[HN Gopher] Tupolev Tu-144: The Soviets' doomed rival to Concord...
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Tupolev Tu-144: The Soviets' doomed rival to Concorde (2017)
Author : Tomte
Score : 92 points
Date : 2021-08-28 06:33 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (edition.cnn.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (edition.cnn.com)
| flyinghamster wrote:
| An amusing anecdote (disclaimer: not sure if true), was that the
| Soviets were having trouble making tires that were durable
| enough. The KGB tried to hire a French runway worker to collect
| rubber samples.
|
| The runway worker went to the French authorities, and a phone
| call to Michelin was placed: "Give us the very worst tire
| compound you can come up with." A batch was whipped up, and our
| runway worker sent some samples of it on to his KGB handler.
| Needless to say, their tire problems persisted.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| Amazing, I hope this is true.
| 0x_rs wrote:
| This was somewhat common voluntarily or not thanks to the
| Farewell double-agent "revelations" of an actual massive
| technology siphoning operation from the west to the Soviet
| Union. There's a funny anecdote on Buran's TPS, which was
| allegedly based on a very early US iteration of the Shuttle
| tiles that was discarded and "given away like candies" to
| foreign spies.
| refurb wrote:
| The FOIA files are on cia.gov, but that disinformation
| campaign around the Shuttle is a pretty epic story. They
| basically took STS blueprints and added a bunch of fatal
| flaws then let the double agent pass it to the Soviets.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Except the soviets ended up building a very different
| craft. Buran was visually similar but radically different
| in basic layout (no main engines on orbiter etc). The
| Soviets didnt fall for all the bad intelligence they were
| fed.
|
| And there is a flip side. Bomber gaps, missile gaps, the
| MiG-25 fiasco, that time the CIA double-counted bombers
| because the russians painted different tail numbers on
| either side ... America gobbled up its share of false
| intelligence too.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-
| Gurevich_MiG-25#Wester...
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqKE5xCogH0
| papito wrote:
| Speaking of. The pictures of the remains of the program are
| fascinating:
|
| https://www.boredpanda.com/abandoned-soviet-space-shuttle-
| pr...
| panick21 wrote:
| They should have done one that was very complex and would
| almost work but then be horrible to maintain.
| perl4ever wrote:
| It's often mentioned how the US covertly imported titanium, I
| think, from the Soviet Union for use on advanced aerospace
| projects.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Not just any project, the A-12/SR-71 spy-plane project which
| was specifically designed to penetrate soviet airspace.
| Zenst wrote:
| Very probably and I had heard of some plans taken that were
| doctored so they got flawed plans.
|
| Also espionage spying was common then (probably still is today)
|
| http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/447464.stm
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Given that this was an airliner, one wonders how they might
| have felt should a hundred people have died due to a faulty
| tire based on that bad intelligence. It is one thing to
| sabotage an enemy weapons system, very much another to damage a
| civilian aircraft.
|
| Ironically, a blown tire caused the fatal crash that led to the
| demise of Concorde. It struck debris, but there are always
| eerie similarities between western and russian programs.
| zepearl wrote:
| As well funny, from
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-144#Early_flights :
|
| > _...an alarm siren went off immediately after takeoff, with
| sound and volume similar to that of a civil defence warning.
| The crew could not figure a way to switch it off so the siren
| stayed on throughout the remaining 75 minutes of the flight.
| Eventually, the captain ordered the navigator to borrow a
| pillow from the passengers and stuff it inside the siren 's
| horn._
| adventured wrote:
| > A Tupolev Tu-144 in flight over Moscow as part of a NASA-
| sponsored research project in 1998.
|
| Photo five, featuring a Tu-144 with a US and Russia flag on it.
| Ah the brief optimistic days before the Cold War resumed. There
| are even a smattering of Hollywood movies over that span of time
| where the Russians and Americans work together in friendly
| fashion. When you view those movies now (eg Air Force One 1997),
| it seems entirely bizarre, from some fantasy world. Movies
| before: Soviets, Cold War, enemies; during the thaw: yay, Russia,
| democracy, friends, hugs all around; after: Putin, Cold War,
| quasi-enemies.
| RegBarclay wrote:
| One of the best Soviet airplane rivalry stories is the Tupolev
| Tu-4 - a bolt for bolt copy of the US B-29.
|
| A good telling of the story here:
| https://wwiiafterwwii.wordpress.com/2019/06/29/b-29-to-bull/
| einpoklum wrote:
| The USSR's call to develop and produce the Tu-144 seems to have
| been a mistake - in hindsight naturally, but also at the time:
| The European Concorde was targeted at the rich, whose time was so
| precious that they absolutely had to get across the world much
| faster. The USSR was a poorer country, and though it too was
| stratified (to bureaucrats with country Dacha's etc.) - it did
| not have a jet-set of multi-millionaires to cater to as air
| travelers. Plus, I believe international travel both within and
| outside of the "Soviet block" was much more limited generally. So
| there was simply not going to be demand for it. Combine that with
| the significant technical challenges and chance of accidents and
| I just don't see how that makes sense.
|
| But - I'm no "Sovietologist", so do enlighten me if I'm wrong
| about this!
| artem247 wrote:
| I'm not an expert but I do not think that commercial viability
| was really something they were interested in. Again, flight
| inside USSR were pretty common, and there was a demand for
| those flights, but only at heavily subsidized prices. So the
| idea probably to have this token supersonic jet as more of a
| demonstration of capabilities of Soviet technology, operating
| at a loss. Also, technological parity. I think it is more of a
| execution failure rather than idea.
|
| BTW, country dachas was not exactly a marker of a bureaucrat
| class. More precisely I believe there were two classes of
| dachas - small summer homes for common people and
| 'nomenklatura' dachas for people with personal drivers.
| anticodon wrote:
| _But - I 'm no "Sovietologist", so do enlighten me if I'm wrong
| about this!_
|
| _and though it too was stratified (to bureaucrats with country
| Dacha 's etc.)_
|
| It wasn't so stratified to mention it explicitly. Everyone had
| more or less the same lifestyle. And many had Dacha's, not just
| bureaucrats. Also, if you'd seen those dachas...
|
| E.g. four years ago I visited Stalin's dacha on the lake Ritsa.
| I'd say that average house of the current Russian middle class
| is much bigger and more luxurious than Stalin's dacha. And he
| was the leader of the USSR.
| einpoklum wrote:
| Not everyone had more or less the same lifestyle. If nothing
| else, you had central cities and peripheral towns and
| villages, and Russia vs other Soviet Republics (I know
| Ukraine got the shorter stick, to say the least for a very
| long time if not all the way to the end), etc.
| artem247 wrote:
| I don't think that major Ukrainian cities of let's say
| post-Stalin era were in worse shape then comparable Russian
| cities of the same time. You had more 'deficit' goods in
| Moscow sure, I don't know if Kyiv was lacking anything else
| to be honest.
|
| Rural/urban gap was very real though but with each decade
| more and more people were able to live in the cities due to
| extensive housing program.
|
| Around 1990-1991 there was a popular sentiment in Ukraine
| that we are feeding the whole Union etc, something similar
| was in Russia (that they subsidize other republics), the
| reality was a bit of a mixed bag
| m0zg wrote:
| It probably was much larger than average Soviet house at the
| time, as well as far more luxurious. Stalin was into
| expensive cars and fine cuisine as well (even as parts of the
| country quite literally starved to death).
|
| Thing is, you don't have to be ultra-rich to feel good about
| yourself. You just need to be substantially richer than the
| next guy. And no party functionary (let alone Stalin) ever
| had any lifestyle issues. Dachas, yachts, personal chefs -
| it's par for the course until your fellow party members take
| you out with a pickaxe or something to free up the spot.
| anticodon wrote:
| This is true for absolutely any world leader. I doubt that
| Hoover was starving during Great Depression. It's an unfair
| appeal to emotions: no matter how much or how little Stalin
| ate, it wouldn't solve hunger problem of the entire
| country.
| m0zg wrote:
| It'd solve a lot of problems if he died of starvation
| though, like millions of his de-facto slaves in rural
| Russia. Folks should remember this when they vote for
| commies. It always ends up like this, no exceptions.
| eukgoekoko wrote:
| There was popular demand for these flights. My father once flew
| with Tu-144 from Moscow to Alma-Ata because of some urgency.
| The distance between these two cities is about 4000 km which is
| comparable to the distance between London and New-York. By the
| time he used to be a student and since the flight was
| subsidized it costed him just 83 roubles, which is just 20
| roubles more than a flight on an ordinary plane, according to
| wiki (https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A2%D1%83-144#%D0%9A%D0%
| BE%...)
| andi999 wrote:
| Another aspect is that you can only fly over sea (since the
| sonic boom is too noisy). So the routes would have been limited
| probably to only go from Moskow to Wladiwostok, or best to
| Japan. But there would probably be no supersonic flight allowed
| to go across central Europe.
| azov wrote:
| There was no regulation prohibiting overland supersonic
| flights over USSR (and hearing sonic booms from military jets
| was pretty common in some areas)
| andi999 wrote:
| Yes, but ppl wouldnt put up with it. Like Saudi Arabia
| withdrew flight rights after Nomads complained that it was
| upsetting their Camels.
| https://mainlymiles.com/2021/06/03/singapore-airlines-
| concor...
| varjag wrote:
| That's about right. TU-144 was borne more of the need to keep
| up with the Joneses. That is to maintain technological parity
| with the West.
|
| Another such project was Buran/Energia, which while not a
| carbon copy of Space Shuttle was an outcome of matching "what
| the Americans have".
| erklik wrote:
| Buran/Energia was in many ways more capable, and powerful
| than the Space Shuttle. Buran was certainly inspired.
| However, Soviets knew how to get into space. They improved
| the design considerably.
|
| Buran doesn't use integrated reusable engines with the
| external tank, so there's no awkward mix of solid boosters.
| Plus, Buran has a fully functional emergency ejection seats
| for all crew members. More so, the Buran had automated flight
| from the outset and meant that Buran could be lauched without
| anyone and be landed fully automatic.
|
| Energia could be launched by itself, and carry about 100 tons
| which is about 3 times the shuttle's capacity, and being a
| seperate system makes so much more sense than the booster +
| fuel tank mix of the Space Shuttle system.
|
| In general, Buran, from an engineering point of view, was a
| fantastic piece of work and although might have been inspired
| by the Shuttle initially, it definitely improved on the
| Shuttle design.
|
| It's truly sad that the Buran was discontinued only after one
| flight. It deserved more time in the sun to shine.
| bserge wrote:
| A shame, indeed.
| MichaelMoser123 wrote:
| Energia, the booster of Buran, was part of the Soviet version
| of star wars; they tried to put up Poljus - an 80 ton space
| station with a 1 MW laser designed to down incoming targets.
| And that was after Gorby has pledged not to militarize space.
|
| But yes, the USSR almost outdid the USA on star wars, if it
| weren't for some software error.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4XgCRnqwpg
|
| https://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-rise-fall-the-
| sovie...
|
| More details on the project in this article (in Russian)
| https://warspot.ru/19630-tayny-polyusa
| avmich wrote:
| Wikipedia says "shortly before Polyus' launch, Mikhail
| Gorbachev visited the Baikonur Cosmodrome and expressly
| forbade the in-orbit testing of its capabilities." It
| wasn't the case that USSR upper power hid its cruel
| intentions or that space industry was more militaristic
| than Politburo.
|
| Buran had other interesting features, like non-toxic
| propellants and longer ability to stay on orbit. It's not
| that Soviets always learned from their mistakes and made
| better systems - sometimes they couldn't, and sometimes the
| problems were internal to the system, like grounding of TKS
| after Chelomey's death - it's that sometimes this approach
| did lead to improved results. Soviet engineers were quite
| capable in aerospace.
|
| Regarding economics of Tu-144 flights. I've heard that
| economics of civil aviation in USSR was rather weird -
| political pressure dictated having civil aviation,
| economical realities dictated subsidizing most - not only
| Tu-144 - flights to keep them affordable, yet this approach
| also had side benefits in keeping industry, which
| essentially was tailored for military orders, occupied with
| projects, testing, maintenance, learning, education of
| specialists, even international sales.
| MichaelMoser123 wrote:
| Correct. Add to this that in the USSR civil and military
| uses were much closer related than in the west, for an
| example, see my previous comment: the engine of the
| Tu-160 bomber was later fitted to the experimental
| Tu-144LL. see
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuznetsov_NK-32
|
| I am not quite convinced about the test limitations for
| the Polyus station; I mean according to Anton Chechov,
| that (laser) gun in the picture would have to shoot, at
| some point. Maybe that would have resulted in much
| earlier conflict between the political leadership and the
| military industrial complex, who knows. They mentioned
| that that they had the Buran launcher fuelled up and
| ready for launch, while attempts were ongoing to push the
| decission for the test launch through, I mean that sounds
| like of lots of politics was going on behind the scene,
| assuming that this exercise would have a significant risk
| and cost a non trivial amount of money.
| erk__ wrote:
| Funnily enough at the sister museum to the Sinsheim
| Technology museum where they have a Tupolev they have a Buran
| shuttle
|
| https://speyer.technik-museum.de/en/spaceshuttle-buran
| guilhas wrote:
| *the Soviet's doomed rival to the doomed Concord
| nicbou wrote:
| The Soviet scored another first by dooming its plane before the
| West
| mhh__ wrote:
| To use more creative language: If Concord was doomed, then the
| Tu-144 was completely fucked from day 1.
| fredoralive wrote:
| The plane uses the French spelling with an e, even in English
| (although it appears there was a bit of back and forth on that
| back during the 1960s).
| johnwalkr wrote:
| It was actually really controversial at the time, at least
| for conservative English newspapers. I stumbled upon old news
| footage of it on YouTube once. I remember an English worker
| with a rough accent saying something like "I don't care if
| they put three es on the end, just let us keep working on the
| bloody thing".
| WalterBright wrote:
| > its rushed development made it notoriously unreliable and
| unpleasant to fly.
|
| Apparently taking away the profit motive didn't work.
| monocasa wrote:
| The Boeing 2707 had the same complaints.
|
| And the closest to successful version, the Concorde, was never
| profitable but propped up with heavy .gov funding from the
| French and British governments.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > The Boeing 2707 had the same complaints.
|
| It could hardly be unpleasant and unreliable, because it
| never was completed and never flew.
|
| As for uneconomic, sure. That's a common result of it being a
| government project, just like the Concorde.
| monocasa wrote:
| They had two prototypes and enough simulations to know that
| it was unpleasant and unreliable.
|
| That's why .gov dropped their funding and cancelled it.
| WalterBright wrote:
| No support for your contention in the wikipedia article:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_2707#Government_fund
| ing...
|
| The funding was cut because it was uneconomic and
| environmentally damaging.
| monocasa wrote:
| It being obvious that people wouldn't want tickets
| because it's unpleasant, and operating being expensive
| because it's unreliable were contributing factors in it
| being uneconomical.
|
| The env damaging part was only over land and there were
| plenty of niches for it. It could have done just fine
| over oceans. Late 70s/early 80s would have loved an SST
| going west coast to Japan and Hawaii.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > It being obvious that people wouldn't want tickets
| because it's unpleasant (1), and operating being
| expensive because it's unreliable(2) were contributing
| factors in it being uneconomical.
|
| I'll need a cite for (1) and (2). I don't believe it.
| diskzero wrote:
| The Monino Airfield [1], north of Moscow, has a Tu-144 [2] on
| display. You can walk right up to it, but can't physically get in
| it.
|
| Monino is one of the more amazing aviation museums I have seen.
| There are some extremely rare aircraft on display, including my
| favorite, a Mil V-12 [3]
|
| You can hire a former pilot who was stationed at the base to give
| you a tour. They can speak some English, but if you speak a
| little bit of Russian the stories become a lot more interesting!
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monino_Airfield
|
| [2] https://www.google.com/maps/place/55deg50'12.0%22N+38deg10'12
| .0%...
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mil_V-12
| baybal2 wrote:
| The key flaw of Tu-144: the whole wing structure was _machined_
| from a single enormous piece of aluminium.
| avereveard wrote:
| Take that, Steve Jobs.
| sonthonax wrote:
| Really? Do you have a source for that? I'd like to read more.
| baybal2 wrote:
| https://testpilot.ru/russia/tupolev/144/tu144_1.php
|
| > Krylo samoleta (udlineniia 1,74 i suzheniia 7,
| mnogolonzheronnoi konstruktsii) sostoit iz osnovnoi i
| ot'emnykh chastei i imeet kessonnuiu konstruktsiiu s silovoi
| nagruzhennoi obshivkoi v vide frezerovannykh
| krupnogabaritnykh panelei vafel'noi konstruktsii iz
| vysokoprochnykh aliuminievykh splavov.
|
| "The wing consists of the main, and detachable part, and has
| a caisson construction with load carrying honeycomb panel
| skin machined from high strength aluminium alloy"
|
| So, a correction there. The wing is made of two ennormous
| machined parts: the main wing, and the wing extension.
| bserge wrote:
| I read it as "big machined honeycomb panels made out of
| high strength aluminum alloys"... So no mention of the
| actual size of a single panel.
|
| Krupnogabaritnykh just means "large/big sized".
| the-dude wrote:
| I don't speak Russian, but your claim does not follow from
| your translation. It could still be made from numerous
| honeycomb, machined parts.
| nzmsv wrote:
| The Russian does in fact say the skin is made from large
| machined honeycomb panels (paneli).
| rkagerer wrote:
| There are videos of the tragic crash on YouTube, but this one of
| the aftermath is quite something: https://youtu.be/rPyvuBbhAAs
| mixtur2021 wrote:
| Somewhat related. While Concorde flew supersonic, the air which
| entered the engine needed to enter at subsonic speeds. They
| needed to slow the air using flaps in a very short distance. This
| was done by the Air Intake Control Units (AICU). Originally
| Concorde used an analogue computer in the prototypes. The
| analogue computer wasn't accurate enough for smooth flight. In
| the end, a fully digital solution was created at short notice by
| the rather grandly named "Guided Weapons Division" of the
| "Electronics and Space Systems Group" at BAC. Here's a pic of the
| unit:
| http://images.yuku.com/image/pjpeg/4df3652018ef41c9e9669a5ea...
|
| All done in the early 70s. These units started to fail in the 90s
| and they had to bring folks out of retirement to produce new
| units.
|
| The Soviets struggled to crack this aspect and apparently
| approached UK Gov to license the tech. Unsurprisingly UK Gov said
| no as the tech was classified as it could be used by military
| aircraft too.
| dang wrote:
| One previous comment:
|
| _Concordski: What ever happened to Soviets ' spectacular rival
| to Concorde? (2017)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19021153 - Jan 2019 (1
| comment)
| wombatmobile wrote:
| > French President Georges Pompidou, foregoing nationalism,
| called it "a beautiful plane."
|
| For a brief moment I imagined a different world to the one I
| experienced in my youth, in which the Cold War, with all its
| cliched animos stereotyped rivalrous ranting that filled every
| newspaper and news bulletin for three decades, was replaced by a
| good faith chivalrous respect.
|
| It felt good. The world was a better, more interesting, more
| productive place.
| sgt101 wrote:
| And yet one half of it lived under a dark tyranny.
| kgeist wrote:
| USSR officially congratulated USA on the moon landings, for
| example. People rarely talk about things like that, sadly.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| It was also one of the only country with the ability to
| confirm that the USA did go to the moon, and had every reason
| (politically) to call it a hoax and didn't.
|
| That's why I still don't get moon landing conspiracy
| theories.
| wolfgang42 wrote:
| I accidentally got into a debate with a moon landing
| conspiracy theorist about this once. Their claim was that
| both space agencies were tacitly colluding to sponge
| budgets off of their respective governments. I dug into
| this further and after a couple of rounds of back-and-forth
| the answers they presented effectively required the entire
| Soviet political and ideological system to be a sham. I
| pointed this out and commented that, if true, this would be
| a conspiracy theory that makes a bit of NASA trickery pale
| to insignificance in comparison, and never heard from them
| again. I'd like to think they changed their mind, but I
| don't think it's likely.
|
| My (uncharitable) explanation is that it gives a comforting
| sense of control and understanding of the world to be part
| of an in-group that has simple explanations for every
| outsider's (potentially complicated and technical)
| objections.
| nimbius wrote:
| Nowhere in the article does it say doomed. Its 2021, can we stop
| flogging the commies yet?
|
| The Tupolev was an absolute engineering masterpiece given the
| constraints it operated under. This thing had to transport
| regular people and land at practically any airport, something
| Concorde never did.
| dmz73 wrote:
| USSR back then and all the currently "democratic" societies now
| are more than happy to support projects that show everyone how
| much better they are than the "other guys" but when it comes to
| actually improving the life of non-elite, all the elite-led
| societies (all of the current and past societies) seem to fail
| for some reason. I wonder why.
| nicbou wrote:
| It always reminds me of Eisenhower's famous chance for peace
| speech: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chance_for_Peace_speech
| adventured wrote:
| > when it comes to actually improving the life of non-elite,
| all the elite-led societies (all of the current and past
| societies) seem to fail for some reason
|
| They haven't failed, it has been exactly the opposite. Which is
| of course why the global immigration magnet is so incredibly
| strong toward those nations.
|
| Those societies, the more affluent democratic ones you refer
| to, have been hyper progressive and prosperous for the average
| person since the WW2 era.
|
| A middle class person since ~1950-1960 in Austria, Germany,
| France, Britain, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, the US,
| Canada, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, Ireland,
| Slovenia, Japan, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand (and
| numerous others) - have largely led quite comfortable lives
| compared to what it was like in the past. Life has gotten
| better in most every regard if you're in those nations vs pre
| WW2.
|
| You can even watch this progress happen in rapid fashion, in eg
| the Baltics or the former Czechoslovakia, as they're quickly
| joining the more affluent tier post Soviet rule. The same is
| true in South Korea, China, Taiwan in terms of non-elite
| progress. The progress by the non-elites in those nations has
| been breathtaking over a very short period of time (30-40
| years).
| m0zg wrote:
| Gotta give it to the Soviet party apparatchiks - they've actually
| flown in these, I believe several times. Or maybe underlings just
| didn't tell them how dangerous that was.
| rossmohax wrote:
| New take on a supersonic travel:
| https://boomsupersonic.com/overture
| jansan wrote:
| In Sinsheim/Germany there is a Tu144 on display right next to a
| Concorde. It really is a sight to behold and the museum is IMO a
| great place to visit (if you are a nerds).
|
| Here is a photo of the beauties:
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/16/Concorde...
| erk__ wrote:
| If you ever get around Sinsheim in Germany I would highly
| recommend a visit to the Sinsheim technology museum they have
| both a Tupolev [0] and a Concorde on top of their roof together
| with a lot of other interesting exhibitions.
|
| [0]: https://sinsheim.technik-museum.de/en/tupolev-tu-144
| Tomte wrote:
| And you can go inside both!
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| How? They're on the roof. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe
| dia/commons/1/16/Concorde...
|
| _edit_ There 's a metal staircase: https://old.reddit.com/r/
| aviation/comments/btze9j/my_picture...
| erk__ wrote:
| The sister museum in speyer have a full 747 on some stilts
|
| https://www.flickr.com/photos/meteorry/49653977743
| 7kay wrote:
| Speyer has the Buran as well
|
| https://speyer.technik-museum.de/en/spaceshuttle-buran
| techdragon wrote:
| Ok wow. That's some amazing effort to find room for not
| just the exhibit but to make it accessible to the
| visitors! These two German museums just jumped out of no
| where into the top ten of my science/engineering museum
| bucket list.
| Kognito wrote:
| The magic of.. stairs?
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| The HackerNews guidelines are quite clear regarding
| snark.
|
| The stairs aren't easy to make out from that photo.
| Here's another photo that shows the metal staircase: http
| s://old.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/btze9j/my_picture.
| ..
| heavenlyblue wrote:
| Unfortunately your initial comment comes off as a snark.
| On top of that you took your time to actually find a
| photo supporting your argument but didn't bother
| searching for a photo of the entrance to the planes?
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| > On top of that you took your time to actually find a
| photo supporting your argument
|
| I did not. Please assume good faith. That image was
| linked by someone else in the thread. [0]
|
| Why would I deliberately seek out a photo that doesn't
| clearly show the staircase, only to then edit my comment
| to link to another image that does?
|
| > your initial comment comes off as a snark
|
| I don't know how I could have phrased the question to be
| any more neutral.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28336561
| smoyer wrote:
| I always love the extra landing gear added to the Concorde
| to avoid tail strikes on rotation - sometimes "patches" are
| the correct solution to infrequent problems!
| chrisseaton wrote:
| I don't think they're a patch - they were part of the
| original design.
| hodgesrm wrote:
| You can also see a Tu-144 in Zhukovsky, a city about an hour by
| train from Moscow. [1] A lot of Soviet aviation development
| happened there.
|
| [1] http://www.rusaviainsider.com/zhukovsky-pays-tribute-
| venerab...
| harywilke wrote:
| Lots of people have been having fun in the parking lot.
| https://www.google.com/maps/place/Technik+Museum+Sinsheim/@4...
| doctor_eval wrote:
| There used to be a tour of the Airbus factory in Toulouse,
| where they made A380s, and at the end of the tour we took a bus
| across the tarmac and were able to walk around and go inside a
| Concorde. It was amazing.
|
| It is a much bigger plane on the outside than you might think.
| That wing is huge.
| notanote wrote:
| The Airbus factory has had a museum nearby since 2015,
| Aeroscopia [1]. It hosts two Concordes, among others (like
| the Super Guppy [2]). It has a pre-production Concorde
| (F-WTSB), used for test flights, and an Air France one
| (F-BVFC). It's worth a visit for any aviation enthusiast.
|
| You used to be able to go inside the test flight one, but
| it's a cramped space, so things might be different while
| covid regulations are in force.
|
| [1] https://www.toulouse-visit.com/aeroscopia-museum
|
| [2]
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aero_Spacelines_Super_Guppy
| bobthepanda wrote:
| part of the reason for the Concorde's decline was the fairly
| tight cabin, which was likened by some to be almost bus-like.
|
| With the advent of lie-flat business class seats in the late
| 90s and early 2000s, Concorde became much less appealing
| since one could just fly a redeye to London and have a
| comfortable sleep than be cramped for a shorter period of
| time.
| jeffrallen wrote:
| Go to Seattle's aviation museum and see for yourself. I'd
| call it "swanky bus", but yes, buslike.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| If you like that, you should definitely go to the Dayton Ohio
| AF museum where they have a Valkyrie. You can't go inside it,
| unfortunately.
| olympusultra wrote:
| Western propaganda is so boring... Yes, Tu-144 wasn't the biggest
| success story of the Soviet civil aviation, but it gave birth to
| this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-160 And 35 years
| later the West is still unable to match Tu-160. The wise would
| say that every coin has a flip side, and every story about a
| Soviet "failure", however one-sided coverage it usually receives
| in the Western propaganda, normally has too...
| relativ575 wrote:
| There have been countless numbers of articles about 737Max's
| failures or A380's financial woe, and yet a single article
| about Tu-144 and you call it propaganda?
|
| > And 35 years later the West is still unable to match Tu-160
|
| Unable to match what? Aircraft is designed to serve a use case.
| B52 is planned to remain in service until at least 2050s,
| despite not winning any records. SR71 is a dazzling aircraft
| that is universally admired, yet none are in service today.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| There were actually aircraft designed by the US to match the
| Tu-160. See the XB-70 Valkyrie, which was a complete failure
| that never gave suite to anything. So yes, the US never
| matched the Tu-160, despite trying.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| The Valkyrie was wound down because missile technology made
| it obsolete before it was even done. The USA instead
| focused on the supersonic B1. And even that project was
| almost cancelled as obsolete if Reagan hadn't had
| intervened, and gone for a low flying B1B instead that had
| much less chance of being shot out of the sky before
| dropping its bombs. To be honest, even the B1B isn't that
| useful, ballistic and cruise missiles do the job much
| better. Even Russia doesn't fly its supersonic bomber very
| often, flying the less expensive to operate TU-95 a lot
| more.
|
| War isn't a pissing contest to see who can have the fastest
| X, it is rather one where you find a bunch of most
| effective tools for the job.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| The main reason the XB-70 and B-1A were shutdown was yes
| missiles advancing, but mostly price.
|
| Low flying approaches and cruise missiles were strongly
| reconsidered at the the because the MiG-31 had look-down
| shoot-down capability. We don't know if it would have
| been a better or worse option, we're dealing in
| counterfactuals.
|
| Russia has few uses for the Tu-160 anymore. It's main use
| was to penetrate hostile airspace of near peer opponents.
| Since the fall of the USSR yes there is not much more use
| for that.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Valkyrie was a different class of bombers, one that never
| came to be. Rather than the Blackjack, the Russian answer
| to Valkyrie was actually the T-4. The SR-71 was a spyplane,
| but there was also to be an SR-71-class interceptor meant
| to shoot down incoming Valkyrie/T4-class bombers. That
| entire field of mach-3 bombers and fighters was stopped by
| advanced in missile tech.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhoi_T-4
| bkev wrote:
| _There were actually aircraft designed by the US to match
| the Tu-160_
|
| At the risk of "arguing with someone on the internet", I
| think you may have your chronology backwards, since it
| seems the Tu-160 was designed to match the US aircraft you
| mention.
|
| The Valkyrie was a late 1950's to early 1960's design with
| physical prototypes existing and flying by 1964.
|
| The B-1A design began in 1965, with the first flight in
| 1974. This would have been the closest western analog to
| the Tu-160, since the B-1B derivative had a different focus
| - low-altitude terrain following - since it was believed
| that the high-altitude/high speed designs like the B-1A
| were vulnerable to newer Soviet missile designs. Stealth
| was also becoming increasingly important to US command due
| to the same concerns about missiles.
|
| The design competition that begat the Tu-160 began in 1972,
| with a first flight in 1981. I'm not saying it's not a
| great plane - by all accounts it is very capable - but US
| designs were not done in response to it.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| The Tu-160 was made obsolete by anti-air missiles and radar
| (also the reason all work on supersonic interceptors stopped
| in the 60's). SR-71 by satellites.
| adolph wrote:
| buffs not so shabby record-wise. A simple search for "b52
| record" returns plenty of gold.
| blincoln wrote:
| I'm not very familiar with the Tu-160, so I'm curious to hear
| your opinion. It seems like it was a Soviet success at building
| something like North American attempted (unsuccessfully) with
| the XB-70. I'm not suggesting it was a copy, just that it seems
| like the same class of aircraft?
| anovikov wrote:
| Tu-160 can't cruise supersonically unlike Tu-144 or Concorde
| and they really have very little in common.
|
| Tu-144 was doomed by the whole system of socialism - and not
| really in a bad way. In a classless Soviet society there were
| no people for who paying 5x for the ticket to get 2.5x speed
| would be justified just because there was no mass inequality.
| In the west, there were some of those people and for a while
| (1980s and 1990s) that was enough for profitable operation of
| planes that came for free - but even then, that wouldn't work
| out if the airlines had to pay for planes.
|
| If was an expensive toy West could somehow afford for a while,
| but Soviet Union couldn't.
| Lio wrote:
| It's worth remembering that one reasons for Concorde's
| limited success was regulatory manipulation by companies like
| Pan-AM, TWA and Boeing to initially block the most profitable
| transatlantic flights to the US.
|
| That limited initial orders and almost killed the project
| until it was slightly relaxed enough to allow some flights to
| New York.
| papito wrote:
| As someone who grew up in the USSR at the very bottom, it was
| definitely not classless. It was the epitome of corruption -
| get into a position of power by any means possible, and start
| lootin'.
|
| This sort of cynical approach to government and lack of
| dedication to public service is exactly what I see now taking
| root in the United States. Get to the feeding trough and
| grift your heart out. It's f--ing tragic.
| lumost wrote:
| I'd suggest the book red plenty for an interesting set of
| perspectives on the Soviet system. The Soviet Union was not a
| classless society by any stretch.
| [deleted]
| evgen wrote:
| The equivalent match on the western side was the B-1, which was
| built earlier and served a roughly similar role until it was
| mostly replaced by the B-2 and now both are being retired in
| favour or the upcoming B-21.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| The B-1B was not an equivalent to the Tu-160. One could go
| above Mach 2, the other could barely go above Mach 1. The
| B-1A would have been a match if it wasn't a failure.
| adventured wrote:
| By your premise any plane that flies even 10% slower
| doesn't match up, even if it's superior in every other way.
|
| You don't have to match exact speeds to match outcomes when
| it comes to bombing. What matters is what the platform is
| meant to achieve and how effective is it at its mission. A
| slower supersonic plane may be the superior overall
| platform, depending on the other aspects of the plane.
|
| Russia made a hyper expensive show pony, when they could
| have built a cheaper, more effective platform at a lower
| speed. That's usually the kind of mistake the Americans
| make. The relatively high max speed of the TU-160 turned
| out to be entirely meaningless, they would have been better
| off building a different plane.
|
| The TU-160 has a $200m+ price tag. That's $1.2b scaled to
| the US economic terms. It's something beyond hyper
| expensive for the Russians in relation to their economic
| capabilities and military spending.
|
| The B-1A was cancelled. The TU-160 should have been
| cancelled.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| What do you mean 10% slower? The B-1B was essentially
| half the speed. That's a huge difference.
|
| Scaling prices of Soviet inventions to US economic terms
| using Russian prices is really, really absurd.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| MichaelMoser123 wrote:
| Interesting that the Tu-144LL was fitted with the Tu-160
| bombers engines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuznetsov_NK-32
| ; The Tu-144LL did test flights for Nasa and Boeing, when they
| tried to design a supersonic jet liner
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-144#Use_by_NASA ; at
| least someone was trying to learn from the design of this bird.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > And 35 years later the West is still unable to match Tu-16
|
| Does it really need to?
|
| Carrying 100 tons of bombs at mach 2... where?
|
| A single F-18 can easily carry a 2Mt nuke, or two, mounted on
| some standoff missile with decent range on itself.
|
| And USA, unlike USSR, has a network of friendly countries to
| host their airforce, and aerial refuelling infrastructure
| spanning the whole world.
| anovikov wrote:
| Especially since payload of Tu-160 is much smaller than B-1B
| and supersonic capability it can provide works only on very
| short distances - it's not for delivering bombs faster, more
| for running away from fighters.
| dude4you wrote:
| It is not delivering bombs it is delivering cruise
| missiles.
| anovikov wrote:
| Which makes the supersonic capability even more
| pointless. If it's going to release missiles from far
| away there won't be any fighters to evade.
| keymone wrote:
| What's "the west" and how were they trying and weren't able to
| match tu-160?
| sudosysgen wrote:
| The West being the US and Western Europe and the attempts
| were mainly the B-1A and the XB-70 both of which failed.
| dralley wrote:
| Cancellation isn't failure. By that point it was clear that
| non-stealth high altitude bombers were going to be
| completely useless within the next few years due to
| advances in missile technology.
| ulzeraj wrote:
| One of my favorite electronic bands has an album entirely
| dedicated to communist era transports and there is a track
| dedicated to the TU 144
|
| The videoclip has lots of footage of the plane.
| https://youtu.be/t09R_uTrvlw
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| Interesting part of cold war rivalry between the US and USSR
| amusingly won by Europeans. The American Concorde never even left
| the design stage so at least the Tupolev got that going for
| itself.
| evgen wrote:
| Given how much the EU pissed away on a useless airplane that
| did not lead to any future orders beyond the initial set I
| would not exactly say that the EU 'won' this competition. The
| only way to win this game was not to play and earlier you
| bailed out on consumer SST the better off the end result.
| philjohn wrote:
| Wasn't that partly because of intense lobbying in the US to
| disallow it to fly overland routes (even subsonically)
| because of "sonic boom noise"?
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Sonic boom noise/damage is a very real thing, and the
| engines on Concord were VERY loud compared to modern high
| bypass turbofans even when not operating supersonic. Flying
| the Concord subsonically doesn't make much sense; the range
| was tailored to cross the Atlantic at supersonic speeds
| (4,400 mi range. 3,600 mi trip. Don't forget that it needs
| to reserve 30 minutes of fuel, in addition to the nearest
| alternate). If you slow it down over land it gets less
| efficient so you really can't get too much farther than the
| coasts unless you stop to refuel. But then you've just got
| a low capacity, loud, expensive to operate subsonic plane.
|
| The reality is that the Concord was very good at one thing,
| getting across the North Atlantic at speed. But it was much
| worse for almost anything else since it lacked the range
| for longer crossings (it had about half the range of a
| 747), and wasn't a good option for subsonic overland
| travel, and consumed more fuel per passenger per mile.
| mopsi wrote:
| The European aerospace industry absolutely won it. Concorde
| established anglo-french cooperation, known today as Airbus.
| Many innovative features (such as electric flight controls)
| introduced in Concorde were further developed in the
| following Airbus A300 and reached their full potential in
| A320, which is the highest-selling airliner in the world and
| has exceptional safety record.
|
| A300 in particular was so ahead of its time that American
| airlines saw it as being too good to be true. An airliner
| much safer, efficient and reliable than any counterpart
| couldn't get a single sale for years until Airbus gave a few
| to Eastern Airlines for free
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ln-ffJM9sJc).
| panick21 wrote:
| That might be the case, but that doesn't mean the plane was
| a success. That means the reorganization of the industry
| was a success.
| evgen wrote:
| That is a nice story to tell yourself, but it is not
| actually what happened. Concorde was more about tying the
| UK into the European Economic Community and the future EU.
| The Aerospatiale/BAC partnership that developed the
| Concorde existed in parallel to Airbus and it was only much
| later that Airbus took over a lot of the operational
| maintenance of Concorde when it acquired Aerospatiale
| entirely in 2000.
|
| Concorde was not an Airbus aircraft. Tech developed for
| Concorde was not the same fly-by-wire that ended up in the
| A300 line. The A300 line is very good, but would have
| (probably) existed without Concorde and the money pissed
| away on Concorde by Aerospatiale and BAC did nothing for
| either company other than weaken them and lead to BAC
| disappearing into BAE. (BAE, the weakened Aerospatiale and
| what was left of Messerschmidt previously had been pushed
| by their respective governments to join into Airbus.)
|
| When BAC still existed as an independent company in the
| late 60s it lobbied the UK government to not support the
| A300 program and instead tried to push its own competing
| civilian airliner. Maybe if Concorde was not such a failure
| then Aerospatiale might have been able to continue on its
| own and BAC would not have been forced to be acquired by
| BAE and become a part of the Airbus group. In this imagined
| reality both would have continued as national aerospace
| champions in civilian planes in addition to their military
| work, but we will never know.
| Glawen wrote:
| I think you are the one telling stories to yourself.
| According to you, Concorde was created to tie the UK to
| the EEC, which UK was not part of. May I remind you that
| the EEC membership was proposed to the UK and they flatly
| refused. Later when they tried to join, France denied
| their membership up until 1973. Concorde first flew in
| 1969.
|
| Parent is correct, Concorde was a first step towards
| Airbus. European governments knew that there was too many
| aircraft manufacturers and they saw the need for mergers.
| France and UK are the leading europeans aircraft
| manufacturers, that made sense to start with a franco
| british venture. Many of the Concorde staff later worked
| for Airbus, like Henri Ziegler, and refined the concorde
| technology.
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