OT: My favorite speed related anecdote.

"UKPDXWRX" (ukpdxwrx) 05/06/2014 at 02:03 • Filed to: None

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It's sort of hard to wrap your head around things that are really fast sometimes. For example: everyone knows a figher jet is fast. But fighter jets don't really take the same trips we do so it's sort of hard to frame in our heads just how fast fast really is.

However, everyone in my neck of the woods was given an incredible lesson in what real speed really is a couple years ago when some yahoo in a floatplane drifted into Obama's airspace during a visit to Seattle.

Now, because jets are fast, Seattle's air defense is covered by Air National Guard F-15's based of Portland, Oregon. On first thought that seems kind of odd right? Are we leaving Seattle in the lurch?

I live in Portland I often drive to Seattle. If I do a respectable 70-80mph it takes me 2.5-3hours (4 with traffic.) Three long hours, sitting in a chair, going quite fast by some peoples standards. If you have a lead foot you might get it down to 2:15 or so.

If you were in a Cessna you can do pretty well for yourself! At 130-140 knots, you might get that down to an hour or a little less.

However when the Air Force decides to be in Seattle in a hurry, it's wheels up, light the burners, gain some altitude and haul some ass. How fast?

Remember - me, sitting in my car three hours. Enough time for a passenger to watch Lord of the Rings.

F-15 with supersonic clearance?

10 fucking minutes.

including takeoff and acceleration time.

If you gave them a running start they could do it in 7. Seven minutes. Silly business.

If you're in Seattle right now, go put on Stairway to Heaven. By the time the songs over some guy that was just 10 minutes driving distance from downtown Portland could by flying over Seattle blowing some shit up.

How about that commuter flight from PDX to SFO you take once a month. Two hours in that turboprop? 22 minutes in the Eagle.

I think about this literally every time I have to take the monotonous drive up North and the drive seems that much longer.

TL;dr - Cars are cool. Jets are fucking awesome.

Rainbow > UKPDXWRX 05/06/2014 at 02:17

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And this is why I hate everyone who killed the Concorde.

Singhjr96 > Rainbow 05/06/2014 at 02:23

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The funny/ironic thing about the Concorde is that the airlines that used to have them actually started to fly them more slowly. Not because of the sonic boom, or gas, etc. But because they passengers complained they were getting to the destination too fast. The passengers wanted to spend more time on the concord, so as a result, the airlines slowed them down to prolong the time onboard.

Manuél Ferrari > Singhjr96 05/06/2014 at 02:28

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Really?

Wow

Idiots

operator2222 > UKPDXWRX 05/06/2014 at 02:30

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Good post

+1

Do like

Singhjr96 > Manuél Ferrari 05/06/2014 at 02:30

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People felt like they weren't getting what they paid for because by the time they got settled in they would already of had been in say, NewYork if they were flying from lax or something. They wanted to actually have time to enjoy those airline peanuts. lol. But I agree, it is stupid. You pay all of that money to get their quicker. Not to get there slightly quicker.

Manuél Ferrari > Singhjr96 05/06/2014 at 02:42

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Wow. Just wow. If you want to take your time and enjoy the trip then you're much better off spending less and traveling on a bigger jet.

People are so funny!

Singhjr96 > Manuél Ferrari 05/06/2014 at 02:46

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Eh, idk. It's definitely ironic. Who can justify the things that people do these days. *cough cough*ricers*cough*

Manuél Ferrari > Singhjr96 05/06/2014 at 02:55

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lol

Bad Idea Hat > UKPDXWRX 05/06/2014 at 06:24

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It is really cool, but full afterburner limits the range. There are a ton of various opinions, but it looks like an F-15C with CFT tanks and 3 drop tanks could do in the 20-25 minute range of full afterburner time. That's a hell of a journey, especially if it's cruising at it's max speed of mach 2.5 (1600 miles!). Still, afterburning for that long is insanely wasteful.

But it's really cool.

Jayhawk Jake > Rainbow 05/06/2014 at 07:58

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Sigh. The Concorde was a piece of shit. Seriously, it was. The only redeeming factor of it was the speed, but it cost 10x more to operate than a normal airliner and only got you there 2x faster.

Seriously, when you consider what transatlantic flights replaced, the difference is astounding even without supersonics: a boat journey that would take days transformed into a flight that takes hours, and for far less money.

Jayhawk Jake > Singhjr96 05/06/2014 at 07:59

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Yeah I'd like to see your source on this.

Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen > UKPDXWRX 05/06/2014 at 08:11

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Back in the 90s I used to work for a car company in the UK, and we used to do some of our testing at a disused airfield. On occasion the RAF used the same airfield for training, suppressing Russian airfields being a key mission for RAF fighter-bombers. Unsurprisingly, when these two events coincided, the pilots thought a fast moving car on the runway made a highly amusing aiming point.

There are very few things which bring the speed of jets home to you as well as having a Tornado unexpectedly rip over you from behind, at 50ft altitude and just below Mach 1, while you're doing Vmax in a fast car. It sounds and feels like God ripping the roof of the car in half. The first time it happens to you you're convinced you're having a crash, and by the time you've realised what's happened all you can see are two little orange dots on the horizon. By about the 10th time, you've moved from FUUUCCK!!! to YEAH, BABY!!!!

JawzX2, Boost Addict. 1.6t, 2.7tt, 4.2t > UKPDXWRX 05/06/2014 at 08:55

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Yup, jets are fast. Vermont Air National Guard F16s based out of Burlington were on site for 9/11 from cold, hangered aircraft, to flying over NYC in 90 minutes. Air travel time 20 minutes. Google says driving time is 5 hours 45 minutes.

Bluecold > Jayhawk Jake 05/06/2014 at 15:50

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If it really was half as bad as you stated, there would've been planes of similar role and capability that would've overshadowed Concorde. Obviously, there weren't. Because Concorde was a monumental achievement and today still stands as one of the crown jewels of human capability.

Jayhawk Jake > Bluecold 05/06/2014 at 16:12

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WHAT

Sorry, I don't want to be a dick but that's one of the stupidest defenses of the Concorde I've ever read.

You know why there weren't planes of a similar role and capability? BECAUSE IT WAS A TERRIBLE IDEA!

It was so uneconomical and such an utter failure as a commercial jet that everyone gave up on the idea. Did you know there were 74 orders and 16 options at the time of first flight? How many jets did they actually build? 20. And of those 20, 6 were test articles. Do you really think that a commercial product of which only 14 were produced for commercial service is a crown jewel of human achievement?

As an experimental project to see if you could make an SST the Concorde is a bit interesting. Given the time frame it was very advanced, and it certainly helped us learn more about supersonic flight.

But it's not a monumental achievement, and it's not a crown jewel of human capability. It's a noisy, cramped, inefficient airplane that proved little beyond the fact that a supersonic transport is impractical.

It's asinine to raise the Concorde on such a high pedestal when there are other planes that made more significant contributions to aviation from the same time period.

As an example, you know what airplane flew just a month before the Concorde? The Boeing 747. In 1969 the 747 was the second biggest airplane ever constructed. It flew for 37 years as the largest capacity airliner to have ever been made. How many 747s have been built? 1,486 and counting! That's essentially ONE HUNDRED TIMES AS MANY airplanes, and at the time the idea of a 747 was almost as crazy as the idea of a Concorde.

I could go on for days with other airplanes that are far more of a success than the Concorde and deserve WAY more recognition that that precious ogee delta everyone loses their minds over. The 737 flew only 2 years prior to the Concorde and has had over 8000 deliveries. It's flown on the order of 260,000,000 flight hours with only 154 hull-loss incidents. It's far and away a more significant achievement in commercial aviation than the Concorde, but it's boring so no one gives a crap.

Bluecold > Jayhawk Jake 05/06/2014 at 17:46

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Because it was a direct commercial failure it was bad enough to use capslock? (You're basically shouting at me, I consider this rude) .

Here's a list of non-profitable stuff everyone absolutely adores: Apollo program. Most art. And Lancia, Alfa Romeo, Citroen SM, Citroen C6, Volkswagen Phaeton, Bugatti Veyron....The list of brilliance goes on.

Profitability and commercial success are the stuff beancounters care about and nobody likes them. People like those who break the mold, not those who make the nicest mold. The 737 meant nothing to aviation. It just happened to be slightly more cost-efficient than its competitors. As was the 747. Big deal.

The Concorde project banked on the idea that some people wanted to spend more to go faster. Which isn't really such a crazy idea if you think about it. But apparently, people only cared about getting there for as cheaply as possible. Which is why easyjet and ryanair are so successful. Which is kind of bleak don't you think?

Jayhawk Jake > Bluecold 05/06/2014 at 21:01

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The Apollo program wasn't for profit, it was a successful science mission.

The Concorde didn't mean any more to aviation than the 737 or 747, other than being an example of what not to do.

People were willing to pay more to fly faster, but the Concorde failed to provide that opportunity at a reasonable cost.

It was a failure, and not even a very good airplane. Look, it's cool. I get that. It's different. But that doesn't make it good. It wasn't some triumph of mankind, it doesn't represent the pinnacle of engineering: it was an interesting side study in commercial aviation that failed miserably.

I love airplanes, I'm incredibly passionate about them. Hell, I design them for a living. But that doesn't mean I can't view them through realistic glasses. The Concorde set out to show the world that supersonic passenger flight was possible and could be profitable, and the team behind it failed to reach that objective. If you look at it without considering the big picture you realize that for as cool of an airplane as it is, it's really not that great, and it's only special because it failed so badly that no one has ever tried again.

Bluecold > Jayhawk Jake 05/07/2014 at 02:49

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I could argue Concorde was as much an European prestige project as was the Apollo project. Even more so because the Americans tried and failed at the time. And I still don't see why the Concorde wasn't 'great' other than it being slightly more expensive than the market would bear at the time. Now you suddenly claim it wasn't even a good airplane. Which it totally was. It looked good and flew quite reliably for decades. Which brings me to another point. If it failed half as badly as you describe, it wouldn't have flown for decades. And made a profit for British Airways. Not enough to justify a successor, but a profit nonetheless. Your hate is unjustified.

Singhjr96 > Jayhawk Jake 05/07/2014 at 02:50

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It was directly from someone who works at Boeing. But you could probably find this online. I'll try too look for it, but i'm busy doing HW right now.

Singhjr96 > Jayhawk Jake 05/07/2014 at 03:02

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There were many writes off on the program from multiple airlines. Especially with all of the safety upgrades, fuel, etc, the program got really expensive.

Singhjr96 > Singhjr96 05/07/2014 at 03:13

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Oh and btw probably should mention this, this was regarding only the flight path of LA to NewYork. Many of the other flights stayed unaffected, unless there was a complaint about sound or something.

Jayhawk Jake > Bluecold 05/07/2014 at 07:58

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My hate isn't unjustified. It flew for many decades because they had to get something out of the program.

The americans didn't try and fail, they just realized it wouldn't be a good business venture

Bluecold > Jayhawk Jake 05/07/2014 at 12:03

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"It flew for many decades because they had to get something out of the program."

Yes. Money. You still fail to grasp that it provided a net influx of cash to BA and Air France. You know why? Because people wanted to fly in Concorde. Because it was a monumental achievement. Because it let them fly comfortable at speeds normally only reachable for trained fighter pilots.

The americans overreached (let's build a plane 50% faster and 50% larger than Concorde!) and subsequently failed miserably. You don't enter prototype phase before considering the business venture if you set out to make a profit on your program. You do the business venture first. You can consider this another data point that SST programs are not just about business.

brandondrums > UKPDXWRX 05/21/2015 at 13:19

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Oh that’s a beautiful shot of an F-15

brandondrums > Singhjr96 05/21/2015 at 15:13

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Haha, that’s hilarious. I guess it WAS a historical luxury plane that people paid extra money to ride. You want to savor that moment naturally but that’s just astounding to think about. It’s like buying a ticket to ride a top fuel dragster and complaining that you didn’t get enough time on the track.

brandondrums > UKPDXWRX 05/21/2015 at 15:14

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I should also say, it looks like it’s dropping CHAFF? or reaalllly tiny bomb clusters. There’s a door open and something is coming out.