Technology for advancing the “state of the art is fine”…it’s simply hypocritical to disguise it as a commercial venture.
Besides, I doubt if the TU-144 did anything more tio advance Soviet aerospace than their many military probrams…and there seemed to be plenty of R&D funds for those, so was it really needed as a benefit for the industrial base?

As you can perhaps imagine, such projects as Tu 144 have military value and potential for usage as well. There were a number of serious studies by Tupolev for military use of Tu 144, and even some flight testing from one of the northern bases of Soviet Navy, I suppose to test the feasibility of use as an ELINT aircraft. But Tupolev instead decided to concentrate on Tu 22M and Tu 160, with a lot of engine and aerodynamics knowledge taken from Tu 144 program.
Pretty much in the same way as Boeing has military versions of B707, B747, B767 etc. So you really cant draw a border there, what is military and what is civilian.

At least the Concorde had a chance at commercial success (before the oil rice hike) because it gave them a product that America was not going to offer (the US program fell victim to the “green” lobby in congress, one of the first major successes of the environmental movement).

It depends on how you calculate commercial success. Its worth saying that Concorde was a state run project much like Tupolev, and British Airways also was 100% government owned when they began operating the type. Also R&D costs were written down by government to nil, so the “success” was pretty much the product of creative accounting.

The concept of a first class luxury airliner in a communist state shows how stupid and corrupt the USSR had become.

Well, the USSR was in certain way stupid and corrupt, but that has nothing to do with designing such magnificent and technically complicated aircraft. Otherwise it would be fair to say that USA were stupid and corrupt because Henry Ford built Edsel (studied since then as an example how the cars should not be built) or because North American built XB-70, which didn’t have even slim chance to do the job it was intended for.

Was it standard practice in the USSR to prove the design as safe with qualification testing prior to certification? In the west mandatory testing is required to specifically locate just this kind of issue prior to the a/c being allowed to carry passengers. By way of an example, Concorde had a full size fuel system rig mounted on a pitch roll platform which simulated all flight conditions;- pressure’s, temp’s, vibration, Acc’s etc, etc. The number of simulated flights always had to be X times (5?) higher than the leading A/C in the fleet.

Well, this happened exactly during testing of new model Tu 144D (Dalniy = long range) before certification and for sure long before it would be allowed to carry passengers. Only crew was on board. Example with Concorde fuel system is a good one, but unpredictable design mistakes happen even in much less sophisticated aircraft. For example only after numerous crashes with a lot of fatalities due to the penetration of hydraulic lines (I think on Tristar and DC-10) were the plugs in the hydraulic system installed that prevented the loss of all fluid.

Oh but there is a fundamental difference !
If you lose your flying controls on one side on a tailless delta,you lose control of the aircraft,because you only have roll control on the other wing…no pitch.
If you lose flying controls on one wing of a conventional a/c you retain pitch control for as long as the aircraft stays together !

This is exactly the thing ! if you have burning kerosene in the wing, your aircraft stays together for not so long.

I know the TU144 crash was caused by a fuel leak…but what caused the fuel leak (IE why did the pipe fail ?)

From what I’ve read the problem was in the shape of pipes, there were too many 90 degree curves for a high pressure pipe. Designers did not foresee that pressure peaks could gradually destroy the integrity of curved pipe.

Gross oversimplication of the concorde accident,the danger of tyre bursts on concorde was well understood – the a/c could/should have been modified earlier.
Aircraft accidents are rarely caused by one single factor,they are quite often a combination of circumstances (swiss cheese is the current fashionable yukspeak for it).

Its no more oversimplification than the statements here in topic like “In addition, both accidents are directly attributable to the aircraft itself (whatever theories exist about the Paris crash, ultimately, the cause was structural failure)” or “Tu 144 was a crap”.

One of the problems with slim delta airliners is that if you have a major fire in the wing then you will very quickly lose all pitch (elevator) control,because there are no independant elevators on a tailplane away from the fire area.

Id say if you have a burning kerosene in the aircraft, it doesn’t matter where exactly, it it even less matters if its delta winged aircraft or normal one.

It is one of the achilles heels I was referring to about concorde – but the same would apply to the TU144,in fact I believe that a TU144 was lost with a major wing fire…caused by ?????

2nd accident caused by the burst fuel line, however they were able to crash land it so the most of the crew survived. One of the reasons is that engines in Tu are spaced further apart so it could flew with burning wing longer.
My view on both liners is as follows – both were remarkable achievements for their time, and even for our time. And development of both was driven by politics/prestige. This is perhaps why rational americans pulled out from their project so early.

I suspect the internal ticket prices on all Aeroflot flights before the Soviet Union broke up were somewhat artificial.

It depends on what you define as “artificial”. They were regulated by state, yes, but they were supposed to cover the airline costs to certain extent. Aeroflot was a state owned enterprise during those days, but still it had budget to care about. But quite obviously Tu 144 burned too much fuel to transport just 120 passengers , so any realistic ticket price could not cover that. In case of Concorde there was a small niche market for outrageously rich people to fly over Atlantic, in case of Tu 144 there was none.

I was not arguing whether the 144 was suitable for nasa !
My opinion was that the a/c was unsuitable for its intended purpose – ie supersonic airliner.
I am in no way anti Russian-they have done some remarkable work in sometimes extremely difficult conditions.
I sometimes say harsh things about british a/c on here as well,I have been an a/c engineer for 37 years so I do not have rose tinted spectacles about any a/c and no axes to grind.

regards baz

Tu 144 was not worse than Concorde in the role of airliner. Actually it was superior, as it flew higher and faster. Reasons behind its short commercial service are purely economics – soviet passengers couldn’t afford paying 6000 USD for a ticket.