Twenty years ago, on this day, October 24, 2003, the last flight of the white elephant known as Concorde took place. The loss of a plane upon take-off in Paris had been the last nail in the coffin.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 375.6ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that there had been a disaster with a Concorde that had crashed while taking off at Orly because something had fallen off the previous plane and got spat into a fuel tank. But longer term Concorde has always been a prestige vanity project. It had never made money.
What I think we can learn from this
Well, the history of Concorde is intimately tied to the history of atmospheric science, and indeed, the birth of the modern environmental movement because of concerns over sonic booms, and ozone depletion (the late 60s and early 70s are full of this). And you could argue, I think with just cause, that the Heritage Foundation, the right-wing think tank in the United States really came into existence because of the successful defeat of SSTS by Congress, following a battle against supersonic air travel by American environmentalists, etc.
More broadly it’s the 20 year anniversary, so there might be some “think pieces” about the retreat from technology and human optimism no longer being a thing, shrinking from our Promethean heritage and duties, because people can knock out for one and a half 1000 words about this crap easily enough.
What happened next
Well, there’s always new planes on the drawing board. They’re lighter and faster and all the rest of it, apparently. But not supersonic.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
