For more than 20 years, the Concorde has been travelling across the Atlantic: fast as a bullet, the world's only supersonic passenger plane can make it from Paris to New York in less than four hours. Ordinary jets take twice as long. In spite of her age, the Concorde is still breaking records. On August 16th, 1995, travelling around the globe took her only 31 hours.
With the Concorde, a team of British and French engineers won an expensive race against the Russians. Mastering the physics proved particularly difficult: at Mach 2, the airplane´s needle-shaped nose needs to resist a heat of more than 260°F.
At first, the Russians led the race. Yet at the aeronautic show LeBourget 1973, their Tupolew 144 crashed above Paris. The Concorde proved a disaster for the West, too, at least in economic terms. When serial production was bound to start, 14 out of 16 airlines withdrew their options – they feared the Concorde’s ravenous kerosene appetite in a time of oil scarcity. Today, only 14 Superjets are in service. The last one will operate until 2005. By then, a follow-up project may be already completed: American and French teams are gearing up for a new race to build the super jet of the 21th Century.
So far, NASA’s Hyperjet project, a co-production with Russia, is ahead. The new supersonic is designed to carry 300 passengers from continent to continent at a speed of 1500 miles an hour. For supersonic testing, NASA has hired the second, still existing prototype of the Tupolew 144. The budget for basic research alone is projected at more than 2 billion dollars until 2002.
With original footage from the 50s and 60s, our documentary recaptures the eventful tale of the Concorde and her sister projects: test flights in the Antarctic and the desert, political poker and protests, and the visionaries’ long fight to make their dream come true in spite of the obstacles.
Pioneers like test pilots and national heroes Andre Turcat and Brian Trubshaw tell their personal supersonic tales, and todays’ Concorde staff gives insights into the Concorde’s exclusive, jet set clientele. Furthermore, we visit the designers of the supersonics for the next millennium: who will be the first to build a worthy successor to the legendary Thundering Beauty?
Length: 54 minutes.
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