http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20171018-the-soviet-unions-flawed-rival-to-concorde

A rather excellent read for your Sunday afternoon.

Good one. I saw one at the Russian Central Air Force museum just outside Moscow in 1997. Really impressive in the flesh.

Enjoyed that. Ta.

Yep, good that, Ta.

If you enjoyed that, which mentions the Russian space shuttleprogramme – Buran – have a look at the pictures of the remains of that programme now.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/07/breaking-into-the-buran-graveyard-aging-soviet-vehicles-still-impress/

I love the articles on the BBC Future page!

Thanks for posting that – a good read indeed!

That was a great read, thanks for that! Here’s another if you haven’t read it already:

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170816-the-monster-atomic-bomb-that-was-too-big-to-use

*Likes*

Good read, thanks.

We’ve stopped off at Sinsheim in Germany to see both planes, and also Buran and a 747 at the sister museum in Speyer just down the road. Well worth a visit.

https://sinsheim.technik-museum.de/

https://speyer.technik-museum.de/

They copied the Harrier and the Milan anti-tank missile as well, amongst other NATO weapons.

Good stuff, thank you!

Ta, always been interested in the TU-144.

The Tu-144 crashed at the Paris air show in 1973, basically finishing the Concordski programme.

A few years later I was speaking to a Concorde pilot (one of those, incidentally, who left his cap in the expansion joint on his plane’s final flight – the gap closed up when the plane went sub-sonic – so his cap is still on display, trapped, to this day in the museum) who sheepishly boasted that the Concorde pilots were aware of a fatal weakness in the Soviet plane, so at the airshow they flew the Concorde in a manoeuvre that they knew the Tu-144 pilots would copy, but would cause it to break up. Which they did. And it did.

RAF banter! Tally-Ho!