h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Fortunately the government didn't baulk at the far greater cost of producing Concorde...the first commercial supersonic aircraft and the nicest looking plane ever made.

I agree that the Anglo-French Concorde is indeed a most beautiful aircraft, but was it the first commercial supersonic aeroplane? Didn't the USSR manage to get there first with the Tupulov something or other?

Also, I seem to remember that the Americans put the boot into Concorde's commercial chances by stopping it from flying at supersonic speeds over their airspace.

The Russins did indeed have a supersonic aircraft, the Tu 144, but it never got pass the prototype stage. It made its maiden flight on 32 Dec 1968. Concorde 001 made its maiden flight in March the following year. On 3 June 1973 the Tuplov Tu 144 broke up in flight during a demonstraion at the Paris Air Show. It was abandoned shortly afterwards. Incdentally, the Tuplov Tu 144 bore remarkabley similar design charateristics to Concorde, thanks to more than little commercial espionage.

http://www.concordesst.com/home.html

Stuart

The Tupolev-144, did indeed fly before the Concorde, it was pretty much a complete failure.

The industrial espionage of the Concorde project was dected by the French Secret Service and the wing geometry used by the Concorde aircraft was subtly changed. Concorde has no lift augmentation devices such as flaps or slatsbecause the wing design is of a complex nature. It is known as an OG wing, or Optimal Geometry. The aerodynamics of it are far to complex to go into here. the Russians used the spoof data provided to them by their spy and went ahead with construction of the aircraft. The low speed handling of the TU-144 was fairly unstable, and required the addition of small wings hich popped out just above the cockpit area when the aircraft slowed to the apporach configuration.

The Paris Airshow crash is now accepted as being caused by the presence of a French Airforce Mirage that was taking photographs of the TU-144. The two aircraft nearly collided, but as the Tu-144 bunted over the top, it exceeded its structural limitations and broke up.

Another reason for the commercial failure of the TU-144 was the very high fuel burn of the engines which reduced the range of the aircraft.

The Tu-144 was used on mail flights within the USSR in 1975 to build up operational data of how to handle the aircraft and was put into passenger service in 1977. Another fatal accident shortly after this was the final nail in the coffin. The last passenger service was in 1978. In 1995 a TU-144 was reactivated for a series of test flights oprated jointly between the Russian Space agency and NASA. That particular aircraft was subsequently put for sale on e-bay!