The last of the Great British engineering Triumphs has past. (and before anyone says anything, yes the french did half the work, but since then they have produced other engineering triumphs, we haven't).
Seems every time we get a good idea we ether get very bad at it (sport) or never follow through on it (Jet Engine - uk actually had a prototype for a supersonic aircraft that was already built 5 years before the US did, never got used. APT, or advanced passinger train, tilted on the corners to help reduce track wear at high speeds and allow higher speeds around said corners - never had the bugs removed and was scrapped, designs were sold to the sweedish, who worked them out, now we're buying tilting trains off of them... That super advanced Catarmeran that was going to take the yaht racing world by storm, but ended up breaking up whilst in one... the list goes on ) and now this...
Its funny and sad, for over 200 years this little island has produced so many of the things that today we take for granted in terms of engineering feets, such as many of todays bridge designs, yet more and more often as time passes we seem to get worse when it actually comes to delivery of the final product.
Its not that we have run out of great engineers either (though in this country it is a dying proffesion) but more and more the people who put these inventions into production flunk and so the idea is lost, only to be sold back to us at a later date for 10 times the original cost...
What is it that we are doing so wrong in this country that causes this to keep happening?
I'll miss concorde, she was always a highlight at airshows that I've been to. The most graceful aircraft ever to take to the sky in my humble opinion. The insides of it though were very tight (I have been aboard the british prototype in an air museum, I'd always wanted to travel in her... guess that will forever be a dream now).
