Despite looking somewhat similar, the Tu-144 was not an exact copy of the Concorde adorned with the hammer and sickle. The Tupolev first took flight in the early months of 1969, a few weeks before the Concorde began trials. The Tu-144 was also dimensionally larger than its competitor at a length of just over 215 feet, compared to the Concorde at 204 feet. At nearly 92 feet wide, the Soviet jet was also almost 10 feet wider than the Concorde. Seventeen total were built and the designer of the plane, Aleksey Tupolev, had to give his seal of approval before every single flight.
Lift for the Tupolev Tu-144D, the latest production model, was supplied by a series of four Kolesov turbojet motors that each provided 44,000 pounds of thrust. The engines, despite being able to propel the plane to speeds over Mach 2, produced so much noise, vibration, and heat that actually riding in the cabin of the jet was an ordeal. Reportedly, it was so loud in the plane that passengers couldn’t hear each other over the incredible din of the engines. The plane was also so poorly engineered to fly at top speed that the friction of the aircraft cutting through the sky required massive (and annoyingly loud) air conditioners to prevent passengers from baking on the inside.
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