Recall this video where Rory Sutherland, a TED speaker, mentioned that instead of producing the fastest train, one could spend less money on (male and female) supermodels serving beverages. As a side effect, train passengers would enjoy the trip and would want the train to slow down instead. Laurent provided another instance of this other kind of optimization as I was mentioning the Concorde earlier:
I recently visited Le Bourget museum (Air and Space museum) and entered in a Concorde for the first time of my life. The cabin was so tiny... The tour guide told us about the crash, but more interestingly about the technology. She said that [the plane] was so noisy that they had flight attendants serve buckets of Champagne right from take-off so that passengers could enjoy the short flight and forget about the lack of comfort....
Looks like the billions invested in a Mach 2 commercial airplane were not enough after all.
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