Interesting Links for 27-01-2025

[andrewducker]

1. Austin rents have fallen for nearly two years. Because they build lots of new homes

(tags:housing economics Texas USA )

2. Storm Éowyn brings down 15 trees in Edinburgh's Botanic Gardens, including one from 1859.

(tags:trees edinburgh storm )

3. Outgoing Muslim Council of Britain leader Zara Mohammed criticises lack of government contact

(tags:Islam UK government )

4. This is the Only Photo of the Concorde Flying at Supersonic Speed

(tags:airplanes speed photos history )

Comments

[simont]

Two more or less silly thoughts about #4:

1. I see that it's very difficult to get another equally fast aircraft to fly alongside Concorde to take the photo. But nowadays I assume they wouldn't have bothered – they'd just have sent up a Concorde specially modified with a highly reinforced fold-out selfie stick. :-)

2. After all that, it's a shame that there's nothing visible in the image that indicates supersonic speed! You'd hope for mysterious coronal discharges, or Star Wars hyperspace effects, or some visible effect of weird vorticity off the wingtips, or at the very least a few cartoon *whoosh* lines behind the plane. They might as well have just slowed the thing down to subsonic speed and taken a picture like that – it'd have looked exactly the same and been cheaper.

[autopope]

You missed the curvature of the Earth visible on the horizon behind Concorde. It's clearly at very high altitude, and Concorde's wings didn't produce enough lift to cruise that high without going transsonic/supersonic.

The more surprising aspect is that the Tornado, even on full afterburner, could go high enough to snap Concorde on a speed run.

I've seen one other shot of a supersonic Concorde, but it's not press/repro quality -- video shot from the flight deck of another Concorde flying a reciprocal course! One bird heading for LHR, the other heading for JFK -- a daily route and they often crossed paths, albeit a few miles apart and at different altitudes. It was only in view for a couple of seconds, those birds moved fast.

[bens_dad]

Ladies and gentlemen, we are slowing down so that the super-sonic fighter plane alongside can get a decent shot.

After multiple attempts to get the perfect shot, Concorde had to reduce its speed from Mach 2 to Mach 1.5-1.6 to allow the Tornado crew to position themselves.

[autopope]

There was a documented incident in the late 70s/early 80s when a USAF SR-71 Blackbird, cruising over the Caribbean, was given a conflict alert by ATC (this was before TCAS was a thing) and told to turn to avoid traffic coming its way at 70,000 feet and Mach 2.

Yes, an SR-71 had to dodge a Concorde on a tourist trip.

While Concorde didn't usually go over Mach 2 in service -- fuel burn was too high, and they had to burn a lot of fuel just to run the air conditioning to stop the passengers from catching fire -- it's confirmed that during the test program, Brian Trubshaw (the chief test pilot) took one of the prototypes up to Mach 2.4 and held it there for half an hour.

And NATO air forces used regular Concorde flights as practice for intercepting Soviet supersonic bombers over the sea -- Tu-160 Blackjacks and Tu-23M Backfires -- because Concorde was a good match for their attack speed and altitude. It was also almost impossible to catch from astern.

1.

[channelpenguin]

The only surprise here is that it wasn't effectively blocked by all those who profit from high rents and high property prices. Which seems the usual case.

Re: 1.

[juan_gandhi]

Yep. A rare case.

[ckd]

I've also taken a photo of Concorde at supersonic speed...just not of the outside.

[andrewducker]

Ooh! How was it?

[ckd]

Quite enjoyable, though not particularly luxurious inside (the fuselage was quite narrow) and with a limited view even from my window seat (small windows were necessary to limit the speed of decompression in case of a failure). The particular aircraft I flew aboard is now on display at the Smithsonian.

[andrewducker]

You've ridden in history!