Why did the Tu-144 end up a footnote in aviation history? In the 1990s, NASA launched a program called High-Speed Research (HSR). The intent of the program was to look into developing a second-generation supersonic transport (SST) aircraft, something not unlike the Franco-British Concorde SST that took to the skies between 1976 and 2003. The appeal of such commercial aircraft is, obviously, the speed. For those familiar with eight-hour transatlantic flights, a cool three-hour jump from New York to Paris is enticing indeed.
Yet when the HSR program launched, it struggled to find a Concorde to use as a test bed for new technologies. Thankfully, there existed a backup.
As the Cold War ended and the United States tried to forge a positive relationship with Moscow, both countries launched the United States-Russian Joint Commission on Economic and Technological Cooperation. The program would be co-chaired by US Vice President, Al Gore, and Russian Prime Minister, Viktor Chernomyrdin. Its purpose would be to pursue areas of mutually beneficial technical exchange, including a potential joint aeronautical flight research program.
Coincidentally, the only other country to develop a first-generation SST such as the Concorde was the USSR.
In fact, the Soviet’s Tupolev Tu-144 was the world’s first SST. When news broke of the Franco-British plans for an SST (what would become the Concorde), the Soviets launched a similar program, unwilling to be beat out by their international political rivals. The Tu-144 they developed was 215 feet long, with a wingspan of almost 100 feet and a cruising speed of up to Mach 2.2. The plane was first test flown in December of 1968, two months before the Concorde’s first flight, and exceeded the speed of sound in June 1969, four months before the Concorde.
Despite this early promise, the Tu-144 showed problems from the beginning. Though it first debuted well at the Paris Air Show in 1971, its follow up performance in 1973 ran into deadly issues. Flying before the Tu-144, the Concorde offered by all accounts a smooth, stellar performance. Unfortunately, the same could not be said for the Tu-144, which tried to upstage the Concorde. Twists and turns led to the plane breaking up midair and crashing into a nearby French village, killing all eight on board and six on the ground.
The crash set the Soviet program back four years, allowing the Concorde to enter service first. Test runs of the Tu-144 continued between Moscow and Almaty, using the route as an excuse to carry mail; but passenger travel didn’t begin until 1977. However, another crash in 1978 forced the Tu-144 down for good—perhaps all for the better, as passage on the plane was so loud (due to the use of engine afterburners and loud air conditioning) that passengers had to pass notes to one another to communicate. All in all, only seventeen Tu-144s were produced, including prototypes.
Yet when NASA needed its aforementioned test bed, the Tu-144 is exactly what they got. NASA pilots used the last Tu-144 ever made, the craft having clocked in only 83 hours of prior use. Despite the thrill of piloting this historical aircraft, the HSR program went unfunded after 1999 when it was determined that an economically viable SST could not be envisioned in the foreseeable future.
Additionally, with the growing adoption of internet technologies around 2000, supersonic passenger flights seemed even less necessary than before. Today, most of us still make our overseas voyages on something much slower.
Alex Betley is a recent graduate of the Tufts University Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy where he was an International Security Studies Civil Resistance Fellow and Senior Editor with the Fletcher Security Review.
