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Boeing 2707: Why America's Concorde Failed
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Boeing 2707: Why America's Concorde Failed

50 MIN · EN · STATUS: [ STREAMING ]
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The Boeing 2707 was meant to be America's answer to the Concorde: a titanium-skinned supersonic airliner designed to outfly and outsize anything Europe could build, carrying more passengers at Mach 3 speeds. This film traces the program from its Cold War origins through the engineering problems that dogged it, including the sheer heat and metal fatigue that come with sustained supersonic flight, and the ballooning costs that followed. It covers the political fight in Washington, where a coalition of environmentalists and fiscal skeptics raised alarms about sonic booms, ozone depletion, and airport noise, ultimately helping kill federal funding in 1971 before a single prototype flew. Archival footage, technical diagrams, and period photographs carry much of the story, situating the 2707 alongside the Concorde and Soviet Tu-144 as competing bets on the future of air travel. What emerges is a case study in how physics, budget, and public opinion can end a national engineering ambition before it ever leaves the ground.