It screamed. If you ever stood on the tarmac at Heathrow or JFK in the nineties, you didn't just hear a Concorde taking off; you felt the Rolls Royce Snecma Olympus 593 in your marrow. It was a physical assault of sound. Most modern jet engines are high-bypass turbofans—big, efficient, and relatively quiet fans that move a lot of air slowly. But the Olympus 593? It was a pure turbojet. A narrow, violent pipe of fire that prioritized speed over everything else.
The math was simple but brutal. To get a commercial airliner to Mach 2.0, you couldn't use the "fuel-sipping" tech found on a 747. You needed raw power. The Rolls Royce Snecma Olympus 593 provided exactly that, pushing the Concorde to speeds that haven't been touched by a passenger plane since its retirement in 2003. Honestly, it’s a bit depressing that we’ve gone backward in speed over the last twenty years.
The Anglo-French Marriage of Necessity
This engine wasn't just a piece of hardware; it was a political statement. You had the British (Bristol Siddeley, later Rolls-Royce) and the French (Snecma) forced into a room together to build something neither could manage alone. The Olympus family actually started much earlier with the Avro Vulcan bomber, but the 593 variant was a different beast entirely. It had to run at full throttle for hours. Most supersonic military jets only hit those speeds in short bursts because they’d melt or run out of fuel otherwise. The 593 was built to cruise at 1,350 mph while people in the back sipped Champagne and ate caviar.
Development was a nightmare. The intake system alone is one of the most complex pieces of engineering in aviation history. See, a jet engine cannot actually breathe air at supersonic speeds. If the air enters the compressor at Mach 2, the engine basically chokes and dies. So, the engineers had to design a series of ramps and doors—the "intake control system"—to slow that air down to subsonic speeds before it hit the first set of blades. All of this had to happen in a split second, automatically. If one ramp failed, you got an "engine surge," which felt like the plane was being hit by a sledgehammer.
Reheat and the Art of the Afterburner
The Rolls Royce Snecma Olympus 593 used afterburners, or "reheat" as the Brits called it. This is usually reserved for fighter jets. On the Concorde, they used it for takeoff and to push through the "drag curve" around Mach 1. Once they hit Mach 1.7, they’d actually turn the afterburners off.
💡 You might also like: Why the Squad Support Rifle System Still Divides the Infantry
Surprisingly, the engine was at its most efficient when it was going its fastest. Most people think planes guzzle more fuel the faster they go. Usually, they're right. But the 593 was designed specifically for the "sweet spot" of Mach 2. At that speed, the intake itself was doing a huge chunk of the compression work, meaning the engine didn't have to work quite as hard to maintain momentum. It was a thermodynamic masterpiece.
Why It Was So LOUD
Noise was the engine's Achilles' heel. The 593 had a very high exhaust velocity. When that hot, fast air hit the cold, stationary air outside, it created a massive amount of shear. That’s where the roar comes from. While modern engines use "chevrons" or high-bypass air to cushion that transition, the Concorde just punched a hole in the atmosphere.
Communities hated it. It’s basically the reason the Concorde was banned from flying supersonic over land. You've probably heard of the "sonic boom," but the takeoff noise was just as controversial. To mitigate this, Snecma developed a complex nozzle system (the Type 28) that could vary its shape to try and quiet things down, but it was like trying to put a silencer on a volcano. It didn't really work.
The Technical Guts of the 593
The engine was a twin-spool turbojet. It featured a seven-stage low-pressure compressor and a seven-stage high-pressure compressor. The turbines had to be made from advanced nickel-based alloys to survive the staggering heat. We’re talking about internal temperatures that would turn most metals into a puddle.
Cooling was the secret. They bled air from the compressors to cool the turbine blades from the inside out. It was a delicate balance of using hot air to cool even hotter metal. If that balance tripped by even a few degrees, the engine would suffer catastrophic "creep" or failure.
- Dry Thrust: 32,000 lbf
- Thrust with Reheat: 38,050 lbf
- Overall Pressure Ratio: 15.5:1
- Fuel Burn: Roughly 22,000 kg per hour at cruise
The fuel system was also used as a heat sink. Before the fuel reached the burners, it circulated around the engine and the plane's hydraulic systems to soak up excess heat. It’s a clever bit of "nothing goes to waste" engineering. They even shifted fuel between different tanks in the wings to adjust the plane’s center of gravity as it transitioned through different speeds. The Rolls Royce Snecma Olympus 593 was the heart of this entire vascular system.
The Tragedy and the End
You can't talk about this engine without mentioning Air France Flight 4590. On July 25, 2000, a piece of debris on the runway ruptured a fuel tank, and the resulting fire eventually led to the plane crashing. While the engines themselves didn't "cause" the crash—they were victims of the fire and the resulting surge—the investigation highlighted how sensitive the entire Concorde ecosystem was.
The engines were incredibly maintenance-intensive. For every hour in the air, the Olympus 593 required hours of meticulous inspection. By the early 2000s, the economics just stopped making sense. Air France and British Airways were looking at massive bills to upgrade the electronics and safety systems. When the 593 finally went silent in 2003, it marked the end of an era where we prioritized "faster" over "cheaper."
What Most People Get Wrong
People often think the Rolls Royce Snecma Olympus 593 was "old tech" by the time it retired. That’s total nonsense. Even today, building a turbojet that can sustain Mach 2 for three and a half hours without melting is something only a handful of companies on Earth could even attempt.
We see "supersonic" startups today like Boom Supersonic trying to bring back the dream. But look closely at their plans. They aren't building a new Olympus. They're trying to use modified medium-bypass engines because they have to meet modern noise regulations. The raw, unbridled power of the 593 is something we likely won't see in civilian aviation ever again. It was a product of a time when we weren't afraid of being loud and expensive as long as we were first.
Actionable Insights for Aviation Enthusiasts
If you're fascinated by the engineering of the Rolls Royce Snecma Olympus 593, don't just read about it. There are still ways to get "close" to this machinery:
📖 Related: Where Is The Hidden Folder On iPhone Explained (Simply)
- Visit the Intrepid in NYC or Filton in Bristol: These locations have Concordes where you can see the engine housings up close. Seeing the scale of the variable intakes in person explains more than any diagram.
- Study "Inlet Recovery": If you want to understand why this engine was a masterpiece, look up NASA’s papers on supersonic inlets. The 593 was basically a "slave" to its intake system.
- Check out the Museum of Flight (Seattle): They have a fantastic Concorde exhibit that dives into the British/French collaboration.
- Look for "Concorde Engine Start" videos: Use high-quality headphones. Listen for the "howl" during the start cycle—that’s the sound of the air being manipulated by the guide vanes.
The Olympus 593 wasn't just an engine; it was the peak of the "Jet Age" philosophy. It was loud, it was thirsty, and it was glorious. We traded that glory for $400 tickets to Orlando on a quiet Airbus. Maybe that’s a fair trade for most people, but for those who love engineering, the silence left by the 593 is still a little too quiet.