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Aviation History
1996
1996 - 3346.PDF
AIR TRANSPORT Supersonic resurrection PAUL DUFFY/MOSCOW WHEN MARSHAL BORIS Bugaev, the Soviet minister of civil aviation, ordered die termination of Aeroflot's Moscow-to-Alma Ata supersonic ser vice in May 1978, it looked like tie end of die line for the TupolevTu-144 supersonic airliner. Early in 1993, however — 15 years after its last commercial flight —Judidi de Paul, presi dent of international trading group IBP, sug gested to Rockwell-Collins that the Tu-144 would provide a good development testbed for a US second-generation supersonic airliner. Bill Adams, who was sent by Rockwell-Collins to inspect the Tu-144, considered it "good for die programme", and set about persuading NASA to use it. START OF THE PROGRAMME That June, Rockwell-Collins met Tupolev at die Paris air show, when Tupolev's director- general, ValentinKlimov, said "...we will build die [research] Tu-144LL anyway; [but] it will take us a long time. With your support it will be quicker". In fact, Klimov, then director of die Tupolev research base at Zhukovsky, and Aleksander Pukhov, chief designer of the labo ratory development of die Tu-144, had begun die Tu- 144LL programme themselves in 1988. At that time, Tupolev had four aircraft, each almost brand new in the sense that they had been flown, at most, a little over lOOh. Klimov and Pukhov believed that die sustained air-traf fic growth of die 1980s would lead to die need for a larger, second-generation, supersonic transport, and diey felt diat die Tu-144 would be a suitable development aircraft. It seemed as if the Tupolev Tu-144 was bound for the scrapheap, but things have now changed. NASA chose to use die Tu-144 instead of die Concorde because the Tu-144 flies a little high er and faster. The new US programme called for speeds of Mach 2.4; die Concorde flies at M2.2, whereas the Tu-144 was designed for M2.35 — a big plus for the US team. The Tu- 144 is also bigger than die Concorde, widi a length of 65.7m compared with 61.6m. Its wingspan is 2 8.8m (2 5.6m), and it has one-class seating for 150 people (100). Widi die need for The Tu-144 being painted at the Tupolev site at Zhukovsky for the 17 March roll-out an economical second-generation supersonic transport to carry at least 300 passengers, die extra size of the Tu-144 is an advantage. Widi agreement reached to use die Tu-144 as a development aircraft, designer Pukhov start ed to look in detail at how to solve its problems. A complete overhaul was needed; worse, die RD-3 6 engines of die Tu-144D had been out of production since 1978 and spares were not available. Pukhov decided to use new engines, a decision which involved considerable redesign work which, combined with the overhaul, meant planning a virtual rebuild, giving the opportunity of installing any test equipment deemed necessary by die US-Russian partners. PERSONAL LOAN By 1993, Russia's aviation industry was in eco nomic crisis, and de Paul personally lent $2 5,000 to restart the programme. "Without it, nothing would have happened," says Pukhov. "That is why IBP has its name on the side of die aircraft, along with NASA, Boeing, Rockwell- Collins, McDonnell Douglas, Pratt & Whitney and General Electric, the odier partners in the NASA-led team." Pukhov chose die KuznetsovNK-321 engine of die Tu-160 to replace those of SSSR-77114, the fourth Tu-144D. "The RD36 engines we had at Zhukovsky only had, at most, 20-30h flight time remaining. While the change to die NK-3 21 involved considerable work, it was not _ as much as it might have been — the engine intakes and fuselage installation needed only small changes, aldiough die rear nacelle needed substantial redesign," says Pukhov. "This was not very difficult to do: from about 60% down die length of die engine we had to 26 FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 18 - 31 December 1996
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