Do Go On - 340 - The Rise and Fall of Concorde

Episode Date: April 27, 2022

Concorde, the only successful supersonic airliner the world has ever known. It was cutting edge, super fast, and elegant. But what happened? We track the rise and fall of an aviation icon. Support the show and get rewards like bonus episodes: dogoonpod.com or patreon.com/DoGoOnPod Submit a topic idea directly to the hat: dogoonpod.com/suggest-a-topic/Check out our AACTA nominated web series: http://bit.ly/DGOWebSeries​ Twitter: @DoGoOnPodInstagram: @DoGoOnPodFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/DoGoOnPod/Email us: [e-mail] Check out our other podcasts:Book Cheat: https://play.acast.com/s/book-cheatPrime Mates: https://play.acast.com/s/prime-mates/Listen Now: https://play.acast.com/s/listen-now/ Our awesome theme song by Evan Munro-Smith and logo by Peader Thomas REFERENCES:https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/yeager-breaks-sound-barrier https://blog.boomsupersonic.com/how-exactly-do-you-break-the-sound-barrier-369b37cc59dc https://science.howstuffworks.com/transport/flight/modern/concorde.htmhttps://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/concorde/anat-nf.htmlhttps://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/concorde-flying-what-was-it-like/index.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_4590https://www.heritageconcorde.com/  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Melbourne and Canada, we got exciting news for you. And we should also say this is 2026. Jess, what year is it? 2026. Thank God you're here. Right now, I'm in Melbourne doing my show with Serenji Amarna, 630 each night at the Cooper's Inn Hotel, having so much fun. We'd love to see you there.

Canada, we are visiting you in September this year. If you've somehow missed the news, we are heading up Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal, and Toronto for shows. That's going to be so much fun. Tickets for all this stuff, I believe, are online. And I'm here too. Hello and welcome to another episode of Do Go One. My name is Dave Warnocky and as always I'm here with Matt Stewart and Jess Perkins.

Hello Dave. Hey Dave. Hey Jess. Good to see you. And you Matt. Here in this place, your humble abode. My humble abode. In the affluent east.

Oh, there's nothing humble about this. What's this, 7,000 square metres? I think it's seven and a half actually. Wow. If you're including the grotto, which I do. Of course. You got to include the grotto. Yeah.

It's so good to be here. I can't wait to get into it. Dave, how does this show work? Well, Matt, what we do here is we take it in terms of the report on a topic, often suggested to us by one of the listeners. Any listener can do that at any time at do go onpod.com. And we go away, do a bit of research, and then bring it back to the others who have no idea what the topic's going to be.

And it is my turn to report. And we always start with a little pesky question. Oh, a little pesky question. And let me ask you that question, guys. what supersonic airliner operated from 1976 to 2003? The Concord. Correct, sir. My report is on the rise and fall of Concord.

Concord, like, rings a very vague bell somewhere deep in the back of my brain, but I have no idea what you're talking about. I feel it on my loins, Concord. Okay. It was the future. It's interesting. And now it's the past. Yes.

It was like, yeah, it's so interesting. I'd love to know about this. Great. Well, I have done this because it's been suggested by a few people. Thank you to Paul Meller from Oldham in the UK. Nick from Kent and Ben Johnson from Milton Keynes. Ben Johnson. What a guy.

What a guy. And Paul, great Saints, support. He's got on board the Saints, I believe, because this show, as an Englishman, he's jumped on board. Ah, that's nice. And I will just say of Ben Johnson, he obviously likes fast things and fiery crashes. So I have written here because Dave's got that bold on his computer

and he's sitting right next to me. He suggested a few such topics? Yes, the Le Mans Crash was also suggesting it is. And I don't want to give away too much, but this may end in a similar way. Oh, right. Who was, sorry, who was the middle person who suggested it? Nick from Kent.

Hey, Nick, good on you as well. We love you, Nick. Keep it up, Nick. So it's an all English topic Because this is a This used to fly from Like London to America or something It's an English and French topic

And this is actually my Third French topic this year already I've done Jonah Vark The Laman crash and now Concord God you're obsessed with the French I know but actually Speaking of Laman I watched Ford versus Ferrari yesterday

Oh good fun Yeah it was good Good movie It was a good movie yeah I enjoyed it I haven't seen it but It's good Matt Damon

Oh Matt Damon Yeah Christian Bale Oh yeah, Christian Baal, is my favourite kind of role of his. I'm very good at something, but I'm not respected. That's that? And Henry Ford the second, or Deuce, as everyone called him. Yeah, not a good nickname.

He's played by the guy who's the coach in the new LA Lakers biopic sort of series. Oh, okay. About the 80s Lakers. Is that good? You enjoying that? I'm been enjoying it, yeah. John C. Riley. love his work.

Anyway, Dave, what a weird side track. I just want to say this one was voted for about our Patreon and supporters at do go on Pod.com. I put up three topics, the history of a certain thing or a product, and this one, buy a single vote. Whoa. So if you want to support the show on Patreon

and you can legitimately influence what we talk about. That happens to you a lot. Yeah. It's amazing, isn't it? It's because you're putting up such great options for them. Yeah, but not that great. Yeah. They're all equally great.

Not one standout great one like I do. Or equally bad? Or equally bad. Well, they're all kind of going, I guess. Yeah. I don't know what any of this is. Fine. Okay, so it could be any of these perspectives.

Actually, I've been getting real close to them as well. It's great. I think it, yeah, I kind of like it when it's a landslide because I really feel confident we'll pick the right one. It's going to be a good topic. Yeah, that's true. I actually thought of Concord as a topic when I was leaving Paris's Shal de Gaul airport a month or two ago on my honeymoon.

And I saw a Concord on display as I was driving out in the taxi. And I thought, surely that's just a replica. It's way too small. But when I looked into it, it was real. Wow. It was real. So they're quite a small plane. And that got me thinking.

So I looked up, is it in the hat? And it was. So thank you very much to everyone that. Jess just noted that four and a half minutes before he mentioned his honeymoon. I saw you glitz over. Yep. Yeah. That a new record?

And it wasn't on his own. It wasn't on his screen, by the way. He added the honeymoon bit. Yeah, just wedges it in a conversation wherever he can. Well, since I got married. When have I ever mentioned it? When have I ever mentioned it? Anyway, me and my wife.

We're on our honeymoon. My new wife. My first wife, as I refer to her. Four and a half minutes. Okay, don't see if you can break that next week. Oh, I will. The history of honeymoons. Until the 1940s, it was a commonly held belief that exceeding.

the speed of sound, that is breaking the sound barrier, would destroy an aircraft and any human being on board. Oh, wow. But that all changed with one man, Chuck Yeager. Jaeger! Great name. And to be honest, it was also changed by many other people who helped. But Chuck Yeager was the guy literally at the front of this breakthrough. He was a combat fighter during World War II, who was a bit of a bad ass.

Yes, we love a bad ass. The American pilot flew 64 missions over Europe and shot down 13 German planes. Yeager himself was shot down over France, but he escaped capture with the assistance of the French underground. Oh, wow. That's pretty cool. On October 12, 1944, he attained Ace in a Day status, shooting down five enemy aircraft in just one mission. Ace in a day. I like that. Yeah, like a frog and a pond.

Great dessert. I love those. I hate Froggerna Pond. Really? It makes the Fredo go a weird texture. Yeah, I like the idea of it more than... Yeah, I like the look of it. You're like, that's a bit of fun.

As a kid, it was exciting. But I love jelly. I love... Yeah, so for international people, just in case it's not... I don't know how international it is. I think it's pretty international. It is a piece of chocolate shaped like a frog. Frodo frog.

Inside jelly that's either green or blue to represent the pond. Yeah, the frog is in the pond. This has got to be a thing we've ripped off from England. Surely, yeah, it feels very English. Toden a hull. It's a bit shit. Hucked in England. I love your food.

That's why me I like it. Sucked in England and us for ripping off your shit things. Honestly, if I like the food, I just assume it's English because I like bad food. That is pretty clever, like for a pub dessert though. It's so easy. Very clever. And like it'd be pretty cheap to make. So that makes a lot of sense.

But yeah, it makes the frog go a bit weird. Just give me a bowl of jelly and a Fredo. Let me have them separately without the frog going weird. Yeah. And let me eat the jelly. Yeah. Give me all the jelly. How much jelly do you have?

Can I get a deconstructed frog in a pond? Do you mind? I'm such a Melbourne kid. I love English food as well to some extent. You know, big English breakfast. Pints of ale. Oh, yeah. I love it.

The list goes on for you. Yeah. So he attained Ace in a Day status eating five Froggerna Ponds in one sitting. Whoa. They were impressed by that. But after the war, Yeager stayed in the US Air Force and was among several volunteers chosen to 10, fly the experimental and ultra top secret X-1 rocket plane.

Rocket plane. Which was built by the Bell Aircraft Company to explore the possibility of supersonic flight. Bell Aircraft. Is the Bell Aircraft Company attached to the Bell Shakespeare Company? Very, very simple. Are they? John Bell and the head of both? Is it from Bell Air? Or is it that's a pun or a portmanteau?

It's Bell. Yes. Aircraft Company. And double L. Uh-huh. So no. To answer your question. Just a question.

I felt like the things I was saying was answering your question, but you kept doing, uh-huh. You know I do that a bit now sometimes too? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Yes. Uh-huh. Yes. So they're employed to explore the possibility of supersonic flight.

That is flight that breaks the sound barrier and travels faster than the speed of sound. So that's what supersonic flight means. Why are you trying to beat sound? Yeah. Yeah. What I mean? Like, who cares if you're traveling faster than sound? Yeah, just travel.

What do you fucking do? Travel the same speed of sound or slower than sound? Like, why sound to the measure? Yeah. Like, I want to go faster than something fast. Yeah, like a cheater. Yeah. Am I going, am I...

I'm going... I'm going... Am I flying faster than the speed of cheetah? Yeah. Yes? Well, wonderful. That's exciting. Okay, great.

Like, I don't understand why you're trying to beat sound. It's not even the same category. It's a completely different. One sense of speed. Yeah. One is sound. Exactly. Don't get him confused.

Don't conflate the two. Jeez, Louise. I mean, but that's what science is always doing, trying to solve problems that no one needs to solve. Yeah. My sixth sense is speed. Mm-hmm. The movie?

The movie speed, yes. He can sense if somebody's watching it. My seventh sense, speed too, cruise control. Do you think that someone in the world somewhere is watching the movie speed at all times? Oh, I hope so. Yes. Around the world. Yeah.

At any one time, someone in the world's watching speed. No doubt about that. Great movie. That brings me joy. I found an aviation website. I think it's pronounced wikipedia.org. Okay. Great.

And what's all about aircrafts? Oh, it has loads of info on planes and pilots and has an article on Yeager's first sound barrier-breaking flight. Yeager! I love his name. He probably yelled that as he broke the speed of sound. Yeah, but nobody heard it. No, not for a little while anyway. scientifically, but I just wanted to have a crack at a clever joke.

Was that clever? Yeah. Is this thing on? So when he was in World War II, he would have been dropping a few Jaeger bombs. He's going, Jaeger! Matt's sipping from his milk after that one. Drink your milk.

Got that a victory sip in their biz. Nail that joke. I earned this sip of milk. Okay, this is from Wikipedia. at all just two nights before the scheduled date for the flight Yeager broke two ribs when he fell from a horse Why was he on a horse? Right before a big day

You don't go horse riding He broke his two ribs Because he wanted to suck his own horse Then you realised Hang on I don't even need these I can keep my ribs And suck this all

That wasn't the problem Oh that's good milk You deserve that second Victory sip, you're right I'm going to be a joke ace five jokes in this episode. Wow, that's never been done. What's our record?

One. Not good joke. We're not there yet. Oh, okay, yeah. You're not going for good. He was worried that the injury would remove him from the mission and reported that he went to a civilian doctor in nearby Rosamond who taped his ribs.

Besides his wife who was riding with him on the horse, Yeager told only his friend and fellow project pilot Jack Ridley about the accident. So he didn't tell anyone. because he's worried he'll get struck from the mission. On the day of the flight, Yeager was in such pain that he could not seal the X-1's hatch by himself. Ridley, the only guy I told,

rigged up a device using the end of a broom handle as an extra lever to allow Yeager to seal the hatch. So he battled through the pain, which is not a good idea. And on October 14, 1947, Jaeger flew the X-1 over Rogers Dry Lake in Southern California, exceeding 662 miles per hour, which is the sound barrier at 40,000 feet.

So he did it. And people are going, well, he's going to explode. Yes. And he did it with two broken ribs. But it turns out that if you break your ribs, there's less pressure inside your body. So that's the only reason he didn't explode. Oh, okay.

So it's actually really convenient. It's great. So from now on, if you're on the Concord, someone stood there with a baseball bat, gave you one on each side, and then you got to go on. bloody hell that's very impressive so the speed of sound varies under a few factors including altitude but an object

that travels at the speed of sound is referred to as travelling at mark one you hear mark speed that means it's travelling at the speed of sound so when the presidents of the United States of America the band sang I will survive in my Mac 5 in my Mac 5 I will survive what does that mean

yeah what does that mean because it always felt like gibberish but was it Or was it just words? I didn't yet know. Well, double the speed is Mark 2. Mark 3 is three times and so on. And that's also a Gillette's revolutionary three blade razor. The travels at the speed of sound.

That was a big ad campaign. We've done it. We've somehow figured out how to put a third razor blade on this razor. They said it couldn't be done. They said it couldn't be done. that the razor blade would explode. They thought that humans shaving with three blades would disintegrate. It's too powerful.

Chuck later himself described breaking the sound barrier for the first time. He said, I noticed that the faster I got, the smooth of the ride. Much like on a jet ski. Is that true? Yeah. Oh, cool. So then you're just sort of skimming across the top. Love that.

Suddenly, the mark needle began to fluctuate. It went up to 0.965 mark. Then it tipped off the scale. We were flying supersonic. And it was as smooth as a baby's bottom. How do people say that? Stop obsessing over baby's butts. Grandma could be sitting up there, sipping lemonade.

What does that mean? Off the butt. Off the butt. So, yeah, you could be, grandma could be sitting on that baby's ass, sipping lemonade. Yeah, why are babies' asses the, are they even smooth?

They feel like they'd be real, soft. Yeah. Is that the same as smooth? Same thing, I guess. And is it like mark one, mark two, the smoother of the baby's bottom, baby bottom two? Yeah. That's twice as true.

It's like that you'd think, because they'd be, they don't squatter anything. They'd have hardly any glute muscles. Yeah. They're actually pathetic at squats. Honestly, watch your baby do a squat. You'll feel so good about yourself. That's what, that should be as pathetic as a baby's bottom. Yeah.

That's what it should be. You're currently being as pathetic as a baby's bottom In that it has no muscle structure Yeah, I think that's better I think I'll fix that one Do you want to take a victory sip of that one or no I don't know Was that worthy of a sip?

I'm just saying you could if you want I mean my problem The way I'm going at the moment is this milk is going to be all gone You're sipping too hard Because of the top secrecy of the project Yeager's achievement wasn't announced To the world for eight months So we had to sit on

On a baby's butt. He had to sit on the baby's butt. That's right. Sip a lemonade. But when it was, the world knew that it was possible for humans and aircraft to travel faster than the speed of sound. Again, who cares?

It can be done. But why? But that would play havoc with your stereo system. Yeah, if you're going faster than the speed of sound, if you, like, once he hit Supersonic and he's like, I'm going fast on the speed of sound, if he went, woohoo, does he hear that? No, that's, I think that goes behind him.

That's back there. That's back there where he said it. Right? Yeah. Like, scientifically. If he's playing, you know... Yeah, if he's going faster than speed of sound, what are the songs doing? Yeah, so he...

He's playing highway to the danger zone. Is that running backwards? He was the first one to hear all those messages in the Beatles songs. Hang on a second. There's something here. I should join the Navy. Well, it was a big deal because instantly airlines and governments around the world began to speculate about the possibility of creating a commercial plane that traveled fast.

than the speed of sound. Obviously, that would make journeys much quicker, and who doesn't want to go on holiday or on business faster? Makes sense. The race was on to design a plane, and both the Soviets and the USA had plans to build supersonic transport, aka an SST. That's what they're called.

Boeing won the competition for a government-funded contract to build an American supersonic airliner called the Boeing 2707. They began developing it at its facility, in Seattle, Washington. A short time later, in 1966, Seattle was awarded a franchise in the NBA. I was going to say this before. That makes sense.

Because of the contract, they called the Seattle Supersonics. So there's another 1966 sports fact. Wow, that's so funny. As soon as you said Supersonics, I'm like, I wonder if that's got anything to do with the basketball team. Yeah, because thousands of people got jobs in their city doing this, became this big project for the city.

And they were like, oh, let's call it the Seattle Supersonics. Rest in peace. Well, the team actually lasted longer than the Boeing contract, which was cancelled due to rising costs in 1971. So the USA pulled out of the race. They went, it's too expensive to make this SST. The Seattle Supersonics stopped existing in 2008 when they moved cities and changed their name to Oklahoma City Thunder.

I don't mind Thunder as a team, that's all right. Yeah, that's pretty good. That's good. How do you draw it? A cloud? Yeah, like a lightning bolt. That's lightning. Yeah, but lightning is just the sound of thunder, right?

No. Lightning is the sound of thunder. Thunder is the sound of lightning. Yes, sorry. No. Still no. Try a third one. They often go hand in hand, but not always.

Really? There you go. I always thought it was the lightning. Because that's why you can tell how far, or is that a myth as well, the account in between seeing the lightning, speed of sight as fast as than the speed of sound. Speed of light.

I mean, I could be wrong. You said speed of sight. Oh, speed of light as... I thought I said light. Anyway, the speed of light as far as the speed of sound. Yeah, the closer it is, the quicker... The gap is between the lighting and thunder. What is thunder?

You learn things on this podcast. Thunder is a sound caused by lightning. You were absolutely right. Give that man a medal. And I said, Matt, you fucking idiot. Say that. How dare, with my eyes. Yeah.

How dare you waste my time with your stupid opinions? But no, you're absolutely right. So there you go. Sort of like the Melbourne Storm, the local rugby league team, is their symbols of lightning bolt. So if they can use that, surely the Thunder can. Storm feels like more of a general term, doesn't it? Anyway. I like weather-based team names, though.

You're looking at what Like the Gold Coast Suns Yeah, that's nice Okay, see They don't really They just have a basketball As their logo I've read this article

About American sports logos A while ago And I was saying that A lot of the NBA teams Have basketballs in their logos Because it Where it came from as a sport It was the

It wasn't that popular A few decades ago So they were like They have to really show The sport Right logos, whereas the biggest sports, you know, the football teams didn't have to put footballs in all their logos.

All right, but people go, Oklahoma City. Yeah. Thunder, what do you do? Yeah, that's right. Are you golfing? Is this a golf team? Yeah. Water polo?

I don't care. But that is the team of young Josh Giddy, the young Aussie that got drafted. But there you go. A 1966 sports fact. Maybe that can be the new one. Yeah. Yeah. Or just add it to the Arsenal.

I think Chicago Bulls also formed that year. A big year in sport. Big year. So USA dropped out, but the Soviets began designing their SST called the TU144, which sounds like a Terminator. I fucking love it, in 1962. At the time, it was thought that all future air travel would be supersonic, so no one wanted to miss out. But then you wouldn't have you like 17-hour flights. You know?

Yeah, we wouldn't have, you know, people wouldn't be able to complain about coming to Australia. Yeah, it's so far. They still would. Oh, now I don't have an excuse. But then I get, but it would be all like relative. So their flights around their home countries would have. So they go, the flight to Australia, geez, six and a half hours. Yeah.

That's three times as long as it takes for me to do this flight. So it's still, it's still complain. But the logic holds up, right, that you'd assume, oh, there's this big advancement. For sure. Like, the more we make this happen, the cheaper it will be common or it will just be, you know, become more cost effective. Yeah. And I mean, it definitely makes sense to make flight as quick as possible and to keep trying to make that faster for the convenience of many different things, not just travel, but also, you know, getting things from A to B and whatever. Yeah.

But why are you trying to beat sound? Yeah. Why is that your focus? Just say, can we fly real fucking fast? But that was the first hurdle. There's some planes over there. Wow. They're flying in formation.

They're flying over the Formula One, which is on during, in Melbourne during the time of recording. That's fun though, but we're talking about planes and there's some planes. There you go. What are the answers to that? The roulette. I think that's the roulette. Ah. Put on a bit of a show.

So you say sound is the thing because that was the first thing that they didn't think that you could go faster than that. If you reach that speed, they thought all planes and humans would die. So you've got to get through that before you can go really fucking fast. I think it's stupid. Like, I just don't, like, just aim for really fast. Why specifically under the lens of sound? Yeah. Ironically, the logic is the first barrier. It's not sound.

Why are we putting these barriers on ourselves? What I'm saying. I feel like my stupidity is, frustrating, Dave. Well, what you need to know, Jess, is they really thought all planes would soon be the only way to travel in this supersonic way. And everyone wanted to be first, which the Soviets were in a way, but I'll talk about that and how it turned out in a minute. Okay.

So the race was on and many of their rivals were surprised when on November 29, 1962, Britain and France signed a treaty to share costs and risks in producing their own SST. Oh. This is where the craft gets its name from. Concord is a French word, but it's also an English word. Concord with an E on the end is how the French spell it. English spell it without the E on the end.

both mean agreement, harmony or union. Oh, that's nice. So it's a two hundred is coming together. It's a shared word. Great. Let's use that. Do they use the French or the English version? Well, English aviation minister, Tony Ben,

recalled to the Guardian how the spelling of Concord came about. The original plan was that both the French and English concords would be spelled with an E. Okay. But the then British Prime Minister, Macmillan, Harold McMillan, had been insulted by a French president Charles de Gaulle on one visit when de Gaulle said he had a cold and couldn't see him.

So McMillan came back and removed the E from the end. That's respect. Yeah, I'm so sorry. I'm trying to pass on my sickness. I'm unwell. He probably had COVID. You know what I mean? I know.

He was looking after you. Imagine in this day and age being insulted by that. If somebody cancelled plans because I was sick and didn't want to get me sick. How dare you? But also, But it's the pettiest thing you can do.

Remove the E. Cut the E. We're not using that French shit. Fuck that guy. That's embarrassing with a big E. But then Tony Bend, the aviation minister, he reversed that. He said we had to have the same name for the same aircraft. And besides, it was reversing an insult for the French, which I wasn't in favour of.

He didn't think it was an insult. No, it's not. McMillan, let it go, man. Who cares? But he didn't come see me. And I made cucumber sandwiches. It took me ages. I didn't know how to make a sandwich.

McMillan never used an E again. Stop doing ecstasy as well. So it's spelled with an E on the end. Flight of the Concords, spelled C-H-O-R-D-S, is a pun. Concordes. Because chords. Yeah. That's fun.

There we go. It's funny the first time we hear it, and then it gets less funny each time after that. The B-shel. British Aerospace and the French firm Aerospatial. which was a predecessor of Airbus and the British Aircraft Corporation which still exists,

agreed to produce the Super Sonic Air Liner. Aerospesial was responsible for the airframe while Britain's Rolls-Royce and France's Snechma which is an acronym that I don't know what it stands for. Snecma. That is an ugly word. Yeah, don't like that.

As opposed to special, which is a real punch-up of special, isn't it? Yeah, specials. Oh, special. Oh, my God. I don't even feel worthy to be near this word. So Rolls-Royce and Snackma developed the jet engines. The agreement stated that the aircraft would be built in both the UK and France

so they could both claim it. Okay, yeah, sure. So do a bit each. That's nice. In the early 1960s, aeronautical engineers didn't have today's design and analysis tools or advanced computers. So they're basically... They should have had them.

I know. They would have made it real... Why didn't they have them? They chose to do it all by hand. What do you mean? That seems like it would take. so much more time. It does, but it feels like more of an achievement.

It feels, you know. Nah, I disagree. They definitely should have used modern technology. I love leaning on technology. Even basic maths. Just chuck that on my phone. Just to check. Oh yeah, all good.

Yeah, just in your notes. Five plus five, that is 10. Yeah, they worked out. They just write it in my notes. They worked out on the notes app. Wow. They basically had to do it all by hand, as I said, but Concord's designers came up with a remarkably

advanced and unique aircraft. Honestly, Concord is an absolute design. Marvel. And I'm not even a big plane guy, but when I was writing this, I really started to nerd out over it. So here's a bit of that nerd bit. Well, let us beat that out of you. Because we're jocks.

Yeah. Aren't we, Matt? Yeah. Yeah, we like sport and beer. Matt did just stop the podcast to point at a plane again. That was me. That's been me every time. Well, you both did it.

Every time it's gone past, I've stopped listening to you. I've missed chunks of this because I've been going, planes. I can see a crane as well, but I'm keeping it together. Yeah, there is a crane. I can see many cranes. Oh my God. I think, you know, it's cool. It's wild that they can do it.

But it's like a lot of things. It's like fireworks and stuff. People go, whoa, look at these planes zooming around. I'm like, I'd be impressed if it was like, you know, you two flying those planes. Like, wow, look, that's cool. These are like trained pilots. But how do you know that? I thought you meant if it was you two flying the planes.

If Bono was in charge. I thought he meant if we were just flying, not even in planes. That would be impressive. Yeah, I mean, yeah, that would be even more impressive, I'd say. Well, let me try and impress you with the nerdy part of the report. Let's start with a speed. For context, a usual Boeing 747 that you've probably been on cruises at about 560 miles per hour. Okay.

That's 901 kilometres per hour, which is mark 0.84. Yeah, I think that's broken the speed of cheetah sound. Yeah. Cheaters notoriously. Wow. Wow. Yeah. Wow.

So they're going at 900Ks an hour. 900k a hour at an altitude of 35,000 feet, just over 10.5,000 meters. I mean, I could have logically figured that out. I didn't know how fast a plane went, but it takes you an hour to fly to Sydney from Melbourne. That's around 900Ks. Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Yeah, I guess that checks out. So that's a normal plane.

That's a normal plane, ones that you go on that we still use. 767, somewhere like that. 747. Yeah, but they're all pretty similar to that. On the other hand, ballpark figure. On the other hand, a Concord could cruise at 1,350 miles per hour, which is 2,172 Ks per hour. That's more than double. Which is Mark 2, twice the speed of sound.

Wow. And they flew at a... So remember 747, 35,000 feet? Concord, 60,000 feet. Wow. You're 18,300 meters. You're 18 kilometers in the air. Oh.

And at that height, passengers were actually able to see the curvature of the earth. Wow. So cop that flat earthers. You just need to go back to the air. 80s and get on one of these. That's so fast. It's so fast. You'd be in Sydney in 20 minutes.

You know? They'd be throwing cookies from the front of the place. There's no time to do snack service. It feels like once it's that fast and you're spending more time at the airport, it would feel weird. It would feel silly, wouldn't it? You'd be like, I'll just drive to Sydney. By the time I go, I get there an hour early because I can check my bags and then they get us

on the plane. and then it's 20 minutes. We're up or down. Oh, they're going to wait for my bags at the other side. The pilot looks out the window at the wrong time. You're in Brisbane. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, shit.

Trying to turn around without anyone noticing. Well, actually, those planes are flying real close together now. That's cool. You're impressed? Yeah, that looks dangerous. I can't see them now. Where are they? They're just going to bind that tree.

Come back. Probably don't fly too close that tree. I hope they're playing scorpions, rock-me, Rocky like a hurricane. Here I am. Was that one? But backwards. The pilots would be hearing it backwards.

But they prefer it that way now. That's how they hear all music. I saw them play that when I was in Germany. Whoa. And it was pretty great. And I remember the singer. He just said a lot. He said,

Come on, baby. Said that all the whole way through their set. He just said it a lot. Come on, baby. Do you know, what are any of their other songs? Their biggest song, which apparently is Wins of Change. Oh, okay. Do they refuse to play that live?

Yeah, they refuse to play it live. Apparently it's really on the nose over there because it was flogged when the wall came down. It became almost the unofficial anthem of that. And then people are over it. And I think people are just sick of it, yeah. So. I get why you were nerding out.

That is really fast. It's amazing, isn't it? And seeing the curvature of the earth and going so high. And apparently the sky is so. blue up there. Wow. Beautiful view, apparently.

That's cool. Also, I guess you'd have to go high because there'd be so much traffic. You know when you're stuck behind a slow driver? Yes. And all these planes would be so slow comparatively. You'd be like,

you'd have to go round them. Stay in the left lane. It's overtaking. Yeah. And they don't. They don't. They just sit in the right lane and just plot along. The pilot is constantly on the horn.

I am going more than double what you're going. They're like, come on. I'm going the limit. And you're like, Well, you think you go on the limit, but I think your speedo's a bit off because you're actually going 5Ks under. Yeah. Can you just get across? Yeah.

Move over. So that makes sense. I think that's probably why they go higher. And should have just made a third lane, a Concord Lane. Concord Lane. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, they did at 60,000 feet. Yeah.

And then they could also prank and, like, dump the toilet on the other points. Oh, that's fun. You'd have to get the timing just right, because they're going so slow and you're going so fucking fast. You know what I mean? Yeah. But if you nail it, it's very funny. Very good. Very satisfying.

So to travel at supersonic speeds, the Concord had to be designed completely differently from other existing passenger planes, which would fall apart and disintegrate at these supersonic speeds. Wow. Planes like the 747 feature low wings, which means the wings are mounted lower than halfway up the fuselage, the long thin part of the plane.

David, if you'd ask me what are low wings, I would have, I reckon, figured that one out. Yeah, that one probably didn't need. That the wings would be... Explanaining. Lower. Well, basically they stick out on either side, and they're most planes you've seen.

Concord, on the other hand, had double delta wings, which are shaped like triangles. D-Ds. And look, oh, massive D-Ds. They're shaped like triangles and look super cool, in my opinion.

They sort of go out. It's like a corn chip on either side of the plane. Yeah, cool. That is super cool. Corn chip on either side. That is really cool. The problem they had to overcome was most delta-shaped wings

that cruise at super high speeds aren't well suited for taking off. So they're really good once you're up in the air, but they're very difficult to get off the ground. Okay. So they needed wings they were able to take off, but once in the air, able to cruise at these supersonic speeds.

According to PBS, it took over 5,000 hours of wind tunnel testing before Concord's designers and engineers were confident that they had the optimal shape. Right. But if you Google a Concord, they look real cool. Ended up being Pringle-shaped, which I think is interesting.

And you cannot fit your hand in it. No. But once you pop, you cannot stop. That's right. Fine. Concord also featured a long and thin, adjustable needle-shaped nose. Yeah.

Ah, yes, yes. Something that a guy from the Smithsonian, who I watched a video on, referred to as a droop snoot. It's a sick planet. It looks like a good fly into the space. I've just Google imaged it. And I've now, I've definitely seen that.

Yeah, like a space shuttle also. So features Delta wings. Delta car and truck rental. Just call 131, 319. Delta is something I think whenever I hear the word delta. I think innocent eyes. Innocent eyes. What is that?

Oh, Delta Goodroom. Del's a Goodrum. I also think my second favorite Australian Gladiator from the show, Gladiators. Oh, right. I was a big fan of Tower. The tall man. Tor, tower's great, but everyone's favorite, of course, is Vulcan. Absolutely.

Gotta be Vulcan. He's the superstar of the show. Absolutely. Then they had Australians versus English gladiators, and they had someone called Dynamite, and he was pretty cool, too. Oh, that's good. That's a good gladiator name. What would your gladiator name be?

The scientist. Yours would. You'd have a beaker. I'd be called the Beaker. That's good. I'm constantly trying to do a science experiment whilst they're trying to pile drive me off a swing. Dave's version of that would be being on the chase, one of the jays. The beaker.

The beaker. The beaker. I think I'd bigger the tank. That's good. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Tank's good. I'd love to be called something like the nugget, but I'm not at all.

I'm just like I'm the opposite of a nugget. Well, maybe that's like one of those ironic ones. Yeah. Which I think tank is for me. Lank. Lank, you're Lank and the tank. We could be a duo. Yes.

Yes. There we go. He's lanky. I'm tanky. Is that something? I don't know. We can workshop it. Yeah.

As always it, Dave, feel free to edit. Any of this out. Do us a solid. Whoever does the report listeners, they do the edit. So anything that's left in, in this case, do not blind me and Jess. Yeah, that's our fault. Any reference to Gladiators, I'm not cutting.

Vulcan, are you listening? We love you. We love you. We love you, Vulcan. You too, Delta. So it's got a needle-like nose, which you may have seen the image there,

which some dude I watch referred to as a droop snoot, which I loved. Love that. Drup snoot. Because during takeoff and landing, Concord flew at such a steep angle as it was going up,

with its front end tilted skyward and its tail pointing down, probably didn't say that bit. A normal nose would completely block the pilot's view and they couldn't see anything. Oh, okay. But Concord's long pointed nose has a hinge.

As the plane took off, landed and taxied, the pilots tilted its nose forward. So it sort of lowers down a bit. But when you're in the air and they want to go supersonic, a hydraulic lift puts the snaps the nose into place. Ah. Which is real cool. That's really cool. I think like if the plane was taking off and you're like going straight up,

that would be awful as a passenger. I would hate that. It feels like it would be fun. I've done it in a sea plane and it was awful. When did you go on a sea plane? Sea plane, that's cool. Many, many years ago. I was on a jet ski tour and you stopped at this little island.

Jeez, you're banging on about jet skis. I love jet skis. I love them. And we stopped at a little island for a rest and a seaplane pilot wanders over. And the tour that he had flown there was, you know, doing an activity. And he's like, you guys want to come for a joy ride. What the hell? What?

This sounds like your, are you some sort of VIP? Extentric millionaire? I was. Were you staying on Richard Branson's Island or something? It sounds like you're about to be kidnapped. It was awful. It wasn't. It was cool.

Was the pilot Ballou? Yes. Okay. From the show. There was a show he was on and he flew a... For some reason, the Ballou, the Bear from Jungle Book, had a spin-off show where he was a pilot in a seaplane. It's such a weird spin-off. It's going to be one of the weirdest spin-offs.

You've made that up, for sure. You've dreamt that. You've dreamt that. Bulu the pilot. Do you know Bulu? Yeah, well, yeah, that's what I thought when you said Bulu, but I was like, this has got to be something else. But it's Balu from the Jungle Bois.

Yeah. Flying a seaplane. He puts a shirt on and he flies a seaplane. And there's a little kid bear who like has a little sort of board that he surfs behind the plane sometimes. Okay, well, that's quite cute. What was that show called. Have I made it up? I reckon you've dreamt that.

What a great dream. So they call it the air necessities. Oh my God. Yes, Dave. If only you had a milk. I'd be sipping. I'd be sipping right now. Do you want me to get you a milk to sip?

Yeah, that would just be really, I just think that would be a bit full on. Yeah, so this, and then once the nose snaps into place, it's so pointed a needle shaped, it efficiently pierces the air. Yeah. So that's another reason it went so quick. Wow. But to get into the sky and cruise at such wild speeds, they needed incredible engines. The planes featured four turbojet engines in total

that were twice as powerful as engines on large subsonic jets. That makes sense. I mean, if you're going to go twice to speed, it makes sense to have the engines twice the size. Twice as much nos. Yeah, yeah, do they have more nos? Well, mounted in pairs under the wings. Oh my God, he's found it.

It's called tail spin. Oh, they fucked that. Yeah, they really fucked that. And necessities would have been so much better. Oh, and is that King Louis was in it as well? How weird is that? a strange. That feels like someone's just gone into the pitch meeting with nothing.

They've gone in stone. They're looking at things around the room, you know? There's a jungle book poster on the wall from their previous hits. Oh, yeah, it's Ballou. But he's a pilot. And they're like, okay, but not just any pilot. He's a seaplane pilot. Sounds like King Louis.

I think King Louis like ran a bar. Oh my God. And there's a little bear because we love to have cute things. things and it surfs. That's like a level one improv class. You have to stop smoking weed before these meetings. You're killing us. That's a brilliant idea.

Wow. Okay. That was a movie or a show? TV show, yeah. How long did it run for? I reckon it used to be on an afternoon. Like, it's just like an after school show. This is a worthy detour, Dave.

Oh, I'm fascinated by it. I'm surprised I didn't see it on cheese TV. 7.6 out of 10 on IMDB. Okay. Actually, it'd be more appropriate on Saturday Disney. Only one season. Yeah, there we go. 65 episodes, though.

That's a long season. 65 episodes. Wow. Imagine if Gossip Girl did 65 episodes a season. Jesus, cool. Ballou, King Louis and Shea Khan. Who was the... That's a baddie.

They operate a business in Cape Suzette. That's the elevator pitch from Google. They operate a business. It couldn't be any vaguer. Yeah, that is... I love it. I love it so much. Well, a good memory you had there.

Well, okay. Well, so to answer your question, Matt, the seaplane pilot was not balloon. Now, back to Dave's report. Matt, I'm trying to talk about engines. Sorry, I'm so sorry, listeners. Jeez, that'd be that's tedious stuff. So you've missed the fact that they've got four massive turbojet engines, twice as powerful as a normal plane.

Mounted in pairs under the wings, each engine could provide more than 38,000 pounds of thrust, which sounds great. I can personally do 40,000. That's too much, sir us. You will disintegrate your co-pilot or whatever. My co-pilot. That's what I refer to them.

Do you mind if I jump up in the cockpit? That's what I just like. God, you're a purport. I just want to watch. Get me in the cockpit. Concord was the first and still only regularly used passenger aircraft that had turbojet engines with afterburners. Which is called reheat by the British.

Raw fuel was introduced into the engines of the planes four engines, immediately increasing the engines thrust by almost 20%. Into the engines of the planes four engines. Is your copilot ever said? Can you up the thrust by 20%? Yeah. All right. You know that plane spotters?

That's how they get about in the buildwaters. Up the thrust by 20. Don't whisper it. Scream it. Yeah. He's a get a bit passionate. Reheat was also used to push the plane from subsonic to supersonic speeds. This is similar to technology used by fighter jets and space shuttles.

Yeah, it has a space shuttle kind of feel about it. The side effects of this were a red, fiery glow in the engines, which is cool, but they were also incredibly loud, not so cool. You couldn't even be watching The Devil Wears Prada that comfortably on that plane. Oh, subtitles are on. Yeah. Luckily, they're going fast on the speed of sound, though. They would hear it, right? It's all good. You can't possibly hear anything. You'd be going, ah, ha! Everyone's screaming, can't hear a thing. It's the most peaceful flight you'll ever have. The plane behind is. I hope I sit next to some babies. They're so cute. And quiet. And soft. Especially their bums.

touch your bump? See, it's weird. Why would you do that? You wouldn't do that? No. God. That's a great out of context quote. Anyway, like I said at the start, they went very big. Concord measured 204 feet or 62 metres in length, which is about the same length as a Boeing 747. Okay. But the fuselage, where the passengers sit, was three times as narrow. Oof. So they're very thin. But they still went two, three, two. That's what's crazy about it. They're only 10 feet wide. I can't conceptualize that. It's the height of a basketball ring on its side.

And then you can walk around in that bit. Can you imagine that? That's pretty small. It is small. So is just like maybe two seats in an aisle or something? Yeah, it's two aisle two. Oh, okay, yep. They can't just scale it up so that it's like 20% bigger all over.

During red heat. Yeah. Just bump up. it up. 20% more thrust, 20% more passengers. So it was 204 feet long, but it was actually stretched between 6 and 10 inches in flight due to heating of the frame. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Six to 10 inches. Yeah, message received length, clear. No, what you're talking about? What? I don't know. It was so hot from the friction of flying through the air at such high speeds when it flew that they had to come up with a new type of reflective white paint to paint it with. Oh wow.

The friction was so great that even the windows were hot to touch for passengers during the flight. So if you touch the window, it was really hot. It doesn't seem like the most pleasant way to travel, to be honest. No, it's very loud, very quite hot on the wind. And it's fast. Exactly. Just to talk about the paint, France briefly painted one of their planes in a predominantly blue color scheme, with the exception of the wings after a deal with Pepsi.

Yeah, so it could really blend into the sky. Perfect. So it's Pepsi blue, but in this paint scheme, Air France was advised to remain at Mark 2, the top speed, for no more than 20 minutes at a time, otherwise it would get too hot. Wow. That's how much a difference the white paint would make versus any other colour. How interesting. Pepsi would want to be paying a lot for that.

Pepsi's colours are also the French flag colours. They're Patriots. How about that? Makes you think, hey? It really does. What does Pepsi mean in French? Hmm. Pepsi.

I think I'd have that. You did too. Each Concord had room for about 100 passengers. But I'll talk about what it was like to fly on Concord in a little bit. Okay. So far, I'm actually sticking to the 747 or whatever. Regular? Yeah, Airbus.

Give me one of those. Because sure, this might be going to. twice the speed, right? So let's say it halves your travel time. So it's only going to take me nine hours to get to, it's probably more still, like 10 hours to get to London, you know? But 10 hours on this sounds fucking terrible.

You know what I mean? What, the view's beautiful. Yeah, the view's nice. It's incredibly loud. It's very hot. No, inside, I must say, the air conditioner as usual. But you know I touch the windows.

With your tongue. I love to lick the windows. I burnt my tongue. That's why you guys always give me the window seat. Yeah. Otherwise you start licking ass. Yeah. I got to lick something.

At takeoff, Concord carried roughly 31,000 gallons or nearly 120,000 litres of fuel, which weighed more than 200,000 pounds. The fuel, because it needs more fuel than a regular plane because it burns so much. Yeah. The fuel was distributed across 13 tanks. Throughout the flight, fuel was ingeniously trained. transferred from tank to tank throughout to maintain the balance of the plane's center of gravity. Obviously, not very superstitious, having 13 fuel tanks.

They didn't have a row 13 though, so. But they did have a bay 13 where people got absolutely wasted. A bit of an MCG joke there. Before takeoff and during acceleration to supersonic speeds, about 20 tons of fuel was moved backwards to tanks in the plane. tail and wings. As the aircraft slowed down at the end of the flight, fuel was pumped forward to the tank

near the plane centre. So it's constantly automatically shifting fuel around, which is, which was, yeah, amazing technology. Now, speaking of takeoff, former British Airways Concord Captain John Ty explains what it was like to take off on a Concord. Okay. He said, each takeoff was a phenomenal experience.

What's his guy's job title again? He was a captain. Okay. Seems a little biased, but okay. Each takeoff was, well, in comparison to other planes he flew, each takeoff was a phenomenal experience. The performance such that we had to warn the passengers in advance what to expect. Yeah, fair enough.

The roar of the Rolls-Royce Olympus engines combined with being pushed back into your seat was like no other civilian plane. Far out. Because you really feel the G's. It feels, I'm anxious. I don't think I'd want to do it. but I'll drive. It's all right.

I'll drive. I'll drive. I'll drive to London. It's okay. I'll figure it out. There's got me bridges. With it, take off speed of 220 knots or 250 miles per hour

and a cruising speed of 1350 miles, like I said, which is more than twice the speed of sound, a typical London to New York crossing would take less than three and a half hours as opposed to about eight hours for a subsonic flight taken by other planes. Wow.

Concord's fastest transatlantic crossing was on February 7, 1996, when it completed New York to London in two hours, 52 minutes, 59 seconds. It's under three hours. New York to London, wow. Usually takes eight hours. Yeah. See, you are flying, both literally and figuratively. Because of speed and the time difference between the cities,

it was possible that the London to New York flight would land before it departed. Oh, I love that. A little bit of time travel. Yeah, that's fun. Whoa. Well, pretty cool. That happens on the on the Australia to America fly, I think.

Melbourne to LA, I think it happens. Yeah. Yeah, or often, what do you land at a similar time? And you go, oh. But then on the way back, you lose a day that you never get back. I know, I'm flying to Honolulu and I get there before I've left on the same day, but on the way back, lose an entire day.

You never get that back. It's gone, Jess. Wow. Let it go. I don't think I can. Move on. What could have happened on that day? I'm not going to tell you.

All my dreams could have come true on that day. Dave and I will experience. It will experience your dreams coming true. Yeah. Do you want us to keep a diary? Yeah, if you could. Just of that day. Tell you what you missed out on.

Yes, please. Dear diary. Does that mean like news? All Jess's dreams came true. News and current events don't happen for me that day. Yeah. Whoa. You're also actually a day younger, so now your birthday is about August 25.

Oh my God. I'm even older. than you now. August 27. 27, yeah, okay. Wow. Wow. So if anything, it's bringing you and I closer.

That's all I've ever wanted. Wow. So that is my dreams coming true. Thank you. So it all sounds pretty great, right? The speed. Yeah. All that sort of stuff.

I mean, yeah. Are there TV screens? I don't think they were originally. Some sort of entertainment. What's the food service like? The food service was incredible. You got a five-course meal. Legit.

Really? Yeah. Which I will talk about. Fuck, yeah, great. The service was phenomenal. Oh, cool. All right. So it sounds great right.

And the tickets cost a fortune, I'm imagining. Incredible amounts. I'll talk about that as well. Okay. But incredible engineering and ingenuity meant Concord traveled fast than normal planes, which is great. But it did have its drawbacks. One of the byproducts of Super Sonic Flight is the very loud noise of a sonic boom. Oh.

Which can be unpleasant or distressing to those on the ground. And in some cases, it can cause damage to windows and structures. Well, on the ground. Yeah, the force is so strong. It's amazing. Maybe another reason why that's to be so high. Well, what is a sonic boom and what causes it? Well, let me let boom supersonic.com answer that question.

Boom, supersonic. Love it. Can't get a supersonic boom. Here we go. It would have been better. Pressure waves, aka sound waves, propagate at the speed of sound. When an aircraft is moving faster than, than the speed of sound, which is breaking the sound barrier.

The pressure waves do not propagate in front of the aircraft, but rather create a wave similar to the wake of a boat that follows along with the aircraft, and a sonic boom is that sound wave passing by the observer. So if you're up there, you're not getting that bit, but you're on the ground. If the plane goes overhead, it goes... And it's like a...

It's a big sound. It's quite loud. And it's just doing that constantly over everyone it passes. Yeah. That sounds... Yeah, that doesn't sound ideal. a result, many countries banned Concord from flying over their cities, including the USA, which ultimately limited the routes to being over water, with minimal time spent soaring over land.

So, for example, New York to LA flights are impossible. So it's not even like it's a once-off kind of thing. It continues to ripple behind it. I think it's like a boom. Everything it sort of touches. Yeah, and it's sort of like, as it flies past, you'll hear it do a boom, but then, you know, someone a couple of K over there when it flies over there, they'll hear a boom. Wow. Okay. Yeah, I guess that makes sense.

Boom, boom, boom, boom. I want you in my room. They wrote that about. Yeah. Sonic Boom. Spired. Yeah, people don't give Venga Boys enough credit. That was Vanga Boys. There's a lot of very topical references in their music. For sure.

And people are just like, it's just fun dance, party music. It's like it's so much more than that. It's funny that a band that traveled exclusively by bus, He was writing about the Concord. Yeah. Well, they were just, I mean, you know, they were looking out their bus window. Yeah, hey, what's that? Boom.

Yeah. Well, if they were in the Concord, they wouldn't be hearing the boom, boom, boom, boom. That's right. And they wouldn't want you in their room. Let's spend their night together. From now and to forever. Isn't the human brain fascinating? The things that hold on to.

Yes, like it. Would not have heard that song in a long time. What about the ad that you referenced before? Surely you haven't heard that. Yeah, that's true. Not since I was a kid. They used to play that at Waverly Park, which is now houses. Well, yeah, it doesn't exist.

And they still play it. It's very annoying to live there. So in America, you couldn't fly over land. So New York, L.A., not possible. But you could fly from New York to London or Paris because most of the journey is over the Atlantic Ocean. Yeah, okay. These limitations had a big effect on demand for the SSTs.

16 airlines initially placed orders for the Concord, totally about 100 planes. Wow. Quantus, which is Australia's national carrier, initially down for six. Six, give us six. Wow. Out of how many? Out of 100.

6%. That's a lot. That's sweet maths. I did it. The 1973 oil crisis had many airlines cautious about aircraft with high fuel consumption rates, and the 747 was launched around the same time. Whilst slower, they were a much lower risk option for airlines as they consumed. heaps less fuel.

Yeah, okay. And in the 70s, when Concord was taking off, so was the idea of being more environmentally conscious. They only started thinking about that in the 70s. People were waking up to the fact that these planes were fuel guzzlers, and this led the planes to often being greeted with protesters. Like a Concord land, and people would say, this is not sustainable.

But look how fast it is. They'd say, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo. I want you out of the air, etc. You know the rest. Sing that alone at home. There was a real concern that if every plane flew supersonic as they wanted them to, that the environmental effects could be detrimental. Overtime was also discovered that Concord's engines produce much more sulfuric acid particles

than the exhaust of subsonic aircraft, and this sulfuric acid damaged the ozone layer. Oh. And I have read reports that they've worked out that if every plane had gone supersonic, by now we would have destroyed the ozone. Holy shit. Yeah. A bit of luck.

they figured that out. Yeah. Also, to add to the woes of Concord's early developments were the costs were much more than expected to make them. Sparling during development to more than six times the original projections. In the end, each plane cost 23 million pounds in 1977, which is just under 150 million pounds in today's money. British Airways and Air France were basically only able to afford to run them because the

governments of each country footed the bill. British Airways bought some concords from the government for a symbolic price of one pound. That's a good deal. That's a good deal. That's a good deal. If they said to me today, you can have a concord for one pound,

I'd say yes, please. Okay. Yeah, well, I'd want to look at the paperwork. I'd say, would you take 90P? What's the current conversion? Like, AUD. One pound could be, that could be absolutely... Two-fifty somewhere.

Breaking us. What's that about buck 60, I reckon? Buck 60. Geez, I don't know. That's all bad. I don't know. I can handle that. $1.75 has gone up to.

All right. Would you pay $1.75 for a Concord? Maybe. Maybe, but where am I going to park it? Yeah. They're not that big, remember? A bit of street parking around here. Get a permit.

I could park in the park across the road. On the roof? On the roof, of course. Keep it out of the way. That's wasted real estate right now. Yeah. Remember how I said initially they had orders for 100? Yeah.

In the end, only 20 concords were built. with six being prototypes, so only 14 were used for passengers. Oh, right. And Qantas had them all. Good for us. We got none. Tragic. But it seems like maybe that's a good thing.

Yeah. We're already damaging arrows and down here. Yeah. Pretty good. There's a hole in ours. So there were few in number, but fly they did. However, the Soviet built Tuberlev T.U.144, the Terminator, beat them to the punch by conducting.

their first flight on the 31st of December, 1968. The Concord made its successful flight just over two months later on March 2nd, 1969. Nice. They waited for a much nice at you. I mean, if the Russians had waited one day. Yeah, not even a day. Fools. The T-U-144 first went Supersonic on the 5th of June, 1969, four months before Concord.

And on the 26th of May 1970, became the world's first commercial tributtal. transport to exceed Mark 2. Wow. So they're beating Concord just, each of these milestones. They're the first to go Supersonic, but they were also the first in the bitter rivalry to do what no one wanted to do. Crash. Oh, oh no. At the 1973 Paris Air Show, both aircraft were due to exhibit.

To quote from the plane website again, Wikipedia.org. What a great website. So good. All about planes. So good. Imagine the whir part is short for wings. Wings. Wingsikipedia. Yeah.

Wingipedia. That was taken. Ah yeah, so you've got to go wiki. Close enough. To quote from this, the Soviet pilot Mikhail Kozlov had bragged that he would outperform the Concord. Just wait until you see us fly, he was quoted as saying, then you'll see something.

Oh dear. On the final day of the show, the Concord, which was not yet in proper production, performed its demonstration flight first. They went first. Its performance was later described as being unexciting. It basically went up and then came down.

It's been theorised that Kozlov, the Soviet pilot, was determined to show how much better his aircraft was. End quote there. Once in flight, the aircraft made what appeared to be a landing approach with the landing gear out, but then with all four engines at full power climbed rapidly. He wanted to put on a show. Possibly stalling below 2,000 feet or 600 metres,

the aircraft pitched over and went into a steep. deep dive. Oh no. Trying to pull out of this subsequent dive with the engines again at full power, the TU144 broke up in mid-air, possibly due to overstressing the frame. The left wing came away first, and then the aircraft disintegrated and crashed, destroying 15 houses on the ground, killing all six people on board the plane and eight more on the ground.

Oh my God. And this is at a big air show where 100,000 people watching. Yeah. So that's the Russian version of a... The Soviet version. A T R20 or whatever. And it's, um, did it, did they look very similar? And that's sort of like, it's a similar design.

They sort of, principle, yeah. They came up like, because they were doing the same tests, they both were coming to the same conclusions. Basically, yeah, this is the best aerodynamic shape. Right. So it really just came down to the pilot being, going for a bit too much. In that instance, yes, but I, I don't think their engines were, the big difference was the engines.

Oh, that's, yeah, so he was sort of like, give him a show. Yeah. Let's do something flashy. Yeah, for example, I'm just going to suddenly go up in the air. Yeah. And it was, and then the engine stalled, and then he had to go full power to try and not crash. And that was too much for the plane and it shook it apart. Far out.

That's full on. And so everybody on board's killed eight people. Eight people on the ground. A lot of people watching. This is a big news story. Yeah, that's... The crash reduced Russian airline aeroplots' enthusiasm for the T-U-144. And another crash in 1978 ended any chance of it being used as a passenger plane.

The T-U144 remained in commercial service as a cargo aircraft until its cancellation in 1983. It feels like, it feels wasted as a cargo aircraft, don't you reckon? Yeah, so. Like, oh, we'll just use it to like, I don't know, send mail around or send some shit. It's fast, but, like, again, they're not that big. Yeah. They're not, they can't carry much. It does sound like it was for the best.

Like if it was real successful, it would have done all the, like, more ozone damage. I mean, obviously not ideal for the people who died. Of course, but yeah. But it's, yeah, it's such a strange thing. So it's just the kind of thing that's just not possible to have, if they stuck with it, they could never have developed it so that it would have been more environmentally friendly and that sort of stuff. Maybe, I don't know.

Because I guess normal jet planes are still pretty. they are bad for the environment but what about like instead of okay supersonic's not great with very noisy and all this stuff why don't we just work on making planes faster yeah mark one in a bit yeah like just sort of you know

middle ground compromise is that what they've done yeah planes faster planes are quicker now like when you get the a 380 the big airbus with the two levels I think they fly faster than a 747 something about having stairs in them makes them go fast

You know, you can go upstairs. You're like, what the fuck? I mean, we obviously can't go upstairs, but we see them as we are. We see the velvet rope as we walk past. As we walk past. As upstairs is the fancy. Yeah. Wow.

Wow. Pretty cool, huh? That is so cool. That is so cool. One day. Oh, imagine. No, definitely not. I just, I still don't get the, you know, just have to have so much money to think that it's worth.

Because those tickets, business class or first class is like, you know, it's like 10 times as much. right? It's so much more. So you'd have to have, you'd have to just have too much money to know what to do with it. Yeah. We had a family friend who in retirement

did quite a bit of traveling and said to me one time and I was like late teens. He was sort of like, oh, you know, if you're going to travel overseas, do it first class. And I was like,

you and I are in very different financial situations, Ian. What do you mean? Is he telling an 18 year old that? Yeah. And I'm like, Ian, what are you talking about?

Yeah. That's a whole like a year of backpacking budget It's crazy Just so that you can lie down And it's like well I'll sleep when I get there I reckon Ian you mad dog

I know what a way to love But I mean like if you can afford it Sure I guess go for it But it's I'd rather spend that money On other things Because you're probably like those I guess they're all What do you call it

Counteracting our cheap flights Yeah Sub what am I saying Sub They're subsidising Subsidising yeah Oh right I think I saw some

maths on how much they make per seat. And yeah, I think it is similar to that. Like, you know, they charge these crazy ticket prices so they can make a profit. Yeah. Yeah. But you're right. If you're paying $25,000 to fly overseas, wild. Yeah, and that's before you got there.

Like, you could spend $25 grand on the whole trip and have an incredible time. Like, do some real flashy stuff, but you're spending that just to get there. That is the life I want to lead, my friend. friend. Ian, get me in there. Is Ian single? Lovely man. No, unfortunately. Married to Fay for a very long time, a beautiful couple. Was Fay up the back? Love them dearly. No, no, no, both in first class.

Oh, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Jeez. I know. Doubled a good life. So the T-U144 crashed. It was highly publicised and it had an effect on people's enthusiasm for Concord. It was also another reason that other airlines pulled out of purchasing them. So now they basically got three strikes. Yeah. They're very loud and you can't fly them everywhere. they cost a fortune, which is they mean it was four strikes.

The safety's now being called into question. So it's like, oh, okay. This isn't good. And also the fuel is very expensive. But they look cool. They look great. So in the end, it was just British Airways and Air France, and they soldiered on together.

They're only two carriers. On January 21st, 1976, two concords, one from each airline, took off simultaneously to mark the plane's first supersonic passenger flight. A team of about 250 British Airways engineers had worked around the clock to ensure safety on board. Concord was subjected to another 5,000 hours of testing before it was certified for passenger flight, making it the most tested aircraft ever. So they were pretty confident that was safe.

So what's it like on board? Oh, I want to hear about this five-course meal. So it had about 100 seats for passengers, 40 in the front cabin and 60 in the rear cabin. So is front like business class or? I actually read an interview with someone who said all the seats are the same but there was like this mental thing about flying up the front where you felt fancier than in the back

even though there's one class for all which is extremely wealthy. So but do the front section do they cost anymore are they the same? No it's the same but people still want to get in the front you want to get out the further up the back. It's the opposite of like being in the back of the bus is cool. I think it's the same.

Yeah. It's still nodes at the front. They've just got much. money. Yeah, you're right. They're all nerds. Rich nerds. All rich people are.

There were two rows of two with an aisle down the middle. The bucket seats were pretty small too, similar in size to today's economy seats. They didn't have big reclinas or anything, but they were made of leather. Okay, so, I mean, you say that like it's luxurious, but it just means if you're wearing shorts or a dress, you're uncomfortable because you stick into the chair the whole time. That's sticky. Especially if they're parked in the sun while you're at the beach. Oh, my God. It's the worst.

You've got to put the tail down. Yeah. Just to make the drive home. And the buckles, just so hot. It burns you as soon as it touches your skin. Oh my God. You get third degree burns from the seatbelt. Can you, yeah, come pick me up in the Concord, yeah, just down at Half Moon Bay.

The plane were serviced by six crew members. Okay. Because Concord guzzled 6,770 gallons of fuel per hour. Per hour? It's so wild. And capacity was limited to just 100. tickets were very, very expensive. This meant that the Concord was largely reserved for the rich and famous,

lots of wealthy business execs needing to travel fast, or people who had saved up the money for years just to experience Superonic travel. I don't think I care that much. I know, I think that, yeah, that's interesting. People, like real plain nerds who, yeah. I can understand that, but yeah, that would be. They're gone with out a holiday for 10 years just so they can get one. Yeah, and I guess, yeah.

And the holiday once they get there is just, It's like it's in dorm room. There are 50-year-old guys in like 12 bed backpacker dorms. But he's having a great time. And they're all going, Can't wait to the flight home. How good was that fly? They're all high-fiving.

I guess like, yeah, I guess I like to spend my money on experiences. And that's an experience. If that's, yeah, if that's what you're excited about. Yeah, people love it. Cool. But how much was it? Oh, it hasn't said yet. He hasn't said yet.

I think he's holding it. It better be impressive now. It's building up real big in my mom. So there weren't TVs, but they did have a fun display on the plane showing passengers the speed the plane was travelling. And people would apparently applaud when it hit Mark 1 and then Mark 2. That was a big part of it. I'm imagining it like a flip clock. That sort of...

Yeah, going... Yeah, yeah, and they'll go, oh! That's what I imagine. Isn't it funny that how much people would have spent back then to fly on a modern plane in just the cheap seats in economy? Yeah. You can pick a movie. Yeah, you can play games. How much does this cost?

Are they the cheap seats? This is a pillow for me? A hot towel. I love a hot towel. I love them at first and then they go cold so quickly and you left sort of holding it. Yeah, I don't get it. I don't really get it. What do I do with this?

What do I do with this? I'll watch my face. That felt good. Now I'm holding it. There was one person at some point thought that was good. Yeah. And they've just stuck with it. I reckon it's like a cheap, like faux piece of luxury.

Yeah. I don't get this anywhere else, but you think about it, you go, they'll just microwave like 100 tails at once. Yeah, okay. Sorry to spoil that for you, Jess. No, you know what? Because I don't necessarily like him on planes. I think what I'm thinking of is like if you go and get a facial and when they're taking the product off your face, they put a hot towel on together. And that's nice.

But you don't have to hold the towel and deal with it. They just put it away. Oh, your servants deal with that, do they, Jess? That's not of my concern. Take it away. Get the towel away from me. Throw it on the floor. Now pick it up.

They're like, you took that from me to throw it. I was going to put it away. You're a nightmare. Yeah, that's why I'm not allowed back in Dota spa. And Dota. To cater for their wealthy clientele, the Concord Fleet was stocked with fine champagne and beluga caviar. La de friccender.

This was followed by a five-course gourmet meal. That's like beluga whales' eggs, is it? Is that what beluga caviar is? Yeah, it's fish eggs, yeah. Wow. Whiles aren't fish, though. What a beluga whales even a thing? Yeah.

Yeah, that is a thing. Baluga caviar. I think that's... What beluga means? Anything to do with Baloo from the jungle book and tailspin? Fuck it. Fuck it. How about this guy?

Oh, fuck it out. Shut your lid, you two. Shut it. A beluga caviar. Is caviar consisting of the row or air? eggs of the beluga sturgeon. Ah. The fish.

It is a fish. Found primarily in the Caspian Sea. Matt, it is a fish. This is a fish. A macro fish. So a five-course meal. Yes, apparently you would get things like lobster and things served up to you. Oh, wow.

Because the flight wasn't that long, apparently people were eating like the whole flight. We just kept bringing out food. That's the way I like to fly. Just keep eating. Yeah, you don't need to watch something. You're eating. Yeah. It's eaten.

Normally you're like. Oh, you want seafood when you're in a seaside town because you know it's fresh. Up in the sky, I'd be wanting to eat birds, you know. If you're on a plane, give me some quail. Do they fly? Pigeons, you know. Give me some pigeons. What have you got in the way of seagull?

You're not going inland and going to the fish and chip shop. No, you wouldn't. You got a magpie? Yeah. I'll eat it. He was a magpie. Give me a magpie pie. Huh?

Oh, hey, got my attention. I know. The few times that they've served pies on planes, I absolutely. What a perfect dish for the sky. Exactly. Heat it up. Pie in the sky. Oh gosh.

It's just. I'm so with you. I mean, should we send an email to Qantas? I think so. I just say, you fucking idiots. That'll get their attention. You fuck. Yeah.

Oh, that's the subject. You fuck. Oh, I better click this one. I've done something wrong. Who's the head of Qantas? Alan Joyce. Alan Joyce. Alan.

disappointed in you. Alan, we need to talk about you. You Irishmen coming over here. Yeah. Taking our multi-million dollar CEO jobs. Yeah. That could have been me. Could have been me. And you know what I would have done?

What I would have done, Alan? Would have put a pie in that sky, Alan. What are you doing? Do you not have pies in Ireland? I think you do, Alan. Pie Island. Pieland. Are you ashamed of your culture because you shouldn't be a beautiful country?

What an Irish stew pie? Delicious. Yes. Beef and Guinness. Beef and Guinness pie. Come on. Alan. Alan.

Alan. Don't be ashamed of where you came from, Alan. Maybe put some veggies in one of them. I think we just got banned for life from Guantan. Vegis, it's okay. I can't afford to fly Qantas. Quantus, Dave. Jesus Christ, Jetstar robust for me.

I'm not happy about that. It's just the way I have to live. Tiger? Oh, sometimes when you're desperate. Despite the cramped quarters, Concord was seen as fit for a king, or queen. Thank you.

Queen Elizabeth the second first travelled on the Concord in 1977. Oh, you weren't calling me a queen. No, sorry I was talking about the queen. Could you call me a queen?

Yes, queen. The airliner was also used for trips to Barbados in 1987. Wow. 2003 for the Queen. And as well as a visit to the Middle East in 1984

and to the United States in 1991. So the Queen, she's all over it. Was she sitting in there with some guy who just saved up all his money for 15 years? Imagine that.

Oh, Queen. You love planes too. Oh my God. Let's look at that dial. Or does she like rent out the whole plane? I reckon she rents. That would be so expensive. When he rented out the whole cinema in Annie?

What? Okay, that is, I would say, less expensive. Really? I think so. A whole cinema? It's got more seats, I guess, isn't it? When you rent a cinema, do you have to pay for every seat? Every seat?

Do they assume that that movie would have been full? Yeah. And so therefore you have to pay for them. I've never been in a full cinema. That's not true I have. We rented a cinema about five months ago. Yeah, how much was that? I don't know.

It wasn't full though, was it? I worked it all out. Do we have to pay for those empty seats? Do we pay those empty seats? Yeah. Is it like a wedding? Oh, boy. Now, I mentioned Concord in my fairly recent live aid episode as Phil Collins

flew on the aircraft between the UK and America so that he could perform at both the London and Philadelphia concerts. Now, is there a dress code or is it no job? jacket required. That was the longest it's taken you to hate yourself after a joke. Like you were happy with it. No, that was a buildup of everything I've seen today. But then we were laughing and then you hated it.

It's not like we gave you nothing. That was good stuff. But as the Sonic Boom went past, they could feel it coming in the air tonight. That's for sure. It was on the Concord. Matt might remember it. Jess, you went there.

I'm not sure if you actually bothered to go back and listen to about three Yeah, it was spectacular. But it was on the Concord that he met Cher who asked if she could join the concert. So the Queen, Phil Collins and Cher, these are the kind of people who flew on Concord. Oh, man. I want to do a report on Cher. The Queen, Phil Collins and Elizabeth II. The Queen bows down, my lady.

According to Bob van der Linden. Good name. Great name from the Smithsonian. He said the aeroplane usually flew with lots of empty seats just because it was too expensive. and each unsolved seat was more money lost by the airline. And because the Concord was such a hyped experience, they had to keep a spare Concord at the airport in New York City so that if there was any mechanical problems with the lead plane,

the passengers could go on the backup one. That makes sense, I guess. It was like when I hired a convertible Mustang and they said, oh, sorry, we don't have any Mustangs, but we're going to give you a free upgrade to a Nissan Maxima. Let me talk to the manager. I might see if we can get a sunroof. Instead of a straight face.

I don't think Mustangs are special in America. That's so funny. That is great. Oh, you wanted to have this beautiful road trip in a fun car? Well, I can... I might not be able to give you fun, but I can give you safe. And family friendly. So we don't have the concords actually out of action,

but we can upgrade you all to a Nissan maximum. We'll take a little longer, but we'll make sure we'll get a sunroof. We will upgrade you... That should be fine. We'll upgrade you to a six-course meal for the inconvenience. Imagine having to tell the Queen that her flight's delayed or something. God, that wouldn't feel good, would it? No.

Especially if it was like weather-related and you're like, I'm so sorry, I cannot control that. But can you? Can you, by any chance? Surely. My lady? You were chosen by God, I heard. It's funny because you too love the Queen. I'd love it.

Wouldn't give me any more satisfaction to be like, sorry, Liz. Yeah, a bit of a delay. Yeah, no, it would probably be another 20 to 40 hours. So. But you're a servant of ours, aren't you? Yeah. Could you give me a cup of tea? So, I think, I mean, you wouldn't expect any special treatment, would you?

Because you were born into a weird family. That'd be pretty ridiculous, wouldn't I? Liz. It's too much to ask, Liz. You're not stupid, I guess. you Liz? Hey Liz, you stupid? That's how you're talking to the queen.

Nah, you're right, Liz, aren't you? Nah, good on you. Do you want to do a selfie? So, yeah, if they have the backup plane sitting there, that's not flying, that's empty, that's costing more money. So a ticket for a one-way transatlantic flight at the end of the 90s was $6,000 US dollars. One way. One way. 6,000 US end of the 90s.

Yeah, that's so expensive now for a one-way flight. Oh, yeah. But back then, I'm guessing that's like 20 grand in today's money, having an absolute stab at it. Yeah, one way. Yeah. So it's very expensive. Yeah.

It's a, you know, a year's of minimum wages for a return flight. Yeah. It's not worth it. So it was costly, but what could be seen as a selling point for decades was Concord had a sparkling safety record. Ah, they did not crash. Similar to Qantas, according to rain man. Yeah.

How was that movie? Flying at such an altitude passengers rarely experienced turbulence. So it was also smoother. Safe, fast, smooth. Honestly, that sounds like the best way to fly. And do other things. Get in, get out. Safe, fast, smooth.

When was the... When was it 6,000? End of the 90s. Jinks. Buy me a Coke. Buy me a Coke. No. I don't drink Coke.

You buy me a Coke? Buy me a Pepsi. Okay. I don't drink Pepsi. Okay. What do you want then? I buy you an orange juice. Thank you.

This is US dollars, Matthew? Yes, Matthew. Let's have a look here, right? It's only about $10,200 according to dollar times.com. It's still expensive. I thought it would be more. But when you do think about it, for a one-way flight, that's insane. 10,000 US dollars.

Yeah, that's crazy. 14,000 Australian dollars. Yeah. So 28,000 Australian dollars for a return flight. Nah, that's, nah. It's a no from you? That's a no from me. What do you reckon?

Did Ian ever fly? I'm going to crunch some numbers. I don't think so. Should ask Ian? Ian, I'm sure it was on there. I mean, I could afford to cash, but I don't think I'd, morally, I just couldn't. Environmentally? Yeah.

Environmentally, I couldn't. Yeah. No, and I appreciate that, yeah. So it was very safe for decades, and that was honestly a point of pride and a thing that people saw... For decades. Oh, no, that has...

Tragically, that perfect safety record came to an end on the 25th of July 2000. This is so recent, and I don't remember any of this. I vaguely remember, like, being in the news when there was its last flight at some point. But I don't know when, but it feels like maybe 15 years ago or something. Yeah, right.

But you don't remember the 25th of July, 19, 2000? No. I mean, I was nine. There is a very famous photo and video of what I'm about to describe. It was another plane incident a year later that probably overshadowed it. Yeah. Oh, 25th of July 2001.

A year and a bit. A year in a bit. Okay, well, be specific, Matt. Otherwise, we don't know what you're talking about. Imagine being that pedantic. Oh, okay. Actually, I didn't think that was a year. I thought that was a little bit longer than a year.

That's interesting. Oh, you count years. Quite differently do I. Do I? What sort of calendar you're running over there? Probably not Gregorian by the Sanford. Yeah, geez, okay. I mean, you live your life however you want to live.

I live by the Gregorian. Stewart calendar has approximately six weeks longer than a normal calendar. Interesting. There you go. You're just a good deed. Yeah. I live my life by Greg and his teachings. Calendar was.

So, flight 45. was a charter flight from Paris to New York City. Most of the passengers were German tourists on their way to board a Caribbean-bound cruise ship. God, they're having a good time, aren't they? Flying from Paris to New York to then get on a cruise ship. Yeah. Ah. It was a full flight with 100 passengers on board, as well as six flight staff and three crew in the cockpit, who were.

Flight engineer Gilles Gerdinot, who was 58, and had been with Air France since 1968. Wow. He's got three decades under his belt. he's the one operating and monitoring the plane's complex systems. These days, most large modern aircraft no longer have a flight engineer as it's mostly monitored by computers. Yep. Back then they did.

There was also first officer Jean Marco, who was 50 and had been with Air France since 1971. Wow, see, they're joining young. Yeah, and they've been around for a long time. And the captain was Christian Marty, who was 53, and had been with Air France since 1967. Captain Marathon. I like that. You like this guy. This is Captain Matty's speaking.

Bonjour passengers. Is he French? Madame and messieurs. You are very good at that day. Prepare the cockpit for landing. It gets me every time. It's so funny. And then you know what else gets me every time we're on a plane?

Is how angry Matt gets every time they interrupt. It comes up on his screen. He's watching cars too for the fourth time. It comes up. No, incredibles too. It comes up at like announcement in progress and he's just, fine, you get so upset. You're about 13 seconds into the movie.

Such a chilled mellow person and that just makes him so angry. It's very funny. I just don't understand why they think it has to interrupt. And it's always like, just letting you know that everything's fine. We don't interrupt my movie to tell me that. Maybe it could be like sometimes, you know, you're in the car and you've got like GPS and music going and it just sort of, it comes up over the top of the music.

Maybe it just does that. So you can hear the announcement still, but it doesn't have to interrupt. And you can pause if you want. Yeah. Anyway, it's very funny. Sorry, you said I'd like Captain Marty. Oh, Captain Marty. He was also, so as well as being three decades as a pilot, he was also the first person to wind surf across the Atlantic Ocean.

Yeah. What? I like Marty. Jeez. Which he achieved. Isn't that, you're really relying on where the wind's blowing to, right? He did it in 1982 after windsurfing across 37 days. Wow.

What would he do? do, like, you're not just in the middle of the ocean, what will you do? Do they have a boat with him? I guess that they have a boat. You should sleep it on the wind? That doesn't make any sense. Yeah, because you'd be so isolated without a support boat. That's incredible.

Apparently, he did lots of extreme stuff on the weekend. Extreme. Wind surfing. So between them, these three men had logged over. I can't picture windsurfing without like fluro colors and an 80s soundtrack. And this guy's doing it in the 80s soundtrack. And this guy's doing it in the 80s. This is peak wind surfing.

He's wearing those sunglasses. Yeah. He's got a windbreaker. The strap. Yeah. Oh, he's going to fall off. He's got zinc across his nose. Yeah.

Sick. Perm mullet. Love it. So between them, these three men had logged over 36,000 hours of flying hours. Wow. They're all experts in the field. You know, 10,000 hours all that? So they were very experienced.

And to be even flying Concord, they had to be considered elite in their field. There's only 14 of these things on Earth. So if you're flying one of them, you're a very experienced. Sort of a one-day ace kind of type. Yeah, yeah. What happened to? Was there a one-day ace at the start of this episode? Yeah.

What happened to him? Charles Yeager. He went fast on the speed of sound. Right. Remember that guy? Sorry, this is a long one. Before that day, this particular airplane, they were on, had flown for 11,900 hours and had 4,873 take-off and landing cycles.

Pretty reliable machine. Okay. No issues. Yep. At approximately 4.43 in the afternoon, the plane began its takeoff from Shalda Galle Airport. Oh, I've just remembered this is a bad story. I know because you're going like very experienced pilots. Yeah.

Plane is in good Nick. Everything sounds like it's going. It's going to be absolutely fine. These planes, if you're getting on it, they've never killed anyone before. So you're going. Sweet. Very safe. Yeah, I'm okay.

The cockpit crew did their usual checks and all looked good, so they took off down the runway. They did everything by the book, perfect. Everything was normal, and as it should be, until a bang was felt on the plane, and it began veering left. On the runway? Yep. The crew didn't know this, but what had happened was the Concord's front tire had been cut. Cut?

The tire sort of exploded, and a large chunk of tire debris, which was four and a half kilos or just under 10 pounds, was sent smashing into the underside of the left wing at an estimated speed of 140 metres per second. 300 miles per hour. Whoa. So it just exploded and then smashed into the... So they're already...

They're flying up the runway. Yeah, going really, really quick. Shit. Fuel, and the tire exploded, fuel tank five had been ruptured in the process, which sent kerosene gushing out, and it was ignited, probably by electrical wiring

that had been cut by the tire. Air traffic controller, Gilles Loggerlin, was in the Shaldigal Airport watching on, and he was the first to notice flames trade. from behind as it hurtled down the runway. Even at a distance it was clear that something had gone horribly wrong.

Within a split second, a massive line of flames trailed the plane. He radioed to the pilot about the fire, instructing them to abort takeoff, but by that time it was too late. The plane had just hit V1 or decision speed, which means they were travelling too fast to abort the takeoff. They had to try and take off or they'd run out of runway, and they were guaranteed to crash. So they have to now get up in the...

Get it up in here to get back down on the ground. Yeah, okay, yep. Because if you keep going. You can't just go boop, sorry about that. No, because you'll definitely crash if that happens. Like George Michael said, you've got to get up to get down in this case. Yes. Did he say that?

Words to live on. Gotta get up to get down. Is that, yeah. Feels like something he would say. I know you're a fan. If you don't know it, then. That is him. I think you're amazing.

Well, thank you very much. So decisions be they've got to get up the ground. Yeah. They get off the ground, but engines one and two both surged and lost all power. And then engine one slowly recovered over the next few seconds. The plane struggled to gain enough airspeed for a controlled takeoff as it was unable to climb as the landing gear bay door had been damaged and they were unable to retract the landing gear.

Okay. Which makes you much less aerodynamic. Yeah, right. The experience crew... Which is crazy, isn't it? Like one thing can't come up and it's like, oh, now we're fucked. Yeah, now it throws the aerodynamics off completely. That's incredible.

The experienced crew who incredibly remained quite calm throughout, in fact, very calm, tried to troubleshoot the problem because they didn't know why, but the landing gear won't go up. So they're trying all different things to try and get it to go up. They radioed the tower to inform them that they were going to try and divert and land at Paris Lou Bourgette Airport, which is nearby. But an uneven amount of thrust on either side of the aircraft caused by engine one and two not work, working meant the plane banked 100 degrees so it was uneven because the planes on one wing are

working but the planes on the other aren't working sorry the engines on the other wing aren't working so they're uneven in the sky I was about to think I did not understand there's planes on each side of the plane I don't understand planes I mean do I have to dump it down for you the crew reduced the power on the engines three and four the ones that are working in order to attempt to level out the aircraft yeah like they're the best of the best yeah yeah they're Yeah, the best. But they lost control due to deceleration and the aircraft stalled. They crashed into a nearby airport hotel.

Whoa. It all happened so fast. From the moment the pilot commenced take off to the moment the plane crashed was only two minutes. Holy shit. And between the tire explosion, which is when things went wrong, and the crash was only 48 seconds. And in that time, they're trying to troubleshoot, trying to remain calm, looking for a place to land. Unfortunately, all 109 people on board were killed. Oh, that's all.

Along with four people on the ground. Oh, my God. Was it sabotage, the cut tire? Well, I'll talk about the investigation. Okay. But the plane's fiery takeoff and crash was captured by a now infamous video and photo, which Jess is looking at right now. Yeah.

The video was taken by a passing driver, and the photo was taken by Toshi Hiko Sato, a passenger in an aircraft on a nearby taxiway. So he's in a plane when he took this. photo. Okay. I mean, obviously, it's much worse to be on that plane. But imagine sitting on another plane and seeing this happen.

And then your plane goes to take off. And you're like, actually, I think I want to stay here, please. Well, that actually just landed. Okay. But they were a bit worried because Jacques Chirac, who was the president of France, was also on board the plane watching. So they were a bit like, don't crash into the president's plane. Oh, wow.

Hight and security, all that sort of stuff. Great name, Jacques Chirac. Jack Chirac. So good. Jack Sharrack. That's good. You're right. That is a good name.

Oh, wow. That's full on. So the photo is both incredible and terrifying and I'll post it later this week. Yeah. Because basically there is like tens of meters of flames trailing the plane as it goes. It's just taken off. Yeah, lots of black smoke. It's not looking good.

Really scary shit. Yeah, it is. It looks like a rocket taking off, you know, like a spaceship. Absolutely. And then, but then you go, oh yeah, cool because the Concord looks like a spaceship. Yeah, for sure. I guess that makes sense, but no, that's not good.

No, something had gone incredibly wrong. So the tragedy was massive news around the world with its dramatic, fiery image. And of course, everyone wanted to know what the hell had happened. Yeah. Concord's previously perfect safety record had been smashed forever. I mean, can anything be safe forever? No, but many wondered if the planes would fly again. Yeah, oh shit. Because it was so dramatic.

Like the plane is on fire. as it takes off. What the hell has happened? It's not good. They were all immediately grounded pending investigation by France's accident investigation bureau. It was discovered that the plane's takeoff weight was calculated

to be 186 tons, including 95 tons of fuel, which was one ton over the maximum takeoff weight. Wow. Which some people said is negligible. But to make the journey, the fuel tanks were chocker block.

Fuel transfer during taxiing left number five wing tank, 94% full. And this is the tank that burst and caught fire. Okay. So it's unfortunate that the tank that was punctured at that time was the one that was absolutely full of fuel. Because remember how fuel is transferred throughout the flight?

Really unlucky. And then once that catches fire, you're fucked. Yeah. The question on investigators' lips was what caused the tire to explode on the runway? They painstakingly combed through the wreckage and made a note of every object and found one thing that couldn't be accounted for. a twisted piece of metal strip, 43 centimetres or 17 inches in length.

They just didn't know where it came from. Investigators were able to work out that the piece of metal didn't belong to Concord and had in fact been left on the runway and that driving over the metal had caused the tire to rupture, sending a large piece of rubber into the fuel tank which didn't puncture. In fact, investigators were confused

because they found the fuel tank looked like it had been blown from the inside. How... How... How... Like, thick or... Is this piece of wire that they've rolled over it and...

You know what I mean? Like, that's... That seems like... You say wire or metal? Metal, sorry, metal. So it's like... What is it? A bit over 30 centimetres long...

43 centimetres long. A foot and a half. That's pretty big, yeah. And I've seen the piece of metal. It looks a bit like the thickness of like a ruler or something like that. Right. It's big. We got it in the right spot.

Right spot. Right spot. But they were confused because the tire looks like it exploded, hit the fuel tank, but then the fuel tank ruptured from the inside. Usually if an object hit something, it'll smash it from outside in. They were really confused. Yeah, and also, jet fuel can't burn. Can't melt.

Still beams. Makes you think. But after a hunch and many computer simulations, investigators found that what had happened had in fact never happened in a plane before. What? So this is the first time this occurred. The rubber of the tire hitting the fuel tank had caused a shock wave through the fuel within the tank

that sort of bubbled around and the stress of this movement caused the tank to burst in another spot from the inside. Wow. So it's like it gets hit in one quarter. The fuel sloshes around so much that the pressure makes it break in another spot. It just feels like a lot of bad luck.

Yeah. The investigators ran multiple tests and discovered that this is only possible when the tank is 94% fuel full. Oh, get fuck, are you serious? 94, which is what it was. Yeah. Not 95 or 93.

Yeah, it's freaking out. That ratio, because it's chock a block and this. Essentially Matt and I are saying the same thing there, you know, same intention. Four. Yeah, but chose different words. That's insane. And remember, like I said, the Concord moves fuel around the plane throughout the flight, so it's seriously unfortunate that the tank was that full at that exact second.

Exact second, yeah, because it's. It automatically moves it around. So just at that precise moment. For takeoff, it's got to be in that spot. It's a freak accident, essentially. Well, Shalda Gawls runways are regularly cleaned and monitored for debris. So it was discovered that the bit of metal that they'd driven over had only been dropped by another plane just five minutes before the Concord took off down the runway.

Oh, my God. Everything. It's so wild. How unfortunate it is. Yeah. After many months of searching investigators were able, I can't believe these. People that investigate plane crashes. One, it's horrific stuff.

but which I imagine that's very hard to deal with but also they painstakingly go through exploded little bits of nuts and bolts and they somehow find out this stuff it's amazing after months of searching investigators were able to track down that that piece of metal and identified that it came from Continental Airlines Flight 55 which is a McDonald-Douglas DC-1030

it's what's called a wear strip from the door of engine number three Whoa. It was discovered that the wear strip had been replaced at Tel Aviv in Israel during a sea check on the 11th of June 2000. And then again at Houston, Texas on 9th of July 2000, just 11 days before the crash. Ah, so it's pretty new. It was a new bit. The strip installed in Houston had been neither manufactured nor installed in accordance with the procedures as defined by the manufacturer.

So what happened? I think the engineer discovered that the bolts. didn't line up on it on the piece of metal. Oh, so... So he drilled new screws into it. They were able to figure out exactly who the car was. So Concord had taken off down the runway. It happened to drive over this wear strip,

which blew the front tire, which exploded sending a large piece of rubber into the fuel tank. That was so full, it created a shockwave that blew a hole in the fuel tank and caused a fire that took out two of the engines. That engineer in Tel Aviv. You know, you think about every little thing... Yeah.

A plane engineer does, you just don't know what, you know, the butterfly effect. There's just one small thing where you're like, it doesn't quite line up. I'll just, you know, it's on there, it's secure. We're good to go. It's slightly to one side to screw, but it's all good. That's incredible. So it literally was the perfect storm and the investigation found that there was nothing the crew could have done to avert complete disaster.

Once they're in the air, they couldn't get the plane back down. Shit. All 12 remaining concordes were immediately grounded and retrofitted with stronger fuel tanks. that were reinforced by Kevlar to try and stop this, remember happening again. Put that in your dragon jeans to go on your motorbike. Kevlar?

Kevlar. Nice. We wear Kevlar pants. Yeah. It's padded on the ass. Yeah. This is my dad always told me. The way they like started to advertise those pants

was like dragging a guy along the ground behind a motorbike on his ass and at the end he gets up and walks away because he's fine. Yeah. He walks away to the hospital. Yeah, he walked at the hospital, but he was okay. His ass is smooth as a baby's bottom still. There's Kevlar in there. But I guess the real question is, why don't they just make the whole plane out of Kevlar?

Good point. Why don't we make all clothes out of Kevlar? Beautiful stuff. The black box is probably made out of Kevlar. Yeah, I reckon. Do you know this? Black boxes aren't even black. What do you mean?

What color are they? Orange. I think? Wild. That doesn't make any sense. It's true. But why would they call it a black box then? Exactly.

Why aren't they telling us? I think this one goes all the way to the top. Alan Joyce? Yeah, go straight to Alan Joyce. Let's add that to our email. P.S. What the fuck? Alan?

But he has to just figure out what we mean by that. He'll be like, is this a black box thing? I get it every day. So one of the things that came from was they reinforced the tanks as well as more secure electrical controls and specially developed burst-resistant tires. to try and cut out all the different little steps of things that had gone wrong.

The Kongan did again fly, but it was really the beginning of the end. John Taylor was the unfortunate mechanic who replaced the wear strip that fell off the DC-10. He was given a suspended sentence for manslaughter in 2010, so many years later, but convictions were overturned by a French appeals court in November 2012, thereby clearing the airline Continental and Taylor of criminal responsibility. Holy shit.

But about 100 million. euros was paid to the families of the victims of the crash. I mean... 100 million. Well, there was over 100. Yeah, that's right. Sadly, all good things must come to an end, and whilst the crash wasn't the only reason Concord ceased flying,

it was certainly a nail in the coffin and accelerated its demise. The September 11 attacks just over a year later. On New York, I actually had written here the year after. I've got to be more specific, otherwise. That rocked the travel industry, as well as everything else on planet Earth, resulting in a massive travel slump that affected Concord's already pretty dismal profitability. Yeah. Especially if they're losing sale.

Like they lose money every time somebody doesn't book a seat. Yeah. And I think like, you know, travel went down like 40% or something after the month. Honestly, everything changed that day. I agree. Yeah. The day the world changed. Yeah.

Is it what people say? Pre-911 world, Concord, sure. viable. Yeah. Post 9-11. Nah. It's over. Fuck off, Concord.

By 2003, it was revealed it would cost British Airways alone, 40 million pounds over the next several years, just to maintain the now aging fleet. These planes have been flying for decades at this point, and to keep going would need major upgrades. So they still have the original planes from the 70s going. Yeah, wow. And they still, they look modern still somehow. And they were still letting people smoke inside. Yeah.

They all had, yeah, velvet. It was velvet top to bottom. It was shagpile carpet all the way around. Instead, British Airways decided to pull the pin for good. Air France agreed and operated its last commercial Concord flight from New York to Paris on May 31, 2003. British Airways soon followed with their last commercial Concord flight on October 24, 2003. In 27 years of service, British Airways fleet of Concord made 50,000 flights and carried more than two. and a half million passengers.

These days they are museum pieces that you can see at various airports and museums around the world, like the one I saw in Paris. It was the first time in history of air travel that the industry took a technological step back. Yeah, that's pretty amazing, isn't it? And in the near two decades since the idea of more SST passenger aircrafts had been floated, but not materialized. But let's just make the fucking airbus faster.

Well, I did look it up. Or move Australia closer. Oh, that's interesting. What if, yeah, what if... Give us a toe. Give us a toe. Maybe bring the south up a little more so we get some nice weather. Yeah.

And then we'll be a bit closer. Yeah. You know what I mean? Well, just shrink the whole world? Oh shit, that's good. That brings everyone closer. Because all I'm thinking about is Australia, but there's heaps of countries all over the place. Yeah.

Yeah, like if you can make it, we could walk to Sydney. That would be handy. That would be nice. Yeah. Just like one step. Wow. No, you've gone a bit too far there, I reckon. But then we shrink all of us down by the same amount.

So then where there's still enough space for everyone. Scalability. But then how is it one step to Sydney? Because if we're also smaller, it's going to be a lot of steps. So we'll have to shrink the world down again. I don't think you've thought this. I reckon, yes. I think he's thought about too much.

I don't think this is a good idea. I'm actually backtracking on this one. I'm just looking at the A3. And we'd obviously, we'd be too big, so we'd just shrink ourselves down as well. Oh, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. What about you just make yourself big enough for the journey, step over? Yeah, and you shrink, yeah. So at the airports, just become, like, big shrink rays and de-shrink rays.

Well, in that case, why not just make airports like teleportation places? Because the technology's not available. That's why. That's what you think of. Sorry. They haven't come up with that yet. How would you do that? I'm so stupid.

We're dealing with reality here. Okay. So the Airbus A380, which is the big one we talked about before, their cruising speed is 1185 kilometres an hour. Yeah, wow. Which is just below Mark 1, which is still a lot quicker than like a 747. But it's still only about half the speed of the Concord. Yeah, but it's, you know, it's faster.

Airbus is such a dull name. Boing. That's fun. Boing. Boing. I'm going to go flying on a boing. I'm going to go on an airbus. I'm going to go on an air bus.

It's a bus for the sky. I have fun because I'm going to go, boying. Like whatever, buses suck. Buses are the worst public transport. Put in the sky, put in the sea, I don't care. I don't go for shit. It's a bus. What about?

It's a sea bus. What about Schnechma from France? Schenkma, we like Schnechma. We like Schnechma. Wow. Okay, but that's my report on the Concord. I'm kind of sad that I never got to fly on one because they look really, really cool.

But maybe you will. Maybe you get your chance to spend 10 grand. To spend. my life savings on a two-hour flight on a plane that's not good for the environment. And they still don't have TVs. They're authentic. Fantastic report, Dave. I really enjoyed that.

Thank you very much. I've been sitting on this one for a few weeks, so very glad to get it out there, my little nerding out on the Concord. Yeah, really cool. They're cool. They look really cool. I'll post a bunch of photos on social media this week, but yeah, do yourself a favor. Google Concord and go, wow. Wow, that is a cool.

It's a good-looking plane. Chip wings. Well, that brings us to everyone's favorite section in the show, where we thank a few of our great supporters. If you want to support this show, helps keeping it run. Without these supporters, this show doesn't exist. And you can do that at patreon.com slash duggonepod or dogoonpod.com,

and once you're there, you can sign up on all sorts of levels. Different levels have different rewards. You've got bonus episodes. We do three per month. month on certain levels. We've got a Facebook group that everyone, all supporters can get involved in, which a lot of people call the nicest corner of the internet. You can also vote for topics like Dave's topic today and a bunch of other things as well, including shoutouts, which we're going to do a little bit of now. One of the levels on the Sydney-Shineberg level, you get to

give us a factor quote or a question, and then I read them out for the first time as I'm doing the episode. I don't read him till I read him. He would never. You know what I mean? Yes. So don't. I'm just saying,

I'm giving myself an out for when I mispronounce a lot of things. So the first one this week comes from Aidan Coglund. But before I say that, I should say, this section I think actually has a little jingle. It goes something like this. Fact quote or question. He always remembers the ding. So this first one comes from Aiden Coglin.

Fact quote or question is also get to. to give us a title, or give themselves a title. Aidan's got the title of Director of Tuba procurement at the Harold Bishop Foundation for the Arts. Oh. Harold Bishop being an iconic. Tubist. Tubist and Neighbors' character played by Ian. Fleming?

Ian Fleming. Huey Hewittson. Ian. I don't know his name, sorry? I don't know his Ian. It's not Ian. Is it not Ian? Is it just his family friend, Ian?

Yeah, is it Ian? That's his family friend, and he only flies first class. Harold. That's such a funny thing you say to a kid. I know. I mean, if you must fly, you've got to fly first class. It's the only way to travel. I don't think it is, Ian.

Look, and he comes over here. Ian Smith. How could I forget such an exciting name? That sounds fake. So, Aiden has asked us a question. Okay. So, yeah, obviously there are, there's no, We had no thinking time for this.

But the question is, are there more wheels or doors in the world? Oh, this question. I've seen this going around the internet. Yeah. Aidan writes, I can't answer my own question as is your usual preference because it seems that nobody can. But as you've probably heard, it's divided people online lately. So I'd love to know if each of you are on team wheel or team door and why.

Some things to consider. Office buildings and ships have lots of. doors but no wheels. Officers, however, are usually full of chairs that each have three to four wheels. I haven't thought of that. Fridges, cupboards, wardrobes and the like do have doors but no wheels unless they're sliding doors. Draws usually have wheels. Cars.

Do they? Sometimes they do. Yeah, like that sort of mechanism. Like I'm looking at like a sliding door on a cupboard there and it's got little wheels on it. Yeah, or like a dishwasher all often. wheels on the racks and stuff. I reckon it's wheels. Cars tend to have four doors, five if you include the boot,

and six if you include the bonnet to four wheels, but then trucks, bikes and scooters flip that ratio on its head. I don't know if we'd call the bonnet a door. Yeah, where do you draw the line? I'd say that's closer to a lid. Or a hatch. Mr. Bean's enemy's car has two doors but three wheels. That's true.

Microwaves tend to have three wheels for every. one door. Submarines might have wheels because nothing about them makes sense anyway, so why not? Correct, Aidan, thank you. Neither Jim Morrison nor Ray Manzarek had wheels. They're from the band The Doors. Ralph Jesus did not have wheels. Is that a Simpsons reference?

Ralph. Ralph, comma, Jesus did not have wheels. Oh, sorry. I think you were saying there's a guy called Ralph Jesus. Sorry. And I was like, is he from a band called The Wheels or something? Maybe. Finally, let's say for the sake of argument that hinges are not wheels,

because that would be a cop-out. P.S. I'm sorry if this is horribly dated by the time we get around and reading it out. I'll make up for it by posting a Harlem shake video and pouring some glass water over my head. Okay. Yeah, I reckon wheels. Yeah, I reckon wheels. I'm team door. Doors, I think instinctively I thought doors, but having seen a lot of TikToks and videos.

They're showing like conveyor belts that are just entirely made of wheels And rooms like there was this one where I was just a room with wheels all over the floor You used to sort of slide things across some sort of industrial building Right Alright Alright So like one two

I'm counting how many doors are in my part Oh no we're gonna start the count One two three four five six seven eight doors Those knobs on your oven are they wheels? What? Is a knob a wheel? No nobs not a wheel A knob's not a wheel.

But then there's cupboard doors, you're right. It's not that many cupboards. It's a real lack of storage space in this place. Yeah. Well, that's on this place. Come on. Lots. I reckon I'm just going to say wheels.

And I say that not really giving a shit. Well, I mean, no I think anyone's really good. But some people get so into it. I think that's a bit. No one's actually caring. I think people care, Matt. And that's sad. It's like the scorn thing.

No one actually cares. Matt, you care. It's fun to pretend that you care a bit. Okay, I'll pretend to care. I think it's wheels. I'm actually coming around to wheels, so I just have the thought that... Yes, I've succeeded and bringing him around to wheels.

With doors, you get a door. You've got a door. You've got a door. You've got a gym. How many gyms are there in the world? Sometimes people, like, those big muscle men move around big wheels, so maybe they've got a gym with a wheel. But what about, like, you know, at my house,

there's doors that are 100 years old. They've just been there for all time. But there's no tyres. that you use for 100 years. I've got hiccups real bad. Don't they, you know, wheels are kind of, or tires are notoriously hard to get rid of and some of them just buried out in land.

Yeah, you replace wheels and tires more than you replace doors. And the wheel was like one of the early inventions. Yeah. They've got millions going. Which they didn't put doors on the cave, didn't they? They've got tens of thousands of years on the door. Or did you count like the boulder rolling in front of a cave? A wheel.

A wheel. Or a door. A door. I mean, it's like a door wheel. So what do you, what do you reckon? I reckon it's wheels. I reckon it's wheels. I've come round to wheels.

Yes. But it tyres wheels. Well, tyres go on wheels, don't they? Yeah. You change tyres a lot, but you don't change wheels. Change the wheels. So if you count tyres as well, I mean, it's just... But if you think in tyres, like you're thinking cars,

there's a lot of cars out there, and you change those more frequently, then you change the doors of your house, you know? And there's also... I've had more cars. Or cars. I've changed my cars more times than I've changed the doors in my house. I'll say that.

Say that for sure. But when you change the car, that gets crushed down and reuses other metals. I don't think those wheels exist anymore. Right. But new wheels have been made. Yeah. So it's, I guess, the same amount of wheels then, isn't it? That makes you think, doesn't it?

Bloody hell. Thank you very much, Aiden. Looking forward to that Harlem Shake video. Next one comes from Vincenzo Bonadonna. Vinnie. Okay, Mr. Apologetic. Oh, why? Vincenzo has also asked a question, which is, before I ask my question, I would like to give you guys a brag and an apology.

I apologize for asking y'all to change my fact quota question submission. Listening back to the show, it seemed as if it wasn't as simple as I thought and probably caused a bit of an inconvenience. It won't happen again. Vincenzo, let me tell you, it wasn't an inconvenience enough for me to remember. I don't remember it at all. So I don't think it was any big deal at all. Not at all. Because I carry beefs with me.

Yeah. I don't let things go easily. If I had any beef with it, I would remember. If I'm wronged, I'll know it. I remember it. And I forgive, but I will not forget. Never again, my friend. Vincenzo continues.

My brag is actually for y'all. God, that sounds stupid when you said it. I really appreciate that you guys could come up with quality content and comedy every week. I don't really know how much work goes behind it. So my question is, how long does it take each of you to prepare a report for DoGo on? Vincenzo's answered the question. Oh, fun. That's so good.

Great. What's the answer? Saying, back when I was in school and I had to do reports, I was always a procrastinator and didn't get my work to. until the day before it was due, and then use my ability to improv, in brackets, BS, through the oral part of the report. Yeah, you've definitely tapped into something there, at least for two-thirds of the podcast. Dave and Jess.

I think it varies greatly between the three of us and then also varies individually. Like, sometimes it could take me ages. Some I've had dream runs, and I've really smashed it out in like a day, or in a few hours or something after, you know, I might watch documentaries or I read a bunch and then the actual writing doesn't take very long. But generally, a couple of days. Yeah. I'd say between a couple days, a couple of weeks, depending on the topic and...

How much time you have in a day. Like, you know, if you're working on it just at nights, you know, fitting it in a couple hours here or there around other stuff, it obviously takes longer. I try to have a dedicated sort of writing day once a week. And then, yeah, sometimes it's just like it's all I'm thinking about for ages because I don't know. Yeah, some of them... And I can think of certain ones where I'm listening to an audio book about it as I go to sleep.

Yeah. And I'm reading and writing about it during the days. And those ones end up being pretty long episodes. But, and then other, yeah, it just depends. Some stories just don't have that much information as well. Yeah. It kind of makes it easier and harder. And then other ones, ones that have unlimited information,

I'll just keep writing until it's time to start doing the show. Yeah. So I just, I guess it depends on how early. start. Some stories are harder to figure out the structure. Like sometimes you're like, where do I start here? Do I leave this important piece of information as a reveal for later? Some of them are really linear and it's easy. Yeah. Sometimes it's, hey, yeah, that's right. That's me. You might be wondering how I got here. Yeah. Well, it all started. Yeah. So it varies a bit. Dave, what do you reckon? Yeah, totally, totally varies. I reckon, like for example, this report took me a good two or three days,

just, pardon me, because I sort of, talking about structure, I sort of treated it as two separate reports, like I did one, I knew I was going to finish with that big crash. Yeah. And that's, sorry, these hiccups are so bad. I mean, we could have just paused the recording and let you get over these hiccups, but we've made,

I can get them really bad. We've made you, the same, but we've made you just perseil. And so I would have done, I did all the report on the history of Concord up until the crash, and then afterwards, and then I went back and I just researched the crash part. Yeah, okay, yeah. I went quite specific on that.

So, yeah, probably two or three days. Yeah. But yeah, sometimes you're right. It's a biography. There's limited info and it's very linear so you can just put it all together. Bag, bag, bang, but. Yeah. Some topics, sometimes with me specifically, the longer the episode, the more time I've probably spent writing it.

And then I guess, like, it's not just the research side of it as well. Obviously, we record. And so far, we've been recording for two hours on this episode. And then we'll go away and essentially, whoever's editing it listens through that entire time as well. Yeah, I'm going to edit this down to about 15 minutes. Yeah. You kind of cut out any pauses or when we need to restart a sentence or whatever, or my dog barking or...

Dead end rifts. That's a couple of hours as well at the other end. Yeah. That can take a while. I think the edit takes about three times as long as the episode for me, I reckon. So if it's a three-hour episode, it'll be like a nine-hour edit. You do slow it down, though, to listen to it. Yeah.

Put it down on like half-speak, quarter speed. I put her on a third speed and I don't edit at all. Just listen to it slowly and it, yep, perfect. Put it out. Yep. But I think my editing takes longer because I fumble a lot in my reports, whereas they haven't just as smooth as a baby's bottom. Thank you very much, Finchanzo.

Next one comes from Sophie Waldron, whose title is Retired Ass Man. Retired Ass man's funny. And Sof has offered us a brag writing, I just resigned from my job as an assistant manager of a ass man, assistant manager, very good stuff. Very good. Of a jewelry store. I've never had the privilege of being an ass prod, but I've enjoyed my time as an ass man.

The rest of my team has also quit in the past few weeks. So while this is a brag about getting a new, better paying and more impressive job, I also would love if you guys could help me say goodbye to the team because none of us are good with genuine emotion and instead use sarcasm to avoid things getting too real. To the 686 gals, I wanted to say working alongside each of you for the last few years has been one of the best times of my life

and I'm so grateful to know each and every one of you. We may be saying goodbye to the store but we will always be in each other's lives. Nice. I'm going to miss seeing your gorgeous faces every day, and it will be so odd not working with people who get all my stupid jokes and references. I love you all.

Thanks to that team. See you at the live shows. Hey, we did see you at the last live show. Yeah. Front row, Santa. What a legend. I think so might have been the person who corrected me on how I said in the April Fool's episode.

I said something like, I can't remember the word, but congratulatory. Congratutorily. No, what is that word? I don't think that was the word, but it was something along those lines, was it?

Congratulatory. Yeah, congratulatory. Thank you, so. That's very nice. Finally, from Matthew Boar, aka champion, of whispering, encouraging words into excellent rectangles.

Okay. Matthew Boer has offered us a fact. Often, I never know if it's a reference to something we've said that I can't remember or if it's a reference to something they're about to say or something else entirely. Anyway, Matthew writes, Hey, do go on.

Though this will probably be a couple of months behind the episode airing. I thought I could give some fast and maybe furious facts about the fast and furious franchise. Well, I mean, I'm pretty sure we covered everything in that podcast. As it is one of my favorites to see

how it has grown over time. Here they come. Timothy Ollifant was the original pick for Dom Torado before he turned it down, leaving the door open for Vincent Diesel. I can't picture that. Very different movie. Very different movies.

I think I'd probably prefer it. Handsome. Handsome. I mean, Vincent's pretty handsome probably. No, he's no Timothy Oliphon. Come on. Come on. Wow.

Did you do gone in 60 seconds instead? Yeah, maybe. Next one, in Fast Five, the Vault. pulled through the street is a combination of CGI and a chopped up truck inside an empty vault driving through the streets while cabled up. A chopped up truck inside an empty vault.

Yeah, a bit of fun. That's confusing. Fast 5 also introduces Eleanor, the lady cop who is played by Chris Hemsworth's wife, Elsa Pataki. I don't know. And is now one of her most recognized roles. Fast 6 is the start of the

shift to be a mix of cast stance and hand-to-hand action. Six introduced MMA fighter Gina Carino and Joe Taslam, while sequels have added Tony Jarque, Rhonda Rousey and Jason Statham. Sequels. Adding the WWE with The Rock and John Sina has also boosted this. Lastly, I would like to throw a name in the ring for Jason Statham theme pod.

Okay. The movies that make Jason stay fun. Oh my God Thanks guys Hope to see you on a North American tour soon Hey thank you so much Matthew Boer The movies that make Jason stay fun

Matthew I gotta be honest with you Truthfully That's brilliant It's not it sucks I just did a little I just a little Imagine seeing it written down

What My favourite still, I now pronounce you, man and knife. Oh, that's what we should call the podcast. Man and knife. Yeah, absolutely. I'm knife. I'm an. As if Dave is man.

Come on. He's the end. All right, take it. Come in the title. Is it an and or an ampersand? What do you reckon? Man. Amper sand knife.

Right on the ampersand. The human ampersand. Oh, those are great. All right. The next thing we like to do is shout out a few of other great supporters. Jess, you normally come up with a little game based on the topic? Yes, we are going to say something interesting about them. Oh, like a fact?

I don't know for this one, actually. I was hoping, I was padding. I was hoping that maybe I thought of something as we went. Maybe some sort of barrier that they've broken. Yes. All right. Well, if I can kick us off first up. I'm not sure I can do this, but okay.

I'd love to thank from the Woodlands in Texas in the United States. Amy Keller, who of course broke the leg press barrier. Whoa. Which people thought you'd disintegrate once if you leg press beyond a ton. Yeah. But Amy Keller did it. What did you do? She just leg muscles got a little bit bigger again.

But she did you do more than a ton or just a ton? Broke the ton. Whoa! A ton plus one. Ton plus one? Yeah. One more ton? One more ton.

So two tons? Two tons. That would have been an easy way to say. Yeah. Wow. She smashed the barrier. Holy shit. Yeah.

I mean, you could just add like those little plates that are like 1.25. You could just added those and you would have beaten it. You didn't have to do two tons. Yeah. It's not, is that, it wouldn't be the leg press barrier. That would be the ton barrier. She broke the tonne barret by leg pressing it. Wow.

I'd also love to thank from Sydney in God's Country, Ohio in the United States, Laura Denny. Laura Denny. What about the coffee barrier? Oh, my Lord. Broke the caffeine barrier. They said you shouldn't have more than 30 coffees in a day. Or you disintegrate. They say way less than that, actually.

Well, Laura did 31. Fours. Laura okay? In a day. Is Laura okay? Yeah. What do you mean? She's very awake.

Very productive? Got a lot done today? Absolutely buzzing. Holy, I'd be a nightmare and I'd be shitting my guts out. Oh yeah, of course. Yeah. Oh my God. I mean, records take sacrifice.

That's true. And finally, I'd love to thank from Charleston in South Carolina and the United States, David Kapler. David Kapler. That's a great name. Kapler's really fun. David Kapler broke the I don't I don't think I get this one broke the site barrier whoa people like oh we'll never this was happened a long long time ago but people used to be like you can't you can't travel fast than the speed of sight which is even fast than the speed of sound

Dave's that right yeah yeah wow maybe this happened in the future then and depending on whether it's happened yet or not and uh but david did it if it's even a thing that's possible oh wow i'm sure it is um but yeah uh david beat the speed of sight and uh so so he's moving faster than like before so so what can he see anything is just black yeah you know like just empty yeah yeah wow it's like uh like hyper drive yeah in a space movie yeah yeah it's just like stars flashing by just hitting the Noss on your spaceship. Yeah. It's like Noss only even faster.

Wow. The Noss barrier. That's crazy. David Kapler. Dave, do you want to thank some people? David Kapler. First time he did it. He craplored his pants.

He didn't get that all through school. Sorry, David. I'd like to thank from London in Great Britain. London. Louise Thorn. Louise Thorn. What about the goosebumps barrier? Whoa.

Read every single goosebumps back to back. They said it was too scary. Too spooky. But Louise did it. Louise, you'll be so spooked. She hasn't slept in weeks. Whoa. From the goosebumps. Yeah. And there's a lot of them. There's so many of them. You read them all. In like record time as well. Well, just speed of reading. So quite. She broke the speed of reading? Reading goosebumps? Yeah. Wow. Are you guys fast readers? No. I'm quite quick apparently. Really? I've got a pretty average.

Okay. I think I'm slow. I do a lot of repeating. My mind wanders. Yeah. And I go, I've just, I've read a chapter and I haven't taken any of it in.

Yeah, I've no idea what happened. Back to the start. Yeah, I hate that. You know when you're driving and your mind drifts off? Yeah, that's scary. Yeah,

when it's a book, you're like, fuck! You can't rewind in 30 seconds before the crash. I would like to thank from Hamburg in Germany now, Utt Martens, or Utt Oort Martens.

Oh, I like that name so much. It's very nice name, isn't it? Hamburg. I had a great time in Hamburg. What Irish pub do you go to? Father Flanagin. No, I remember. That was sort of...

At a Guinness. The Reaper Barn. It was like the nightclub district. Yeah. Do you go and get a nice Italian meal or something while you were there? Remember staying in a 12-bed dorm? No, it was the theme. It was like an 18-bed dorm.

No theme. It was just a massive dorm. But that's where I was staying when I went and I saw a scorpions. Wow. 18 and a dorms too many. It was so big. It was a big L shape.

What about Oot broke the scorpions barrier by getting them to play winds of change one last time? Saying, oh yeah, baby. That's so good. Was it a massive venue? It was a festival, yeah. So it was big, huge outdoor, biggest festival of ever been to, I think. That was at Varkin. Oh, cool.

And who else? There was a massive band. there, weren't they? Yeah, massive metal bands. Yeah. It would have been sick. It was real good. Yeah, motorhead with the headliners.

Love it. Yeah, baby. Thanks, Oot. And I'd like to thank now from a location that is unknown to us. Moles. I can only assume and see within the fortress. It is David Plant. Broke the barrier to the center of the earth.

What? They said it couldn't be done. I know. Got to the Earth's core. Dug his way down and then went, huh, that's crazy. Wow. And straight back up.

Doug his way up. Yeah, Doug his way out. Dug up. Dug back up. Dig up, stupid. Great work, David. What's that from? Is that from something?

That's Simpsons. Of course, it is. If you have a question where a random quote in your head is from, it's a Simpsons. May I thank some people? Yes, please. I would love to thank from Brunswick here in Victoria, Linley, Evis. Oh, broke the piss barrier. Break the seal.

Broke the piss barrier. Yeah. On a night out? On a night out. A few too many vodka cranberries and then. In record. I was reading about there used to be some nightclub. I can't remember where it was.

You see this? Yes. And they had a night that was, drinks were free until the first person broke the here. Was this on a Patreon group or something maybe? Maybe it was, yeah. And so apparently got real brutal. People, if anyone pissed, they'd be fight starting and people would be pissing in the

corners of the pub and stuff. Yeah, just to not go to the toilet. Just a real sort of. What a terrible promotion. Yeah, it's not a good idea. So, yeah. So when Linley did it, the first time, yeah. That wasn't one of the good records that was broken.

Well, Sulla, congratulations to you, Linley. I would also love to thank from Rifle. Fuck, that's badass. In Colorado, CO? Yeah, beautiful. I would love to thank Aaron Romero. Aaron Romero. Aaron Romero.

What about broke the vending machine, barrier. Oh. Cleaned it out. Okay. Everything. Empty the vending machine. Really?

All the drinks. All the snacks. That barrier. Even the crappy, crappy, like, apricot bars that no one actually really wants. Been there for six years. Cleaned it out. Wow. Got everything.

The protein cookie. Yeah. Nobody wanted. Broke the barrier. It's got three grams of protein. That's not a lot of protein. Clean it out. That's a lot of cookie.

It's a big fucking cookie. She's there with my head. She was there for six hours with the coins. Oh, she paid for all of them. Oh, yeah. Okay. I don't see where the barrier is. Oh, people said it shouldn't be done.

It's a bit of a faux par. Yeah. It's a social barrier. You were thinking she smashed the physical barrier. The glass. Yeah. No, she paid for everything, but she was at the airport and there was the only vending machine in the whole place.

And there was a line behind her hoping to get a snack pre-flight. She's like, no, fuck all of you. No way. Then she says throw it down next door. Yeah, then she said, sold them at a big marker. Oh my God, that's good, Erin. Genius. Well done. That's very good. Especially it was a blizzard. All those people had no other choices. There were three days in the airport. She owned every morsel of food. Just because she had so many coins on her. Holy shit. And finally, I would love to thank from Austin, Massachusetts. Walker Anderson. Oh, that's good. Oh, well Anderson.

Bizarro Will Anderson. Wow. People would call well short for Walker. I reckon you just call them Walker. Don't reckon. I don't think they'd get called wow. Maybe wall. Walks.

Walks. Walk. Broke the speed of smell. Whoa. Somebody farted. Yep. He did you within 0.3 milliseconds. Yes.

Isn't that crazy? Cheers. I did say he could identify. That's a different skill altogether. Just again. Well, had them both. Well, the nose Anderson. Dave, girls don't do that.

So that's... Girls don't fart. Gentlemen, don't shit. That's silly that you blamed it. I mean, that's what made that so funny. Thank you so much to Walker, Erin, Linley, David. You, Lewis, Louise, David, Laura and Amy. The last thing we like to do is welcome a few great supporters into our triptych club.

So to be in the club, you've got to be on the shoutout level or above for three straight years. Unless, of course, Dave is organising it, which he did a few episodes back when he just brought people in willy-nilly. Oh, come on. Hey, he did his best. I was, hey, look, I was absent, so fair enough. If you want to, if you want to just meet me, meet me around back. I'll get you in. I'll get you.

I think one of the people who came into the Tribidge Club had signed up the day before. But anyway, from every other episode, you've got to have been signed up for three. I made up some names. All right. Well done to Philip neighbor. Congratulations. So the way we normally do this is, you know, a bit of theater of the mind. I'm standing on the door.

the club you get a ticket it's a lifelong pass once you're in you're in for as long as you like Dave's the MCs the hype man he's standing on the stage welcoming you in everyone who's already been in there standing and cheering you on as Dave hypes you up from the stage he welcomes you in after I've checked you it off the door jazz is behind the bar and then comes up with a cocktail base what's the Concord cocktail we've got beluga caviar oh yes blended with gin That is fancy. Shaken up rice.

Whoa. That is a fancy cocktail. I'm not done. Then it's got a garnish of a cherry. Oh my gosh. That is luxurious. Yeah. That's luxury, baby.

And also blended lobster. Whoa. Shaken. It's five courses in one drink. It's honestly disgusting. And Dave, you've normally booked a band? Yes, amazingly. You're never going to believe this.

I have booked the band Concord. Right. Wow. How did you get them? I just reached out. I slid into their DMs. Honestly, I'm now starting to see his process. He just went to Spotify and typed in Concord.

He didn't think fly to the Concord's or Scorpions. A couple of bands were talking about. Concord, most famous for their song, Just Kiss Her. 30 million plays. Not bad. Really? Not bad at all. All right.

Well, we've got, looks like eight inductees today. I can I just say the lead singer of the band. Stephen, it's a one-person project, Stephen Becker, PhD. That's good. Dr. Stephen Becker. All right, great, Dave, you ready? Because I'm ready to hype you. Oh, so I'm going to hype these people.

Hell yeah, let's do it. I mean, that's how we've always done it. I don't know why this is a surprise to you this week. I guess I'll have a go. We've never done this before. All right. So first up from Suva in Fiji. It's Dave Cullen.

Dave Cullen. I'm not feeling sullen. I've got Dave Cullen. Yes. From Hawthorne in Melbourne, Australia, it's Ebony at Marja. Or at Maya. I bow down to the mayor at Maya. Yes.

From Kinross in Western Australia, it's Jacob Lane, our Simpsons. Jacob Lane. Let me just say, dull. It's Jacob Lane. Yeah, that's good stuff. Come on, Matt, you can't say that's not amazing. I mean, I don't know how that's a hype up. Come on, keep with a flow going.

From McKella in Australia's capital territory, it's Alex. I don't feel like I'm in McHellar. I'm in McHaven. Yeah, with Alex. Yay, thank you. From Copenhagen in Denmark, it's Fabian Peterson. I don't remember how it was Copenhagen before you arrived, but I'm feeling better now, Fabian. From Denver, Colorado in the United States.

It's Scott, more like hot. From Oakdale in, I want to say, Minnesota in the United States. in the United States, it's Tim Kaiser. Kaiser. This night was Shizer without Tim Kaiser. Yeah, Tim Kaiser's here. And finally, from Aylesbury in Great Britain, it's Macy Doe. What Alesbury, you. Macy Doe wasn't here, but she's now here.

Macy Doe is an incredible name. I know. Holy shit. Macy Doe. It sounds like a dance move. Yeah. And Macy Docee. Macy, thank you so much. You are amazing. Welcome in Macy, Tim, Scott, Fabian, Alex, Jacob, Ebony and Dave.

And that brings to the end of the episode. Jess, is there anything else we need to do before we let this baby home? Just to remind people that they can suggest a topic at dogo onpod.com or there's a link in the show notes. You can find us on social media at dogo on pod across Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. And, you know, go out there and do something nice for a stranger. Oh, okay. Well, like take them for a ride in your... Concord.

Your boat on the water, just off for a group of jet skiers to go for a little ride. do something nice like that. It'd be fun. That's nice. Yeah, it is nice. All right, well, let's wrap it up, Dave. Thank you so much for listening. We'll be back next week with another episode.

But until then, I'll say thank you so much. And goodbye. Later. Bye. Oh, yeah, baby. Don't forget to sign up to our tour mailing list so we know where in the world you are and we can come and tell you when we're coming there. Wherever we go, we always hear six months later,

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