I Have Seen the Concorde

The cockpit of the Concorde may be one of the most fascinating things I have seen in I don’t know how long. I could have stared at it for about 30 minutes and talked about it all day. Probably staring could have lasted 2 hours and talking: 1 month. A guy and his girlfriend stared at it for about 3 minutes before me and took a million photos, and the museum guide had to kick them out. I had a Pentecostal trio stand behind me (favorite quote: very defensive: from the very large man: “I LIKE caviar. It’s good.” Somehow, the 35-40-ish daughter had never heard of caviar?) trying to ruin my life and then Reggie, our tour guide, officially ruined my life by saying “the bus is leaving.” Imagine 4 seats packed into a place as small as 2 airplane bathrooms with half the head room. Then imagine the whole thing covered in tiny dials, switches and meters. It is the cockpit of a fighter jet. O Lord in heaven, it was fascinating.

 

When you are in the Concorde, you fly in the stratosphere. This means you are so high in the atmosphere that if you looked up, you would see black because it is SPACE. When you look out your window, you would see the view that ASTRONAUTS get, which is the curvature of the earth. Like those pictures of continents and oceans and clouds with a little haze over it and then black, i.e. SPACE.

 

The engineering was explained in one of the best multimedia presentations I have seen to date, and I am a hideous, judgmental snob about that. They did the sonic boom (and all of the little kids in the airplane hanger scream in unison, every single time), they explained the engines and that the pilot can move jet fuel around the plane to alter the aircraft’s center of gravity. When they talked about something, they would highlight it on the plane. They also projected the film: on the plane.

 

The wheels are filled with liquid nitrogen, because it gets so high in the atmosphere that it needs to be able to freeze.

 

I laughed very hard at the stewardess uniforms.

 

We then had a drink at a bar.