The announcement

that the

Anglo-French supersonic passenger plane Concorde is to cease operations is

another step back from the big-technology do-it-because-we-can enthusiasms

of the 20th century. Concorde was a government project, like the Apollo

program–commercially it was a joke. (The principal booster on the British

side was Anthony Wedgewood-Benn, a hard-left socialist and “Minister of

Technology” in one of the Labour govts of the 1960s.) I confess to a slight

temperamental weakness in favor of these grand state-financed

projects–Apollo was magnificent!–but on the whole, I think Concorde’s

demise is to be welcomed. (It was originally supposed to be named

“Concord,” by the way, but the “e” was added from deference to the French.)