martinlittle.com:thinkThin

On Friday morning, quite a few of us went to the tenth floor in our building to watch Concorde come in. It looked absolutely fabulous. I felt I really had to see and hear it take off, so I left the office about at about 1.20, for the 2pm takeoff. Normally the airport bus jets out to the airport with little effort. Of course, today the bus was (very) late, plus there were roadworks and the road was busy anyway. I changed transport methods after one stop, opting for a personal bus instead! At 2pm on the nose, my taxi was finally somewhere I thought I could get a vantage point, so I jumped out and zoomed across a road, close to the fence. Luckily for me, the takeoff was slightly delayed, by about 20 minutes, giving me time to get a videocall placed to work (twenty tries to place one call is not a great way to increase usage!).

My vantage point turned out to be spot on, giving me a very clear view of Concorde. It was a fabulous thing to behold, but having two phones and a camera in my hand certainly didn't help me capture a good picture. :-( Thankfully plenty of others did.

I really was sad to see Concorde go. Yes, there are plenty of financial and environmental issues raised by the plane, however it was an incredible technological achievement (as well as looking great) and to be saying goodbye to it when there is nothing better to replace it seems strange in this Moore's law world.

Since the retiral was stated, I really have considered splashing the cash and going for a ride, but I just did not have the cash (cheapest ticket was 2k, going Concorde one way, economy back). Ah well.

The BBC has a great site covering all things Concorde, and the Guardian has three good articles. Time for me to go and shed a tear.