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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 targete

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!

andi999 5y ago
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 5y ago
  There was no regulation prohibiting overland supersonic flights over USSR (and hearing sonic booms from military jets was pretty common in some areas)
  - andi999 5y ago
    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-concorde-the-full-story/#2-india-refused-overflight https://mainlymiles.com/2021/06/03/singapore-airlines-concor...
varjag 5y ago
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".
- erk__ 5y ago
  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 https://speyer.technik-museum.de/en/spaceshuttle-buran
- MichaelMoser123 5y ago
  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://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4XgCRnqwpg https://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-rise-fall-the-soviet-death-star-14854 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 https://warspot.ru/19630-tayny-polyusa
  - avmich 5y ago
    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.
artem247 5y ago
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 5y ago
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.
- m0zg 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      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.
- einpoklum 5y ago
  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.
eukgoekoko 5y ago
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%D0%BC%D0%BC%D0%B5%D1%80%D1%87%D0%B5%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B0%D1%8F_%D1%8D%D0%BA%D1%81%D0%BF%D0%BB%D1%83%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%B0%D1%86%D0%B8%D1%8F https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A2%D1%83-144#%D0%9A%D0%BE%...)
- thrwway34 5y ago
  And 83 roubles will be like 2x more that his monthly stipend.

andi999 5y ago

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 5y ago
There was no regulation prohibiting overland supersonic flights over USSR (and hearing sonic booms from military jets was pretty common in some areas)
- andi999 5y ago
  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-concorde-the-full-story/#2-india-refused-overflight https://mainlymiles.com/2021/06/03/singapore-airlines-concor...

varjag 5y ago

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".

erk__ 5y ago
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 https://speyer.technik-museum.de/en/spaceshuttle-buran
MichaelMoser123 5y ago
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://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4XgCRnqwpg https://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-rise-fall-the-soviet-death-star-14854 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 https://warspot.ru/19630-tayny-polyusa
- avmich 5y ago
  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.

artem247 5y ago

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 5y ago

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.

m0zg 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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.
einpoklum 5y ago
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.

eukgoekoko 5y ago

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%D0%BC%D0%BC%D0%B5%D1%80%D1%87%D0%B5%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B0%D1%8F_%D1%8D%D0%BA%D1%81%D0%BF%D0%BB%D1%83%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%B0%D1%86%D0%B8%D1%8F https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A2%D1%83-144#%D0%9A%D0%BE%...)

thrwway34 5y ago
And 83 roubles will be like 2x more that his monthly stipend.