Posts about: "Intakes" [Posts: 64 Pages: 4]

Not as far as I know - the first UK "production" Concorde intended for testing rather than line flying (G-BBDG) did end up as a donor for spares, but it wasn't a case of an aircraft without a home - it was just the way things turned out - they never intended to sell it to an airline. In fact that very airframe is the one now living at Brooklands. Several things kiboshed Concorde as a going concern in the '70s - not least of which was the protest movement in the US making US airlines shy away. Above all it was not an issue with the project itself, but the early '70s oil crisis which had the most drastic effect. In fact, while the UK government effectively wrote off the cost in the '70s, the profits BA ended up making could have made a sizeable dent in the development costs.

There was a B model on the drawing board which could very well have been capable in that arena.

CONCORDE SST : CONCORDE B

In fact, BA significantly underestimated what customers would be willing to pay for Concorde service at first - it was this realisation that enabled them to turn a profit!

Well, that was kind of the crux of the issue. Boeing had already effectively bet the company on the 747 project, and the 2707 still had technical issues on paper that the Concorde project had already solved. As far as my reading suggests, the runaway success of the 747 in fact owed a lot to the issues that ended up swamping the DC-10 and L-1011 - essentially gifting Boeing a market leading position and rescuing the company from the abyss - the 2707 was cancelled long before that became a reality though. In effect, before the success of the 747 was a done deal, Boeing couldn't stretch to doing both.

Superb aircraft, superb thread

I would like to know how susceptible both the clever intakes and the Olympus engines were to damage from bird ingestion, and if it ever happened in flight. I assume the answer might lie in the positioning of the ramps at takeoff and bird inhabited altitudes?

Also, a theme throughout the thread has been that the two projects of the era that people wanted to work on were Apollo and Concorde. My question is; were there any companies (and particularly individuals) who were lucky enough to work in some part (large or small) on both of these marvels of engineering?

I would also be very interested to hear:
i) From the pilots - what the "worst" (both subjectively and objectively if you like) situation or failure was that you trained for in the sim or on a real aircraft.
ii) From the engineers - the "Concorde factor" aside, how was she to work on and how did her systems compare in terms of ease of maintenance to regular passenger aircraft of the day? What were the jobs/events most and least looked forward to?
iii) Any more about the de-tune facility in some of the pictures posted earlier - was its sole function to hold the bird in place and quieten the engine noise, or did it serve any other purpose (e.g. did it contain any measuring instruments).

Disclaimer: Not a pilot/engineer.

Getting somewhat closer to the topic - does anyone know what the Tu-144 used for computing? The NASA report on the Tu-144LL says that they had a digital controls for the engines, but since those were new engines the control system was probably a good deal more modern than the original. I can't see any mention of how the intakes were controlled, or what the original engines used.

And really on-topic, was there any work done towards updating this for Concorde-B? Or did they never get that far? Or was the plan to just keep using exactly the same stuff, since it was already working so well?

According to this, 5500-6000 feet/1700 meters

Heritage Concorde

IIRC from one of the previous posts here, the strong differential required also defined the normal descent/deceleration timing and distance.

Power could only be reduced to 94% (N1 or N2, I forget which) or there would not be enough "bleed" air available to maintain the cabin altitude at TOD.
(although I could have misinterpreted that - it may have had more to do with maintaining the oblique inlet shocks, or hydraulics, or some such.)