Concorde throughout its 35 year career, despite its leading edge in aeronautical technology, faced a mountain of financial problems. "But why did the people who launched the project get the costs so mistaken? The straight answer must be: "They would have needed to be superhuman to get them right." These men were trying to do something that had never been done before - build an airplane that would carry 100 passengers at twice the speed of sound - and they had no precedents for designing and marketing a supersonic airliner. The men in charge did not and could not, know what a jungle of problems they would have to hack their way through." (F.G Clarke and Authur Gibson 1976)