20 Euro Austria 2020 - Faster than sound

Faster than Sound, the fourth and final piece in the Reaching for the Sky series , is dedicated to the undisputed star of commercial air travel, the supersonic airliner Concorde. The most iconic and glamorous airliner of all time, the Concorde was not only a triumph of engineering but, with its delta wings and slightly bent nose, it was also a design classic. In service from 1976 to 2003, Concorde captured the public imagination like no other civil aircraft before or since.

With a top speed of more than twice the speed of sound (1354 mph or 2180 km / h) and a Paris-New York flight time of three and a half hours, Concorde was a collaboration between the British and French aeronautical industries. Although a source of national pride for both countries, with its high fuel consumption and excessive noise levels - notably the sonic boom during the breaking of the sound barrier - Concorde was a source of controversy from the outset. The excessive cost of its development program and the resulting prohibitive cost of a seat in the cramped airliner - up to 30 times that of the cheapest transatlantic options - meant that Concorde was effectively reserved for the rich, who were served champagne and caviar in-flight to mask the plane's relative discomfort.

The remarkable consumerism typical of the latter part of the 20th century eventually began to be replaced by today's dominant concepts of sustainability and efficiency. With the demise of Concorde in 2003, supersonic civil aviation effectively came to an end, while the zeitgeist had shifted from the age-old dream of flight to the dream of environmentally-friendly flight. The sound barrier had, however, been broken several times along the way.

The coin's reverse shows Concorde in takeoff mode over Paris, with the Seine and Eiffel Tower below. The obverse of the coin features the rocket-powered Bell X-1. Piloted by Charles "Chuck" Yeager on October 14, 1947, "Glamorous Glennis", as he called it, became the first manned aircraft to break the speed of sound in level flight.