There hasn’t been much for National Review readers to celebrate this summer. Now, at last, some good news: This week, the U.S. granted a patent for a new supersonic jet.
It took the Jamestown settlers five months to get from England to the New World. Transatlantic travel has been in demand ever since; after it became routine, passenger lines began fighting for the fastest crossing time the way industrialists competed to build the tallest skyscraper. The first purpose-built transatlantic steamer was the Great Western; in 1838, she steamed from the west of England to New York in 15 days, 12 hours. In 1851, an American steamer named the Baltic became the first ship to cross from England to New York in under 10 days: 9 days, 19 hours, 26 minutes. In 1882, the British ship Alaska broke the week barrier, crossing in 6 days, 23 hours, 48 minutes. Before she became a casualty of the First World War, the Lusitania became the first ocean liner to cross the Atlantic in under 5 days: 4 days, 19 hours, 52 minutes. After that, airplanes took over.
The first non-stop transatlantic flight was in June 1919 — from Newfoundland to Ireland in 16 hours, 12 minutes. A speed revolution. The first regular transatlantic passenger flights began in 1939 — 27 hours, New York to Lisbon, on a Boeing Clipper. The first non-stop jet flight was made by an English Electric Canberra bomber in 1951 — 4 hours, 37 minutes, Ireland to Newfoundland. Transatlantic jet passenger service started just seven years later — 10 hours, London to New York, in a De Havilland Comet.
The next big step was supersonic flight. In 1947, Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier; after that, supersonic passenger travel was inevitable. In 1976, the supersonic Concorde entered service; its average transatlantic flight time was under three and a half hours. Mankind was doing well. If progress had continued apace, a New Yorker in 2015 should have been able to leave for London at 11, lunch at Heathrow, and be back at JFK before noon. But things went horribly wrong.
Angry leftists led a campaign to ban the Concorde from landing at JFK, fearing that the supersonic plane’s sonic booms would destroy the tranquility of airport-adjacent property. In April 1976, Congress banned supersonic passenger planes from landing in the United States. The ban was overturned by the courts in 1977, after it was pointed out that the Concorde — which flew at subsonic speeds around the airport — was in fact quieter than conventional jets. Never mind: Like irrational fears about nuclear power or GMOs or vaccines, sonic-boom panic sustained anti-Concorde campaigns, which successfully throttled its business. When the Concorde was announced, airlines around the world placed combined orders for more than a hundred planes. By the time it made its first flight, a quarter of the orders had been withdrawn. By the time the production line was up and running, three-quarters of the remaining orders had been canceled. Only 20 Concordes were actually built; all 20 were bought by the British and French governments, which had paid for the Concorde’s development. They were flown by BOAC and Air France.
When Pan Am launched the first transatlantic passenger flights in 1939, a round-trip ticket cost $675 — which is about $11,000 in today’s money. Clipper flights were even more exotic than Concorde flights; nonetheless, within a few decades, they had driven ocean liners out of business. Because so few Concordes made it into service, service prices never came down, part prices never came down, operation never became routine. In 2003, the Concorde died, and mankind did something it does rarely: It took a step backward.
There haven’t been many technological steps backward. The United States gave up on manned space exploration after Apollo, and nuclear power after Three Mile Island. Europe gave up on plumbing after the fall of the Roman Empire. We could be on Mars now; our energy could be dirt cheap; Europe could have saved itself a thousand years of excrement-filled streets. Because of the Concorde’s failure, we might be permanently stuck having to spend an entire day flying somewhere, when no plane trip anywhere should ever take more than half an hour.
So thank God for Airbus. Finally we — as a species — are back on track.
So thank God for Airbus. Finally we — as a species — are back on track. Actually, Airbus isn’t the first aerospace firm to talk about bringing back supersonic passenger flight — but it’s the biggest and the most credible. An Airbus neo-Concorde is downright plausible. The new Airbus design, we’re told, will be able to fly from London to New York in one hour — two and a half hours quicker than the Concorde. Its top speed will be 2,500 mph to Concorde’s 1,350. And, for the hippies, it will have boom-dampeners, so the noise won’t bother western Long Island, and so it will be able to fly overland.
Of course, the one, big, nagging problem is that Airbus is an Anglo-French company. Are we going to take that?
I’m sure Boeing and Lockheed and Grumman all have e-mail addresses.
— Josh Gelernter writes weekly for NRO and is a regular contributor to The Weekly Standard.