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Comment by einpoklum | Hacker News Reader

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!

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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%...)

And 83 roubles will be like 2x more that his monthly stipend.

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.

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".

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

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://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-rise-fall-the-sovie...

More details on the project in this article (in Russian) https://warspot.ru/19630-tayny-polyusa

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.

Correct. Add to this that in the USSR civil and military uses were much closer related than in the west, for an example, see my previous comment: the engine of the Tu-160 bomber was later fitted to the experimental Tu-144LL. see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuznetsov_NK-32

I am not quite convinced about the test limitations for the Polyus station; I mean according to Anton Chechov, that (laser) gun in the picture would have to shoot, at some point. Maybe that would have resulted in much earlier conflict between the political leadership and the military industrial complex, who knows. They mentioned that that they had the Buran launcher fuelled up and ready for launch, while attempts were ongoing to push the decission for the test launch through, I mean that sounds like of lots of politics was going on behind the scene, assuming that this exercise would have a significant risk and cost a non trivial amount of money.

Buran/Energia was in many ways more capable, and powerful than the Space Shuttle. Buran was certainly inspired. However, Soviets knew how to get into space. They improved the design considerably.

Buran doesn't use integrated reusable engines with the external tank, so there's no awkward mix of solid boosters. Plus, Buran has a fully functional emergency ejection seats for all crew members. More so, the Buran had automated flight from the outset and meant that Buran could be lauched without anyone and be landed fully automatic.

Energia could be launched by itself, and carry about 100 tons which is about 3 times the shuttle's capacity, and being a seperate system makes so much more sense than the booster + fuel tank mix of the Space Shuttle system.

In general, Buran, from an engineering point of view, was a fantastic piece of work and although might have been inspired by the Shuttle initially, it definitely improved on the Shuttle design.

It's truly sad that the Buran was discontinued only after one flight. It deserved more time in the sun to shine.

A shame, indeed.

Buran was intended to be a carbon copy of Shuttle, but Soviets weren't able to put engines there because of weight constraints and they had no solid boosters either do they had to improvise.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I don't think that major Ukrainian cities of let's say post-Stalin era were in worse shape then comparable Russian cities of the same time. You had more 'deficit' goods in Moscow sure, I don't know if Kyiv was lacking anything else to be honest.

Rural/urban gap was very real though but with each decade more and more people were able to live in the cities due to extensive housing program.

Around 1990-1991 there was a popular sentiment in Ukraine that we are feeding the whole Union etc, something similar was in Russia (that they subsidize other republics), the reality was a bit of a mixed bag

I know Ukraine got the shorter stick

I don't think so. It's probably a propaganda of the new independent Ukraine government since 1991. Many of my relatives are stuck on Ukraine now because they moved there during USSR times because life there was better. They'd be happy to return to Russia, but they're old and they are citizens of Ukraine and if they sell their property in Ukraine, they'd be unable to buy real estate in Russia, so it's almost impossible for them to return. And they regret that dearly because of politics of nazism and poor state of economy.

Not all republics in USSR were equal, but differences weren't as big as they're now. And contrary to what current propaganda says, most prosperous republics were Baltic republics and Georgia. USSR was investing a lot of money in those republics to buy loyalty. You can find numbers in the USSR statistics. For example, USSR paid more for milk from farmers in Baltic republics than it cost in the grocery shops.

It was a big mistake to invest in those countries. Now they hate us the most despite all that effort and money poured there by Russia.

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.

There was no regulation prohibiting overland supersonic flights over USSR (and hearing sonic booms from military jets was pretty common in some areas)

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-concor...

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