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I could have sworn the Concorde was still glass-breaking loud at 40,000. Reardless, NASA is working on getting rid of the sonic boom http://www.sciencealert.com/nasa-is-building-a-jet-that-brea...


I used to live under the Concorde flight path near Heathrow. Twice a day there'd be this crackling rumble and all the windows would shake; and this was flying subsonic.

Concorde was really, really loud --- a lot of that was due to being a really old plane with old engines (aircraft have gotten way quieter since the 1970s), but even back then it was considered loud:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3581192.stm

It was exempt from the usual noise regulations and on takeoff it'd set of car alarms in the airport carparks.

I still miss it, despite the noise. I'd hear the noise and look up, and there'd be this beautiful delta-wing shape slipping through the clouds...


It's really hard to quiet down Turbojets. Turbofans are much easier, but they don't work well at supersonic speeds.


I lived under the Concorde flight path near Dulles. I couldn't hear it, but we'd go out side to watch it fly over every now and then.


Modern aircraft are so dull! Efficient, safe, cheap, reliable even, relatively comfortable, but so boring. Even the A380 is a boring, and that's an office block with wings. How can something so incredible be so deadly dull?

...yeah, yeah, I know, being dull is an accomplishment in itself, and the duller aircraft are the better they are, and the one thing that every passenger pilot in the world wants is a thoroughly uninteresting flight. But, dammit, they're still so dull.

I miss Concorde.


A380 passes overhead here every day on final, it is uncanny how it just seems to hang there on account of it being so large that relative to its speed it takes a while to move it's own length. Sure it's still going quite fast but it doesn't seem that it does and this sets of some 'it's going to fall' alarm at the back of my mind. Weirdest feeling.


Maybe? I don't think the Concorde ever flew over the Ozarks, or indeed any location in which I found myself while they were still flying.

Boom's Kenrick Waithe worked on that same project when he was at Gulfstream and when he was at NASA.




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