"You only see what your eyes want to see" Madonna sings in her song "Frozen" and you don't even assume how often this piece of truth acts on you... For example all people tend to believe that Concorde (the old version that flew between London/Paris and New York from 1976 until 2003) consumed approx. as much fuel as a Jumbo Jet of Boeing while carrying only 120 passengers maximally... Because speed is meant to cost so much fuel...
I am writing this Blog Post because the above assumption is not true: Concorde was not only the fastest airplane of the world but the most environmentally friendly one as well - except for its noise maybe...
First of all, let's have a look at the power output of the famous Rolls-Royce/Snecma Olympus 593 turbojet engines...
dry thrust: 140 kN
thrust with afterburner: 169 kN
(CFM LEAP turbofan jet engine, static thrust: 100 kN, designed for the Boeing 737 MAX among others)
(an average turbofan jet engine of a Boeing 747, static thrust: 270 kN)
The CFM LEAP engine is one of the most modern and most fuel-efficient turbofan jet engines waiting to be deployed on various aircraft of the future... The CFM LEAP engine contains lots of sophisticated technology which makes it clean, silent and fuel-efficient - on the other hand I also think that there in no significant difference between gas turbines that create very similar power outputs in their fuel consumption because in Jet fuel A-1 there is always the same amount of energy, the basic structure of the jet engines is the same and their working principles are the same, too... I mean you can enhance gas turbines and you can improve them but the basics remains the same... So I have the opinion that Concorde never consumed as much fuel as a Jumbo Jet of Boeing but rather as much as 4 main engines of a modest Boeing 737...
Still what I put down above is not a miracle yet... The miracle begins when Concorde surpasses the sound barrier and it turns into some radiation, actually... As an amount of radiation which is flying through the air Concorde doesn't face any other resistance than that of other radiations in its way and crossing its way, respectively... The crash of radiations would result in changing of the radiations and their addition, respectively - you cannot afford any of these occurrences in case of Concorde which is a passenger aircraft... That is why you need an implementation onboard Concorde which absorbs radiation that Concorde encounters... The absorbed radiations can be turned into electricity which can supply all electric systems onboard of Concorde with electric power: the heating of the passenger cabin and of the entire airframe, the heating of the air within the air-conditioning, electric control systems and electric oil pumps for the onboard hydraulic systems etc.
The above radiation exchange onboard Concorde results in no auxiliary power unit being a part of Concorde... On all other airplanes it is the auxiliary power unit (or APU) which supplies electric systems of the aircraft with juice and it consumes approx. as much fuel as the main engines altogether... As you can find no APU in the aft of a Concorde but a braking parachute, Concorde consumes far less fuel during its supersonic flight than other airplanes during the cruising phase of their flight... The electric power supply of Concorde must have been solved by a couple of reliable and fuel-efficient internal combustion engines before the supersonic phase of Concorde's flight and afterwards, too... These decent internal combustion engines must be known as the fuel pumps which were needed to pump jet fuel from one fuel tank of the airplane into another during a flight, according to widely spread rumours... There is not as much fuel onboard of any airplane that was worth of being pumped anywhere because of a better balance of the airplane... Furthermore the development of the unique and state-of-the-art implementation for the exchange of radiation into electricity during the supersonic phase of the flight of Concorde could explain the 7 years of development from the first flight of Concorde in 1969 until its introduction to the flying public in 1976...
All in one, Concorde must have been a good investment for The Boeing Company in the first decade of 21st Century...
Best wishes, Joseph de la Mikula and Team
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