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Back in those days, we called it the «Concordsky» as it was so obvious that the Russians did copy the French-UK Concorde design. They did the same for many other planes and specially with the USA's space shuttle which was a failure and never went in space. TU-144 did crash in France's Bourget airshow.
ReplyDeleteWith all the problems plaguing Boeing recently, they certainly dodged a bullet on this subject. Awarded a government contract in the 60s to develop an SST for the U.S. they had a design in development that, of course, would have been almost 3 times larger than the Concorde SST and this Russian equivalent, seating 250-300 at a speed of Mach 3. Because of funding pull-backs, noise and environmental issues, the program was scrapped before any aircraft took to the air. These aviation beauties seemed ahead of their time and proved unsustainable, but they sure captured this teenager's imagination in the 60s and defined the phrase "Dream Big But Not Too Big."
ReplyDeleteJiEL - I love Concordsky.
ReplyDeleteMilleson - Good philosophy.
A crude form of the Concorde. The Russians used a straight delta wing for the TU 144, where as Concorde used a delta wing of slight and complex curvature due to the use of computer modeling technology, a technology that the USSR lacked. Also the Soviet jet engine technology could not compete with the advances of the Concorde’s Olympus jet engines. That’s why the Soviet school system stressed mathematics and the sciences to compensate for the lack of advanced computers and other technologies.
ReplyDeleteThe Soviet Ilyushin 62 was a knock off of Britain’s Vickers VC-10. The VC-10 had full electro hydraulic controls and servos for its control surfaces (elevators, rudder, air brakes etc.) The Ilyushin 62 controls were largely mechanical, literally cables and pulleys like in a DC -3 of the 1930’s ! -Rj
Rj - You always impress me with your knowledge.
ReplyDelete