The race to Mach 2.0 at scale
summary
Anglo‑French Concorde reaches Mach 2 supercruise and crosses London–New York in about 3h15m by using slender delta vortex lift, a droop nose for landing visibility, fuel moved aft for trim, and fuel used as a heat sink — afterburners only for takeoff and transonic. Development costs hit £1.134 billion (≈1600% overrun), only 14 aircraft enter service (7 each to British Airways and Air France), and cruise economy sits near 17 passenger‑miles/gallon versus 33–73 for subsonic types.
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chapters (20)
- 0:00Start
- 1:04Supersonic Flight
- 1:57Supermarine Spitfire
- 2:31The Sound Barrier
- 5:15The Delta Wing
- 7:08Slender Delta Wing
- 10:01The First Supersonic Bomber
- 10:26Sputnik 1
- 16:43Swing Wing Mechanism
- 18:16What Is Kinetic Heating
- 20:09Trimming the Plane
- 21:19Afterburners
- 23:57Soviet Iron Curtain
- 31:06Sales
- 32:21Sonic Booms
- 33:49Was Concorde Successful
- 35:59The Availability Heuristic
- 36:40They Were Given the Task of Building a Plane That Could Carry a Hundred Passengers across the Atlantic Faster than the Speed of Sound and They Came Up with a Machine That Was Purpose-Built To Do Exactly that a Plane That Was Beautiful Not because They Wanted It To Be but because It Had To Be To Fly That Far that Fast a Plane That Was So Innovative that It Felt Plucked from the Future Even When It Was 25 Years Old and Being Forced into an Early Retirement the Designers and Builders of Concorde Must Have Considered It Very Successful Indeed
- 40:06We Tear Ourselves Down because Our Brains Are Lazy by Nature So Here's My Challenge to You Zoom Out Think about the Impact That You Want To Have in Life the Things You Actually Care Deeply about Rather You Respond to that Email Today or Deliver that Project this Quarter May Be Important but It's Likely Not Enduring some of the Relationships You Build along the Way Will Be Your Brain Will Stay in Shortcut Mode if You Let It Just Going with the Flow of Events around You
- 40:27Some of the Relationships You Build along the Way Will Be Your Brain Will Stay in Shortcut Mode if You Let It Just Going with the Flow of Events around You so You Have To Choose To Live Intentionally To Remember that There's Far More to Life than What You'Re Feeling Right this Moment because this Is Lead Developer Many of Us in this Room Have the Added Privilege of Helping the Folks on Our Teams To Do this As Well Helping Them Realize that Today's Failure Is Not a Forever Failure Helping Them Understand the Long Term Successes They Don't Even Realize They'Re Having Helping Them Make Plans for Even Bigger Things in the Future
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