Concorde trip
We arrived at school excited to visit the world
famous Concorde. We got on the bus and set off to
Manchester airport. When we arrived we saw lots
of planes landing and taking off. There were old
planes in the car park and one was a big military
plane. We went inside and were shown a video
about the history of Concorde. It told us about how
revolutionary and ahead of its time it was.
We then went onto the Concorde. We sat down in
the seats where many famous people had sat. The leather interior was very stylish and
modern, it was designed by Terence Conran. A man who was an expert on the Concorde
told us about what it was like to fly on the Concorde. He told us about the famous
celebrities that had been on the Concorde, such as the Queen.
We then went into the cockpit to look at all the flight controls.
There were so many complicated dials and buttons. He
explained the basics and went through the take off and
landing procedure. We saw that from the cockpit windscreen
there was not much visibility. We were shown the different
facilities such as the food preparation and toilets. We then
went outside and looked at the exterior. We started at the
nose and were taught about the strange design of the
Concorde nose. The Concorde nose is different because it can move to reduce drag; this is
because of it strange take off style. He showed us the under body of the plane and the way
that the refuel and start the engines.
The Concorde has four Olympus 593 MK.610
engines that were made by Rolls Royce. For
Concorde to be economically viable, it needed to
be able to fly reasonably long distances, and this
therefore required high efficiency. For optimum
supersonic flight, turbofan engines were
considered, but then rejected, this was due to their
large master cross-section which would cause
excessive drag. Turbojets were found to be the
best choice of engines for Concorde. The quieter
high bypass turbofan engines such as those which are now used on the Boeing 747s could
also not be used. The engine chosen was the twin spool Rolls-Royce Olympus 593, a version
of this Olympus engine had originally been developed for the Vulcan bomber, and then
developed into an afterburning supersonic engine for the BAC TSR-2 strike bomber and then
in association with the French company Snecma Moteurs , this had been adapted for
Concorde, with the final version fitted to the production aircraft known as the 593 mk610.
Overall it was a very interesting trip and I have learnt a lot about the famous Concorde.