Name this plane.
 

http://img188.imageshack.us/img188/7193/frontsfq.jpg

What plane is this? It is Russian but I haven't a clue as to what it is.

thats what it looks like to me

I'd certainly guess it's a Tupovlev something, and yeah it does look like a Tu 144.

I'd concur. Can't see anything else that looks like it has an engine config like that.

Best tail shot I could find of the plane:
http://beano.de/tupolev/262.jpg

http://www.aviapedia.com/files/civil..._landing-1.jpg
http://davidszondy.com/future/Flight/tu-144ll-01.jpg

I've been inside that very plane at the Technikmuseum Sinsheim :D The plane is pretty cool. You can actually 'walk uphill' into the cockpit.

And yes, it's definitely a Tu-144 in the OP.

It is a Piper Cub:O:

looks like a Concorde ripoff to me. lol

That's why it's also known as the Concordsky :DL

Perhaps, but it flew before the Concord.

Crashed too...

Interesting to compare the designs.

Similar aerodynamic requirements, I suppose.

There was indeed some espionage on the part of the Russians, but in general it's overblown. The British found out about the spying very quickly and put a stop to it, but not before they'd had some fun with their Russian counterparts. They drew up some fake designs and left them where they knew the Russians would find them. The result was some poor Russian engineers pulling their hair out because their "top secret British tire compounds" kept coming out as jelly!

Ironically, the crash that XabbaRus mentioned may have been caused by French espionage against the Russians. The French set up a photo recon plane to take pictures of the Tu-144 during its Paris Air Show routine to get some in-flight photos, and they didn't tell the Russian crew about it. Some people suspect that the Russian pilots were startled when they saw the French plane and took evasive action, which caused them to lose control and crash.

I have heard about the French recon plane as well somewhere.It is very possiable but who knows.It is also true that both the Tu-144 and the Concorde both crashed but each accident was under completey diffrent circumstances and neither was during high speed flight.

At least it shows that engineers have a sense of humor. :up:

I believe that a similar story happened when the Russians copied the B-29 from battle damaged planes that landed in the USSR. Stalin demanded that the plane to copied exactly, right down to the wiring. Many years later a engineer who had knowledge of the B-29 saw a TU-4 (the B-29 clone) and inspected it. he noticed a hole in leading edge of one of the wings and asked a Russian engineer why it was there as no American B-29 had a hole there.

The Russian explained that they had copied the designs from shot up bombers and as Stalin had said to copy the plane without alteration, they had also inclued the hole, which was a bullet hole!

As an engineer I can confirm this.

I can also give you the algebraic formula we use to achieve our sense of humor.
In this particular joke 'x'=23.77 'y'=4556.001 'z'=Graham's Number.

oah boy.... he brought in math...:dead: lol

It's a Tu-144D according to the book "OKB Tupolev A History of the Design Bureau And it's Aircraft". :)