According to ‘Stuck on the drawing board’, the UK tried to cancel Concorde a number of times in its early days but couldn’t due to the way the contract had been written.
If it had been able to cancel the aircraft, could France have picked up the whole cost of the programme and if so what does that do for its funding of other aviation projects?
How much money would the UK have saved had it been able to cancel the aircraft and what would have been the chances of it being spent on other aviation projects?
By: XL391 - 16th January 2007 at 08:14
I submit there was zero technology spinoff.
A supersonic airliner?? :confused: If there was zero technology why did it take so long/cost so much/not use the tech today??
By: alertken - 15th January 2007 at 17:43
R&D+14 production cost £1Bn.each, France/UK (in 1960s’/70s’ money!), plus the operating subsidies paid to BA until Mar.’84 (AF, 2003). France could have done it solo (the only fabrication novelty was in sustained-hot power/big-reheat – selection factor for BSEL’s TSR.2 Olympus), but not affordably, concurrently with its remarkable and near-solo triad of nuclear deterrence – silo IRBM, air, SSBN. France did foresee benefit to Mirage IV (first flight 1959, intended for very long Service – 2006!) in piling up data on structural fatigue in prolonged supersonic operation.
UK entered 29 Nov.’62 upon “this profitable modern eccentricity” (PM Macmillan) as an entry ticket to EEC. That, and Mirage benefit, were remote: we truly did it to show US we could, thus to bury gloom from Comet/Suez (UK) and Algeria/Suez (Fr.). If Mac had cancelled after CDG’s Non 24 Jan.’63, UK would have put the saved money to non-Aero uses. Conservatives would have entered Oct.’64 Election leaving it in taxpayers’ pockets – to their ballot benefit (no 1964 Healey! Labour’s majority was 4 seats). He did not chop it because he had told his son-in-law Minister J.Amery to omit cancellation clause from the Agreement, to stop Sud/SNECMA thieving our brains and doing their own thing.
Economically this project was disastrous. So, a challenge: what payoff can anyone identify? Some extra ticket sales were captured by (BA), though many were cannibalised from their own First Class. I submit there was zero technology spinoff. There!
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January 14, 2007 at 7:53 pm