Derek Copeland wrote:

All the advances in travel technology from canals to
railways to steam powered steel hulled ocean liners
to aeroplanes to jet transports have required far-sighted
designers and shedloads of investment cash. If the
accountants had always been allowed to get their way,
we would probably still be travelling very slowly by
horse and cart, and sail driven wooden ships

The accountants always do get their way, eventually. All those wonderful
advances were sustained by their economic, not their romantic, momentum.

Better SSTs will be built, when they make sense. If the simpler Concorde
could not recoup its full development and operational costs, we can
applaud Boeing for being sufficiently prescient to avoid making an even
bigger mistake.

The dreamers will solve tomorrow's problems, and the accountants will
fund the solutions, as always.


Jack