TU-144 - attacking rider of supersonic aviation

Tu-144 - not just the "first swallow" supersonic passenger aircraft. This is one of the symbols of the Cold War Councils and its technical superiority over the Western world. Tu-144, almost twice the speed of sound and for several decades ahead of its time, marked the beginning of a new era of passenger aviation, which, however, has not yet come. His only competitor in this field - the Anglo-French Concorde - suffered an even more deafening fiasco.

In the sixties, mankind, perhaps, was still technologically and scientifically not ready for such achievements. Then, almost nothing was known to world science about the fatigue of metal. The whole history of the competition between these two cars was accompanied by continuous catastrophes and setbacks on both sides.

When it became known about the joint Anglo-French project to create a radically new supersonic passenger airliner, the reaction of the Soviet Union was lightning fast. The answer to this project was to be Tu-144. "Concord" was calculated on cruising speed of flight within the limits of 2200-2300 km / h. The Soviet analog had to surpass this figure, like many others. Nikita Khrushchev did not want to yield to his Western enemies in anything.

The development of this ambitious project was entrusted to the Tupolev Design Bureau. The new aircraft was given the brand "TU-144", and its construction was handled by the Voronezh Aircraft Plant. The appearance of the new offspring of the Soviet aircraft industry before the Concorde and the technical superiority of the Soviet airliner over the Anglo-French car were regarded only as the most important political tasks. Money for the construction of the Tu-144, as was customary in the USSR, did not regret.

The whole design of this supersonic metal bird was the embodiment of a bright and progressive technological idea: it fed the workpiece to an automated CNC machine and got a huge fragment of the fuselage or plane of the wing at the output. Automation, of course, did not fail, but with this approach, for some reason they forgot that for semi-finished products of such a huge size and ingots needed a suitable scale. They are difficult to cast, which leads to the formation of local inhomogeneities, foreign inclusions and defects that weaken the metal.

Maybe this would not be a problem, if not for the purpose of the machine. After all, the TU-144 aircraft had to overcome the sound barrier, which means that it could withstand enormous overloads. For example, his technological rival "Concorde" after not the longest operational period in flight, wings started to fall off. And the cause for a long time could not be clarified. He was perfectly passing various tests. Including in deep basins under very high pressure conditions. In the end, it was simply withdrawn from production.

Approximately the same fate befell TU-144. After processing the structure, made of a solid metal plate of great thickness, in some places there were thin (up to two millimeters) bridges. They, in time, were torn, unable to withstand the constant huge overloads.

And still, the Tu-144 has considerably surpassed the "Concorde" by the period of operation, although the memory of the crashes of this car is still preserved. Perhaps the most famous of them is the catastrophe that occurred at the air show in Le Bourget in 1973. The invaluable experience gained in the creation of this machine was successfully used in the design and construction of heavy supersonic airliners Tu-22M and Tu-160.

And the Tu-144 itself was successfully used up to the middle of the nineties in various scientific studies: studying the ozone shell of the planet, solar eclipses, etc. Thirteen world records were set on the modification of this machine-Tu-144D, which have not yet been beaten.