Watching a big-ticket Hollywood movie is always a spectacle in itself with breathtaking CGI scenes, stunning animations, amazing (though often repeated) storyline, bold themes and the devil-may-care attitude of it's makers. Truly, the Hollywood filmmakers are not bound by so many social laws and rules that their Indian counterparts are bombarded with. At the end of the day, you also get a feeling that it's worth for the money that you have spent. Two of the recent movies that I have watched have been G.I.Joe and 2012. Both these movies had their fair share of completely illogical and ridiculous things happening in them but the fact is that they were packaged in a stunning and convincing way that you will not be able to completely refuse it either. While the former had menacing sci-fi machines looking straight out of an alien land and super spacecrafts that could go around and destroy missiles as far as over NewYork and Moscow in seconds, the latter had extravagant ships that could even withstand "end of the world"!
These things place a very obvious question in front of our mind - Are these going to be the machines of the future? Are we going to see and experience machines like these any time soon in our life? Though our heart will start beating faster thinking about the prospects of seeing things like these and will give a "Yes", our mind would say a definite "No no". Case in point, the sad demise of the "Concorde". Having let go off the closest machine that the public had access to like the one we see on these sci-fi movies, we don't really have a chance to see or experience machines like these in the near future.
The only real supersonic travel experience within the reach of the public deserved a much better run and more love from the public than what it actually garnered. Just imagine the feeling of traveling faster than sound which is just what this sleek monster provided. Though one can't deny the associated "Sonic Boom" that almost deafened the people directly under it's path and the gas-guzzling nature of it's turbojet engine, the universal truth is that "All things good come at a cost". For reasons not related to it directly, the most significant of them being the crash of the Air France Concorde in 2000 because of a chunk of metal in the runway from an aircraft which took off earlier and the economic depression, the flying of Concorde became nonviable for the associated airlines and the last flight happened in November 2003. I remember being very upset on seeing the last flight in news channels as it not only marked the end of an icon in aviation history but also ended one of my dreams of traveling in the Concorde one fine day. I had it on top of my Things To Do Before I Die list.
Personal feelings apart, I really wish there is a true successor to the Concorde lurking underground somewhere and is unveiled one day much to the surprise and excitement of the public and once again giving us the chance of traveling supersonic!
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