The lead story on the BBC World Service this morning was today's final flight of the Concorde. The de facto UK space program, the Concorde has long been a proud symbol of British (and French) technological achievement, a piece of art created by engineers, not artists. However, it's also a technological dead end, and a cautionary tale. The Concorde was an (ultimately doomed) attempt to predict the future. The future of air travel turned out to be giant buses with wings, not 100-seat darts.