Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I realize that some people would use horrifying instead of exciting. But it means what was once something only the privileged could enjoy is now within the reach of the middle class.
Primera Air offers $99 seats on a B737 TransAtlantic routes.
TU-144 flew about 37 times and suffered a poor safety and maintenance record prior to shutdown as I recall.
The demise of the English/French Concorde in ~2003 saddens admirers of ultra super sonic flight a bit. By 2003 the price of kerosene/jet fuel had risen to the point that the Concorde was grounded.
TU-144 flew about 37 times and suffered a poor safety and maintenance record prior to shutdown as I recall.
The demise of the English/French Concorde in ~2003 saddens admirers of ultra super sonic flight a bit. By 2003 the price of kerosene/jet fuel had risen to the point that the Concorde was grounded.
Blame that d bag anti noise activist in NY/NJ. I forget her name, but the regs changed, and they couldn't go supersonic above the U.S. Beautiful airplane.
Why did the USSR want to build an SST anyway? Were they anticipating making sales to Western carriers?
That seems improbable. So was its purpose just to show that Soviet technology could do anything the West could do?
Faster travel from Moscow to the Russian Far East for bigwigs -- surely that wasn't worth the R&D expenditures.
Why did the USSR want to build an SST anyway? Were they anticipating making sales to Western carriers?
That seems improbable. So was its purpose just to show that Soviet technology could do anything the West could do?
Faster travel from Moscow to the Russian Far East for bigwigs -- surely that wasn't worth the R&D expenditures.
You are right, of course, from a business and economics standpoint, but the USSR seems to have had a "little brother" complex about the USA, whatever we did, they had to do it too, and if at all possible, do it bigger and better. Sometimes they succeeded in being at least bigger: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba
Of course R&D expenditures for this sort of thing tend to pay off in unexpected ways - one could argue that the modern IT world was brought into being, or at least hurried into being, by the space program. If one accepts that premise, the payoff on space R&D spending was huge.
And, finally, if it had become as successful as the R-7 rockets have turned out to be, yeah, they might have had foreign customers for it. Hard to imagine how that could have happened, but, just sayin'.
Why did the USSR want to build an SST anyway? Were they anticipating making sales to Western carriers?
That seems improbable. So was its purpose just to show that Soviet technology could do anything the West could do?
There was a lot of that, back then.
Quote:
Faster travel from Moscow to the Russian Far East for bigwigs -- surely that wasn't worth the R&D expenditures.
Depends on whether you're a bigwig, no? Of course, once they saw the product, they decided against using it.
The Soviet Union has been described as "a banana republic without the bananas." Meaning, they could excel in a handful of areas that were deemed national priorities, such as the space program, military, and hard scientific research. But their economy otherwise was incredibly hollow. Standing in line for hours to buy poor quality food, and forget most basic consumer goods...
The Soviet Union has been described as "a banana republic without the bananas." Meaning, they could excel in a handful of areas that were deemed national priorities, such as the space program, military, and hard scientific research.
They had excellent scientists and very good engineers, but their QA in mass production, as a rule, was horrible. They worked around these limitations quite well - their military hardware was not very advanced, ugly and roughly made. Also tough and useful and available in quantity. It is a skill to come up with designs that will perform well under these handicaps.
When they were allowed to gather the cream of the crop in metallurgy, machining etc., they could build lower numbers of very, very fine pieces of technology. Although the TU-144 was an example of ambition overshadowing capability just a little.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
a question for aviation historians
