to do that. For those within, it's much the same, but also with e-Passport gates (that take a photo, compare with passport, etc.).
Great Britain lies on the European continental shelf, part of the Eurasian Plate. The United Kingdom is also culturally and politically affiliated with other European countries. Why is it not in Europe?
They are referring to Europe as a political entity not as the geographical feature. GB has generally considered itself separate from 'Europe' as a polity.
It would be like referring to someone from Cuba as 'American' because they are from North America. Technically true but people assume American means someone from the states.
In the UK, and particularly England which is a lot more euro-sceptic than the rest of the UK, it's a standing joke that the UK or England isn't part of Europe, and "Europe" is often used to refer to Europe or the EU excluding the UK.
Don't even bother visiting the US then. And no, even in VWP (Visa Waiver Program) and using a biometric passport, you still have to submit fingerprints and photo on the spot.
oh sorry I don't travel outside the eu (yet).
for the ID you CAN but it's not a MUST. currently not sure if it ever will be a MUST since the new id's feature still aren't there as promised. it's a complete failure. still I know have a way smaller format for my id which is great!
The fuel costs are just a function of ticket prices. The passenger pays the fuel prices.
Once BA worked out that most Concorde passengers didn't buy their own tickets, they increased pricing dramatically. The passengers didn't drop off.
In some markets, higher prices signal certain status which then allows even higher demand. Same with exclusive real estate, jewellery, artwork, etc. As long as supply is limited it's not necessarily a problem.
I can confirm. My SO is cabin crew. One of her trips is London, UK to Lagos, Nigeria. The passengers manage to buy out all the duty free onboard. This is in addition to the gifts in the luggage hold. She has actually seen arguments take place over duty free, i.e. someone buys up all the Taittinger, others would like a few bottles but are now locked out.
Sonic booms are far better understood now than they were back then — the research done on the basis on the XB-70 (i.e., the Oklahoma City sonic boom tests) is arguably less relevant than ever, as we understand better than ever how to effect sonic booms, especially with shape of the aircraft.
Turbojets are truly that much louder than the turbofans we're now used to. At the time it was only a bit louder than contemporary aircraft, but everything else got far quieter. Concorde is more comparable in engine noise to a modern fighter jet than it is to most commercial aircraft.
At the time it was built, it was a little bit noisier than the 707. The only issue is that while planes got much quieter (as the 707 was retired for example and new ones appeared), Concorde kept on flying...
It's always been seen to me as a supreme irony that a country that sells two-stroke leaf blowers and line trimmers by the chinese-container load was worried about a 4-times-day distant thunder-like rumble.
Much more is understood about the noise footprint now than in the '60s.
I used to live under the Concorde flight path in and out of Heathrow, and yes, it was noisy (even travelling subsonic). Every day at about 1000 there'd be this deep-throated roar and the windows would start rattling[ * ], I'd look up, and there'd be this beautiful delta-winged shape sliding through the sky.
It was completely unlike the noise a normal jet makes, more like a rocket engine than anything else. I can't say it particularly annoyed me; I liked knowing it came from Concorde.
Yep, it is a problem (though not on the ocean flight obviously). I'm pretty sure Boeing would have liked to sell a SST given what they spent back in the day and their teaming with NASA to figure out a way to reduce the sonic boom. http://www.nasa.gov/aero/centers_tackle_sonic_boom.html
Is there any real advantage for 'regular supersonic flights' these days? Shaving an hour or two off the flying time is all well and good, but on nearly every trip I spend more time in the airports and taxis than in the air. Perhaps greater time savings could be made elsewhere and with far less effort.
Supersonic aircraft wouldn't be used on shorter domestic routes. As you say, the time savings are insignificant. More importantly, sonic booms prohibit most over-land flights.
But supersonic transport could win for long-haul flights over ocean. Depending on the direction, SFO-TPE takes 11-14 hours. Going at mach 3 would cut that down to 4 or 5 hours. Airlines could charge significantly more for such speed. Faster trips also mean that each plane can make more trips per day. For a trans-pacific route, a 777 takes over 24 hours to go back-and-forth once. 300 passengers go west, 300 passengers go east. A mach 3 transport, even if it had half the capacity, could ferry more people in the same time period. If fuel costs were low enough (unlikely, I know), the supersonic craft could actually be more profitable than the 777.
Concorde didn't have the range for trans-pacific flights. If you compare its times on very long-range flights with today's flights they're much less impressive than shorter flights: its best JFK-Heathrow is under 3h (2:52:59) to a subsonic ~7h, but its best Heathrow-Sydney is 17h (17:03:45) to a subsonic ~24h.
Concorde had a range of 3900nmi (7200km/4500mi), a 777-200LR has a range of 8500nmi, an A340-500 HGW has a range of 9000nmi
The comment I replied to discussed supersonic transport in general, not the obsolete Concorde. That's why my comparison used a hypothetical SST with longer range and higher cruising speed.
Range aside, wasn't the problem with London-Sydney that most of the route is over land, and can't be supersonic for noise reasons? At least, IIRC, that's what killed the Concorde in the potentially very lucrative US east-west coast market.
Just remember the sonic boom thing was more of a political problem than anything else.
If say the US had come up with something else than just a wooden supersonic airliner (Boeing 2707), I guess swallowing the supersonic pill would have been easier.
Plus realistically, it's not like military planes are not allowed to fly supersonic over their own countries. Really, solutions, routes, compromises could have been found, it's just no one had the guts to.
When British Airways retired one of its Concorde to Seattle, it flew from New York / JFK to Seattle, it flew supersonic over Canada. Flight time: 3 hours and 55 minutes. Regular flight time is more like 5h30. Supersonic all the way would have been even quicker...
FWIW, this article doesn't concern regular supersonic flights but 'fly-pasts at air shows and made available for corporate and special events, as well as for private charter.'
As to your question, it rather depends on the cost, doesn't it?
To start with, it saved about 4 hours on the Paris/NYC connection, not "an hour or two." If it were only $400 more to save 4 hours of overseas travel, then many would jump at it, and find it a real advantage.
I really wonder how they could even do fly pasts at air shows.
The only technical reason (technical not economical) Concorde doesn't fly anymore is because the type certificate, aka the airworthiness of the aircraft, was surrendered by Airbus, hence grounding all the fleet and making it unlawful to fly it.
So to fly it, they would need that to be reinstated.
For the Avro Vulcan, they went through a different aerospace company for that.
I'd love to be wrong, but I doubt Airbus would let anyone fly one of its Concorde...
As far as I'm aware, XH558 flew on a Permit to Fly from the CAA, hence why it never left the UK. Note that being on a Permit to Fly restricts it to VFR.
Concorde wasn't $400 more than an equivalent flight. It was >$11,000 more than a similar comfort premium economy class seat, and that's after the British government had underwritten the losses from the design program (around $2000 per passenger per flight in today's money)
Certainly. But sandworm101 asked about regular supersonic flights as a general concept, and not specifically about Concorde.
FWIW, the full economics must note that people with a lot of money are more likely to hop on a business jet and get point to point service. When Concorde was designed, business jets that could fly non-stop between US and Europe had just barely entered the market. (The Gulfstream GII, May 4, 1968 vs. first demonstration flight of the Concorde 2 March 1969.)
I feel like the best use case is international flights. Being able to cut down the time significantly would be a huge improvement.
Honestly though I think shaving off an hour or two is worth quite a lot. There are many people who have conditions, like claustrophobia, people with knee and back issues or hell just regular people get uncomfortable when you're flying for hours and hours. My last two flights were both almost 6 hours each way and I was incredibly sore and ready to get off. It's anecdotal, sure, but I don't know a person who doesn't feel the same way.
And if those people flew international business/first, they'd be a lot more comfortable and it would likely be cheaper than an SST. The Concorde specifically was actually rather cramped. Certainly compared to today's seats up front in a widebody but even compared to first class seats of the time.For me, an 8-12 hour flight is a bit boring but, honestly, it's not really uncomfortable if you fly business and that's the relevant comparison to an SST.
BA now operates a number of the old Concorde flight numbers (BA1, notably) as business-class only flights on an A318 from London City to JFK, with a fuel stop (and customs and immigration pre-clearance at Shannon) on the westbound flight (due to London City's short runway). I do wonder if Concorde would be more profitable nowadays following that example, seating a very small number in standard business lie-flat seats. (Though maybe one doesn't actually need actual flat seats, given flights are all under four hours.)
LA-NY is a key route for SST but was blocked because it was overland. This was one of the main reasons it took forever to become profitable and also why only two airlines ever flew them, and were virtually given the planes.
Even spending two hours in the airport at each end doesn't even equal half the trip if I'm taking a 10-hour flight. And it's only 80% of the trip if I'm taking a 5-hour flight.
yeah, I used to fly London-San Francisco regularly. About 11 hour flight time. With hand luggage only, that came down to 16 hours door to door (based on hotel in Palo Alto or Menlo Park), of which 1h30 was travelling between home and London Heathrow.
The moment you need connecting flights is when you start racking up the extra time rapidly.
With the increased number of ultra-rich these days, Concorde or another SST is probably more viable then ever. It's certainly less ridiculous than talk of suborbital rocket planes.
The kid in me wants to see Concorde fly as an aircraft, but the working adult would see it as yet another toy for the very rich, undeserving of any special consideration from my ilk. When I see a ferrari drive by I think "cool car" but I certainly would be against any and all tax breaks or special treatment to keep it on the road. Mounting a Concorde on a special platform in the middle of the London Tames seems like a cheap tourist trap.
Worse yet, the plane on display would not even "fly" as a cheap tourist trap. The Concorde may be a fascination symbol of stagnation, the absolute peak of the lighting fast development during the first half-dozen decades of aviation, a snapshot from just before progress suddenly stopped to be anything else than "same thing, just maybe a little cheaper". This is all very exciting for aviation geeks and people who like to think a lot about the younger history of technology, but those won't fill a restaurant. People who have never used the Concorde just don't have the level of nostalgia for it as some of those few that have.
The kid in me wants to see Concorde fly as an aircraft, but the working adult would see it as yet another toy for the very rich, undeserving of any special consideration from my ilk.
Did you ever hear the term "jet set" used to describe the glamorous social elite, well that term comes from the days when international air travel was the exclusive preserve of the super rich. Nowadays you can jump on a plane for less than the cost of a meal at the airport (+ taxes of course). Small-minded attitudes like yours would have kept us living in caves because people in mud huts were the "undeserving rich".
> Small-minded attitudes like yours would have kept us living in caves because people in mud huts were the "undeserving rich".
Not having such cheap flights might ultimately have been for the better. Flying has become very cheap, but we're not paying the true cost in terms of environmental damage.
Put some consumption taxes in place and not only do I not begrudge the ultra rich their toys, I'm happy to bend the rules a little bit to enable it.
For example, want to waive the height restrictions so you can have airplane view so of Manhattan from your $100M penthouse? Sure, no problem. Want to pay the same property taxes as a $3 million apartment? That's a horse of a different color.
Concorde itself is a non-starter. The companies which know how to make the parts for it don't want to make the parts, and the agencies which would have to give regulatory approval for it to fly won't give the approval (especially without the parts).
If someone cracks the economic difficulties of supersonic passenger flight, maybe some other aircraft could do it. But Concorde is going to remain a museum piece.
Actually, I suspect the internet has all but killed the real value of the Concorde.The only thing it had to offer was NY-London in 3.5 hours instead of 7.5 hours. There are so few cases where those 4 hours make any difference, particularly with the advances in telepresence, that there's just no real market for the service. The seats are all technically First Class, but First Class in a Concorde was really not that much better than coach in a subsonic aircraft. Personally, I'd take an 8 hour flight in a 747 with a seat that lays flat rather than pay the same price for a leather coach seat for 4 hours.
747 seats didn't lay flat at the time but, to your basic point, the real market for the Concorde--such as it was--was the international lawyer who had to jet over to London for the day. And it was relatively cramped compared to first class on a 747 and certainly compared to today's wide bodies. I'm not sure how much the Internet has to do with it as the Concorde never really did have a market but probably the "need" for 4 hour trips to New York or London have declined in any case.
Sure but to the ultra rich the Concorde lets them wake up and decide they want to eat dinner at the best restaurant in London that night, then fly back home to party all night in NYC.
Except not really, that's still 7 hours of flying. Lets say 1 hour transit from airport to restaurant and 2 hours of eating, you've already spent 11 hours on that dinner.
1 hour transit time to the airport? You need to get a new helicopter pilot.
Seriously though, you're forgetting timezones. Hop on the jet at 11am NYC time and be in London at 7:30pm London time. Leave London at midnight and be back in NYC at 10:30pm NYC time. You're not going to be exhausted from travel because it's first class all the way and you don't even need to pack bags.
Many bigger cities seem to actually be surprisingly lacking on viable (and legal) landing sites for helicopters... Trust me, I've tried.
You may not be exhausted but sitting stationary for 7 hours just to get dinner doesn't seem like such a fun thought, even in first class. (The novelty wears off very quickly)
Security is hardly an issue flying privately, I've had experiences where we've landed and all stepped out of the plane just looking around the airfield waiting for someone to come say something... and nobody coming.
> It's certainly less ridiculous than talk of suborbital rocket planes.
as far as in understand the X-15 is more simple than Concorde. The suborbital and ICBM-ballistic tech is well understood and has been in constant use for half a century, where is Mach 3+ aircraft territory is still almost no-go zone. Compare to high Mach the suborbital/ballistic is just more energy efficient.
Yes, but you aren't going to see wealthy people (generally older) going through the astronaut training, tying in with 5-point harnesses, climbing into a vertically-mounted fuselage, then pulling 3+Gs on "takeoff" followed by several vomit-filled minutes of weightlessness before reversing the entire process.
Imagine the chaos of a dozen members of the general public experiencing zero gravity for the first time. Better bring lots of towels ... and an umbrella.
It's very easy to dramatically underestimate the amount of fuel needed for an effective suborbital trajectory. If you want to travel half-way round the world, then delta-V wise, you're not very far off actually getting into orbit.
That article quotes 7km/s for a 10,000km trip, compared to about 8km/s for LEO.
The X-15 (and SpaceshipOne, for that matter) was never trying to actually go anywhere; it just hopped out of the atmosphere and come down again very close to where it took off, with a delta-V of about 1.5km/s.
It's worth getting a copy of KSP and actually trying this. It's eye-opening.
What about electric cars? At this point most of the wealthy get all the tax breaks from owning these cars. And they don't contribute to the upkeep of the roads since no gas tax.
The wealthy paying for expensive electric cars (I'm sure you're insinuating Tesla) are subsidizing the build out of charging infrastructure as well as a manufacturing base for electric vehicles and batteries.
Those tax benefits the wealthy receive are a less risky subsidy than directly giving electric vehicle and charging infrastructure companies funds directly. Its a balance between doing nothing and doing something more drastic (full disclaimer: we aren't doing enough, and we should be pouring buckets of money into electrification of mobility, but that's an argument for another thread).
With regards to gas taxes, most people already aren't paying their fair share of gas/road taxes (the US highway trust fund is completely broke). I'm not sure electric vehicles are contributing to the problem as much as the existing 253 million internal combustion vehicles already on the road (not counting heavy trucks, that contribute even more to road damage).
It's true that user fees - gas taxes and tolls - for motor vehicle drivers in the US pay far less than the costs of the roads they use. I think it's roughly 50%.
However, assuming that by "electrification of mobility" you mean "everybody who's driving their own car keeps driving their own car, only it's electric rather than gas-powered", then I believe you're looking at it all wrong. In cities where people increasingly live, single-person cars have huge negative externalities aside from fossil fuel consumption, starting with congestion and moving on to over-building of parking, road deaths, sprawl, etc. Electric cars won't solve all of these, and neither will self-driving cars, or self-driving electric cars.
Instead, what we need for mobility in cities is better land use, with dense areas or corridors, safe walking and bicycling infrastructure, frequent and convenient mass transit, and congestion charging.
Road wear is proportional to the fourth power of axle weight. It's the lorries that should be paying for road upkeep; the amount of wear from cars is negligible.
Money is fungible, through progressive taxation those people (unless they are hedge fund managers who pay lower tax than almost everyone else) heavily contribute to the tax base even if it isn't earmarked for roads to the extent gas is.
> (unless they are hedge fund managers who pay lower tax than almost everyone else)
Everyone whose income is largely derived through long-term capital gains does this, really; hedge-fund managers just happen to be people who seem like they are working for someone else but manage to get paid for that work in a way that gets them taxed like capitalists.
(Which might explain while a few notable actual major capitalists -- who don't favor general reform of taxation on capital -- have come out in favor of reforms that would tax hedge-fund manager earnings like normal income.)
Why deny rich people their spending? Do you wish that exclusive art be denied from rich people? Exclusive property?
What's wrong with some tax breaks for old classic cars to keep them on the road? They're part of the modern design language and aesthetic and just as important as any important architecture. If you see road/fuel taxes as a cost of using the public road network then providing lower taxes to vehicles who barely drive 500 miles in a year is hardly a burden given the benefit that seeing old classic cars brings to people. Besides, the majority of people driving old cars (even old ferraris) are not mega wealthy but people on more regular incomes who are dedicated to their hobby.
Putting any type of barrier in front of wealthy people spending on this type of technology is a net lose for us all. A private SST would not be built by exploiting workers or robbing pension funds.
As for cheap Tourist traps - London is crawling with them already, including the London Eye and the battleship in WW2 camo.
I flew Concorde right after it came back into service in late 2001, right after the crash. Highlights were feeling the heat on the windows and seeing the curvature of the Earth. Downsides were tight seats, and the fact that it didn't save that much time vs. a conventional jet. But, it was amazing, and I still wear my Concorde cufflinks. It still seems complete uneconomic.
It's really weird to see a frequent fliers' club come together and open their wallets with the sort of dollar values normally seen at, say, alumni events for a major university, or perhaps a charity fundraiser for an ongoing natural disaster.
Then again, when one reads things like "A particularly extravagant excursion was a one-day visit to the pyramids in Cairo in 1982; priced at £780, it was marketed as the most expensive day trip in the world," and ponders the sort of mindset where "most expensive in the world" is considered a marketing point, F. Scott Fitzgerald does come to mind: "Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me."
The French and the English built the Concorde in the late 60's and the French also built the HST known as "TGV" in the early 70's, a train that to this day (with newer iterations) holds speed records for a conventional train (proof that the initial design was excellent). After all this, people still like to joke about how the French are "not good engineers".
Interesting trivia: the maximum external dimension of the Concorde's fuselage is 3.32m, whereas the overall diameter of the GE90-115B, the engine used on some 777s, is 3.429m. It's a very narrow plane.
Supersonic commercial passenger travel is almost certainly dead for the foreseeable future. (Small supersonic bizjets are another issue entirely.) Here's why:
To start with, Concorde was a high-maintenance airframe, more like a military aircraft than an airliner. Each airliner averaged about a day of maintenance in the hangar per two hours of flight, so made one return trans-Atlantic crossing per week. It also burned roughly 100 tons of fuel shipping 100 passengers between NYC and London in 3h30m, compared to a 747 burning the same amount of fuel to ship 450 passengers between London and San Francisco; about 5-10x the fuel burn per passenger-mile.
But the reason it eventually tanked in the market ...
Suppose you're flying London-NYC, post-9/11. You can queue up for security checks 2 hours before you take your seat, then either fly on a regular subsonic airliner or Concorde. After your flight you spend 1 hour getting through immigration and customs at JFK. Total time on security/queueing: about 3 hours. Total time in flight: 3h30m or 7h. So Concorde only cuts your end-to-end travel time from 10h to 6h30m.
Note that a Concorde seat is a cramped, narrow coach-class seat. Okay, there's first-class food and drink and a buffet in the departure lounge: but it's still coach-class leg-room. Meanwhile, a first class seat on a 747 gets you a lie-flat bed along with your posh nosh ...
But if you have the money to fly Concorde, you have the money to pay for a seat on a private bizjet or a charter service like Netjets. It's still subsonic, but you by-pass the entire check-in/security/boarding/immigration/customs mess. Just drive through a gate and up to your bizjet, board it, and it takes off when you're ready for it, not vice versa. And on arrival, an immigration officer comes out to meet you and stamp your passport (if you pay extra -- part of the service). Travel time: 7h.
The takeaway is that the super-rich/first class jet-set passengers deserted Concorde because they could get the same travel time for the same money on private business jets, without being treated like cattle by the TSA.
Even if you could wave a magic wand and streamline the queueing/bureacracy for Concorde passengers, there remains the fact that if you re-started services tomorrow they'd only be able to manage one flight in each direction per day (if they had a fleet of six hulls magically preserved and ready to fly). Whereas the bizjet is ready to fly whenever the passenger wants it.
Upshot: mass supersonic jet travel is dead for the time being. A market may exist for supersonic bizjets (and indeed Aerion claim to be bringing a Mach 1.5 bizjet to market within the next 5 years -- but someone or other has been saying some variation on this theme since about 1990). The only way we'll see supersonic passenger airliners the size of or larger than Concorde again is if we get a propulsion technology breakthrough that makes it feasible to run a scheduled daily-or-more-frequent service across distances that make it desirable -- LAX to Tokyo or Beijing, London to Sydney, and so on. Nuclear, anyone?
All manner of transportation and industry is contributing to global warming. Unfortunately, that is typically not an important factor in these kinds of decisions.
http://www.pprune.org/tech-log/423988-concorde-question.html
It starts off slow with a technical question, but gradually pulls in some of the plane's designers (and even a flight attendant) discussing every aspect of the plane's design and operation. One of the most amazing aviation threads on the Internet.