I vaguely recall my first flight on an airplane... I can't recall the airline though... I remember my sister and I getting little plastic pilots wings, a deck of cards, and a little matchbox type airplane... We were naturally in awe since we were probably 5 and 3 or 5 and 4 (depends on the month we flew)... Air travel was pretty routine then I guess... My father did it all the time for his work, and I don't recall thinking that we were "special" for flying... It was just exciting since I was 3 or 4... As I got older, I became interested in planes, and used to read lots of books on them... The Concorde was always an amazeing plane to me... I also remember there being an SST in some of the books that was a similar design... There was even a little bit about the Russian super-sonic passenger plane... The more I read, the more it just seemed logical, that eventually, there would be nothing but super-sonic planes... I didn't know about the restrictions placed on the planes due to the sonic booms... So why not fly everyplace faster than the speed of sound right?... Well the SST never really happened... The Russian plane didn't due much either... But there was always the Concorde running between New York, and either England, or France... It was something I always dreemed of doing... I still wish I could... $10,000 is a bit steep for my entertainment fund though... Well now, I will never get that chance... Nor will anyone else... The final commercial flight leaves New York tommorow for Heathrow... There are a few flights after that for VIP's, and I suspect there will still be a few here and there as they retire the fleet to the various museums they will go to... (One of them arrives at the Intrepid Air and Space Museum in NYC on Monday... Have to see if I can get in to the city then...)
I ran across this article over at MSNBC, and it set me off on this rant... Moran brings up some things to think about...
"Yet Friday, as the Concorde roars off Kennedy’s runway for the last time, I cannot help thinking we are losing more than the last vestige of this “golden age of air travel.” What succeeds this wonderful aircraft? At one time, the Anglo-French consortium that built it had a faster, quieter, bigger, more fuel-efficient Concorde II on its drawing boards. Instead, the company changed its name to Airbus and built a flying toothpaste tube."
Yes, it is centered around the passing of Concorde... It is however about a far more important concept... Have we decided that we're ok as is?... Are we as a human race going to simply tread water where we are?... Have we just lost intrest in further/faster/bigger/higher?... Something to think about... Personally, I'm not content... I love to read/hear about/see the biggest whatever... the fastest something... the thought of going back to the moon, or Mars, or elsewhere... I've had it with people who say that this kind of thought isn't practical... Or that bigger is bad because it might interfere with some microbes existance... Have we become so concerned with our surroundings that we are becomeing stagnent?... Quietly, I hope that the Chinese sending up someone to space will light off another spark of national pride, and we'll start funding NASA propperly again... Imagine that... They might be able to stop worring so much about cutting costs, and get back to designing a replacement for the shuttles, or atleast be able to get the existing fleet into a more acceptable level of existance...
Hmmm... You'll have to excuse the rant there... I did digress somewhat... I'm just too typically content with the current reality to go back and do anything about it...
Posted by Backstage at October 23, 2003 07:04 PM