For those of you who still dream of supersonic flight, today’s story may provide a glimmer of hope.
Last weekend a former Concorde engineer performed a preliminary engine inspection on one of the Mach 2 airliners in hopes of green-lighting the resurrection of the Concorde as a flying piece of aviation history instead of a mothballed museum display.
The supersonic Concorde last flew in 2003 and several of them have been sitting as museum pieces ever since. But almost as soon as the engines were shut down for the last time, there has been a small group of people who have been trying to get at least one of them flying again. Until recently, much of the effort has been seen as mostly a long shot. But now there has been a positive step taken towards getting the massively powerful jet engines up and running again.
Saturday’s preliminary inspection of the Rolls Royce engines of a Concorde at the Air Museum in Le Bourget, Paris went as well as could be hoped. An engineer used a borescope camera that is commonly used to peak deep inside of engines for inspections. After a thorough seven hours, the engineer said the engines are in great shape.
Much like the aeroplane itself, the effort to get a Concorde flying again is a joint effort between two organisations,one from Britain and one from France. The groups next hope to get the engines running and follow up with taxi testing. The end goal is to get a Concorde flying again in time for a fly over at the 2012 London Olympics. More photos and videos of the inspection can be seen here.
Unlike MIT’s futuristic design that could use 70 percent less fuel and produce less noise than modern airliners, the Concorde burned roughly six times as much fuel as a modern airliner and was a whole lot noisier than any other commercial aircraft. But with a cruise speed of 1,300 miles per hour, it did get your from point A to point B about twice as fast as a 747.
No comments:
Post a Comment