Encore for an SST

The Tu-144 made its inaugral flight on December 31,1968, chased by a MiG-21 that had been modified to analyze the aerodynamics of the SST's delta wings. Photo: Mir Agency

By edging out its western rival, the Tu-144 became a solid propaganda coup for the Soviet Union, and as soon as the flight concluded successfully, the cloak of secrecy began to lift. A Soviet documentary about the flight said, in part, "This aircraft embodies all that is best in world science today."

Well, maybe.

The Tu-144, like many grandiose projects of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, never lived up to expectations. Its thirsty engines compromised its range, a colossal air conditioning system to cool the hot aircraft assaulted passengers' ears, and in 1973 a Tu-144 crashed at the Paris Air Show, creating a public relations disaster. Instead of a triumph, the Tu-144 became a Mach 2 white elephant.

But now Russian and American engineers are taking a second look at this nearly 30-year-old design. Not only are the two countries pooling their resources, with NASA leading the U.S. effort, but even rival airframe manufacturers Boeing, McDonnell Douglas, and Rockwell, along with engine makers Pratt & Whitney and General Electric, have teamed up. In September 1994 I met with members of the Tu-144 team in Moscow, where they were converting one surviving Tu-144 into a flying laboratory.

The goal is nothing less than a new SST. A preliminary study by NASA's High Speed Research Program estimates a demand for up to 1,000 next-generation SSTs by the year 2015. NASA would like those SSTs to be American, and in 1994 the agency started a $1.5 billion, seven-year second phase of the program to develop technology for a Mach 2.4 aircraft that seats 300 and has a range of 5,000 miles. Aerospatiale, British Aerospace, and Deutsche Aerospace have established the rival European Supersonic Research Program to study a Mach 2 craft with capacity for 250 and a 5,500-mile range.

For critics of the SST, it's déjà vu all over again. In 1967 the Federal Aviation Administration predicted that by 1990 there would be a market for 500 copies of a proposed American SST. That airplane was to have been designed by Boeing, with the U.S. government funding initial development, but Congress squashed the program in 1971 after an $800 million investment.

Also in 1967, British Aircraft Corporation's "most pessimistic" estimates showed a market for 200 Concordes by 1975; only 14 ever entered service. "Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of the SST theme overall is its cyclical return from the dead every few years," says Howard Moon, author of the 1989 book Soviet SST: The Technopolitics of the Tupolev 144.

R.E.G. Davies, curator for air transport at the National Air and Space Museum, included the Concorde in his book Fallacies and Fantasies of Air Transport History because he believes that SST programs siphon money from more deserving projects. In a letter to Aviation Week & Space Technology last January he wrote, "The aircraft industry is promoting the SST myth, to generate many billions of dollars in development funds to be supplied by governments via taxpayers, very few of whom have ever flown or will fly in an SST. No more than a half-dozen city pairs ever could justify supersonic flights." (It's worth noting that the NASA study indicating the need for a next-generation SST was conducted by two airframe manufacturers who hope to build it.)

The technical challenges are intimidating. SSTs need lightweight materials that can resist the high temperatures created by air friction. To reduce drag at cruise, they need wings with a thin airfoil, yet the wing's structure would have to be rugged enough to handle a hard landing. The engines must be powerful and durable enough for long periods at Mach 2 cruise, yet reasonably quiet, fuel-efficient, and environmentally sound: Of particular concern are nitrous oxide emissions, which may damage the high-altitude ozone layer. Such concerns helped kill the American SST program in the 1970s, leaving only the Concorde and the Tu-144 to duke it out.

Despite its technical shortcomings, the Tu-144 does offer one natural advantage for studying supersonic flight: It's very fast. In 1993, when Bill Adams, an affable Rockwell engineer, traveled to Russia to discuss ejection seats, a Boeing official asked him to look into the possibility of leasing a Tu-144. By April 1993 Adams and Rockwell had negotiated the lease of an aircraft from Tupolev. The program dovetailed nicely with American foreign policy and was even included as part of an agreement signed in Vancouver last June by vice president Al Gore and Russian prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin.

But the practical realities of the program can be outlined more easily with an atlas than a flow chart. NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, runs the High Speed Research Program, but the agency's Dryden center in California is in charge of the Tu-144 program. Boeing, based in Seattle, is the lead civilian contractor. Co-manager McDonnell Douglas is in southern California, as is Rockwell, which is handling refurbishment of the aircraft and negotiations with Tupolev. Engine company General Electric is in Ohio, and Pratt & Whitney is in Connecticut. Tupolev is in Moscow; its business representatives are based in London.

The Americans hope to measure the conditions of actual supersonic flight and compare them with the data that their computers and wind tunnels produce. "We've developed lots of predictions for the surface temperatures and the structural loads under these flight conditions," said Cal Jarvis, who headed the team from Dryden. "The question is whether they're correct.

"It was a big job to identify the experiments that everyone agreed were high-priority experiments," Jarvis continued. "We had 50 and screened them down to nine, which was kind of a traumatic experience." The seven in-flight and two ground experiments that made the cut will study surface, structure, and engine temperatures, sonic boom signature, boundary layer, the wing's ground effect, aircraft handling, noise (interior and exterior), and the way the structure flexes in flight. (The sonic boom experiment was later dropped.) A total of 33 test flights are scheduled, all to be flown over Russia.

The aircraft selected for the project bears tail number 77114. "We looked at the list of Tu-144s that were built and this was in the best flying condition," said Jarvis. "This was the last one built, and most of the systems had been recently operated." The aircraft is one of the D models, which were equipped with Koliesov engines, an improvement over the original NK-144s. Still, 77114 is being upgraded with NK-321 augmented-turbofan engines, originally produced for the Tupolev Tu-160 Blackjack bomber, pushing the Tu-144 from Mach 2.15 to 2.3. The aircraft will be fitted with a new digital data system to replace the old analog one, plus thermocouples, pressure sensors, and skin friction gauges to measure the boundary layer. This meeting in Moscow was intended to nail down the final details of the experiments and schedule.

Although the cost of the program has crept from $9 million to $14 million, the Tu-144 project is still relatively small potatoes for the Americans and a small fraction of the $440 million contract NASA awarded to Boeing and McDonnell Douglas for high-speed research. For Tupolev, it's much more important. The loss of state support following the collapse of the Soviet Union has brought the Russian aviation industry to the brink of extinction. Forced to compete with western products, Russian companies like Tupolev are being overwhelmed: According to an April 1995 article in Aviation Week & Space Technology, 84 percent of Russia's aircraft companies are considered "financially insolvent." For Tupolev, the Tu-144 project is a chance to earn some hard currency. Russian pride is at stake as well. Tupolev, after all, had built an SST, something none of the American companies had ever done. Yet in 1991 Tupolev had to ask be to included in an international consortium formed a year earlier to study issues involved in a next-generation supersonic transport.

When the first Tu-144 scale model appeared at the 1965 Paris Air Show, it started a storm of speculation. Later models reflected the aircraft's ever-evolving design. This model is on display in Tupolev headquarters Red Hall. Photo: Tom Huntington

The meetings I attended took place at Tupolev headquarters, a grimy yellow-brick building in eastern Moscow that reflected the downtrodden state of Russian aerospace. The lobby was dim and empty, save for two grungy dogs. The lights were off in some hallways, forcing you to grope your way in the pitch dark.

Each day started with a meeting in a room called the Red Hall. Along its walls were large-scale cutaway models of various Tupolev aircraft, including a see-through Tu-144 detailed down to tiny suitcases stowed in the luggage racks and little newspapers on the tray tables. Following preliminary discussion, the meeting broke up into work groups, one for each experiment.

In the Red Hall, the surface temperature group discusses the placement of thermocouples near an early Tu-144 model. Boeing's Bryan Johnson is in the red shirt. Photo: Tom Huntington

Bryan Johnson, a young Boeing engineer, later explained why exact placement is so important. "We need to know what is around that thermocouple so you know what might influence its response," he told me. "For instance, the fuel pumps: As the fuel runs through those lines they're going to get warmer."

"The same physical laws apply, whether you're socialist or capitalist," interjected Tupolev's Andrew I. Kandalov (he prefers to Anglicize "Andrei"), once a senior vice president and now retired, though his business card reads "assistant of the general manager."

On Wednesday afternoon the Americans were scheduled to visit the machine that had drawn them here. The Tu-144 was at Zhukovsky Airfield, site of its first flight and now an open air base. Beside the Bears, Backfires, and Blackjacks lined up on the ramp, a backup Tu-144 stood forlorn in the drizzle.

Like the Concorde, the Tu-144 has a droop nose, which the crew would drop to increase visibility during landings and takeoffs. A next-generation SST would quite likely dispense with this feature. Instead, the pilot would use some type of viewing system to see beyond the nose. Photo: Tom Huntington

The program's Tu-144 was inside a hangar, where it was being prepared for modification. The Americans quickly ascended a boarding ladder and within moments were all over the airplane. Norman Princen, a young engineer from McDonnell Douglas in the ground handling group, headed into the cockpit to look at the instrumentation. Bryan Johnson and Craig Stephens of the surface temperature group went through the dark, stripped-out cabin and out an aft hatch onto the wing. There they peered inside the aircraft structure where the outside paneling had been removed and, after consulting their unrolled blueprints, began discussing the placing of thermocouples. Bob Rackl, a Boeing engineer with the cabin noise group, studied the location of the airplane's windows and determined where he would place his equipment.

Like the Concorde, the Tu-144 had a cockpit crew of three. This photo shows the flight engineer's station. It is unlikely that much, if any, or the original instruments will be retained for the flying laboratory. Photo: Tom Huntington

The visit was over quickly, and the group boarded a bus for a short drive to the test facility's headquarters. Once inside, they sat around a long, green-covered table adjacent to the director's office and sipped sweet Russian coffee as each group gave its report. The Americans were careful to praise the Russians, but there was an undercurrent of frustration over how little time they had had with the aircraft. Bob Rackl raised the topic gently, asking, "Would it be possible to slow the rotation of the Earth to give us more time?"

Back on the bus, some of the frustrations surfaced. Boeing's Bryan Johnson said that ideally they would have had an entire day to go over the Tu-144. "Access has been difficult," he said. When I mentioned that it appeared the discussions had narrowed down to details, he pointed out that in the United States it would have reached this point after a few phone calls and faxes. "They cooperate when it's easy," Johnson said, then, perhaps realizing that he was talking to a reporter, added, "Not to make that sound bad--normally you wouldn't get 300 thermocouples on an aircraft." On the other hand, he said, the SR-71 Blackbird had 400 thermocouples concentrated around the engines alone during its testing. Yet this Tu-144 is not a test prototype. "This is a production airplane, so all the stuff you give yourself in a test airplane isn't there," he said.

On Thursday morning the American team gathered in the hotel for a quick strategy meeting. Frank Neumann, the brisk, no-nonsense Boeing engineer in charge of the delegation, led a discussion about the final statements each group would have to prepare. After some talk he ended the discussion by saying, "We don't have enough money to diddle around with this forever."

During the bus ride to Tupolev I talked with Norman Princen. "One of my main concerns is the number of pilots qualified to fly the aircraft," he said. "It was rumored that there was only one flight crew available." But chief of flight operations Sergei P. Avakimov had assured him that at least three pilots were available for the various maneuvers. Good news, Princen said.

This was Princen's second visit to Moscow for the Tupolev project, and he was still excited by it. "You read Jane's in high school about all these exotic aircraft," he said, "but you never dream that you'll participate in a project involving one of them." (On Friday he would work that thought into a toast.)

Later in the day, Alexander L. Poukhov, Tupolev's chief constructor, held a meeting in his small, cluttered office with Frank Neumann and Robert E. Patton, also from Boeing. Poukhov peered over the top of his glasses at a draft document of the meeting agreement, occasionally striking through a line with one of the sparkly Boeing pens that Bob Patton had been giving out. "This document is okay for us," Poukhov announced. "I crossed out places of misunderstanding from yesterday."

Then Poukhov began a presentation, illustrating his talk with a stack of 25-year-old charts of the Tu-144 wing geometry. He sorted out the ones he needed and hung them on a nail. At first Neumann and Patton seemed confused by the point he was making as he put up charts showing the Tu-144's wing aeroelasticity. Eventually it dawned on Neumann that Poukhov wanted the Americans to fund an experiment to more precisely measure the wing's geometry at various stages of flight.

As Neumann and Patton quietly conferred about this development, Poukhov sat across from me and talked about the program. He told me that Tupolev still has dreams of building a next-generation SST, the Tu-244. "This work we do not stop at any time," he said. He gave me a photograph of a Tu-244 model, which, except for its logo, looked like the Boeing and McDonnell Douglas versions.

As the groups continued to fine-tune their experiments, the managers gathered in Vyacheslav Alexandrovich Sablev's office. Sablev was a Tupolev engineer who was working with the instrumentation group; he also had what must be one of the largest offices in the building. For Tupolev this meeting was important because it would establish when they get paid. For the Americans, it would let them know exactly where the project stands.

Helping to guide Tupolev through the brave new world of capitalism is The IBP Group, run by American-born Judith de Paul. With her straight, jet-black hair and elaborate makeup, de Paul brings a touch of showbiz to the program. A former opera singer and television producer, she had started her career as a dancing matchbook in an Old Gold cigarette ad. As Tupolev's business advisor, she has been a combination of babysitter, negotiator, cheerleader, and spin doctor. She also provided the translators, most notably the three Sergeis. Little Sergei, young and balding, had large glasses that gave him the air of an inquisitive owl. Middle Sergei was outgoing and sardonic, sporting horn rims and a stylish haircut. Big Sergei was a stolid, no-nonsense Russian.

With Big Sergei translating, Poukhov announced that the first subsonic flight had been delayed until February 15, 1996. He discussed the test aircraft's new engines, four new ones leased from the military and two re-conditioned ones purchased from the Samara plant.

When discussion turned to payments, Rockwell's Warren Beaulieu, a big, beefy American, questioned the new schedule. "The milestones have slipped but the payment schedule hasn't," he complained. As the discussion continued, the people around the table rose and began jabbing fingers at the schedule. Beaulieu didn't want to pay until Tupolev delivered its final report. "Let's say money will be paid as soon as you receive the report," Sergei offered. Adams and Beaulieu from Rockwell wanted a date. Sergei offered June. Judith de Paul stepped in to broker an agreement for May. "You'll have the report done by then," she assured Tatiyana Bubnova, the project's program manager. "Khorosho," said Poukhov. Very good.

"Khorosho," said Bill Adams.

"We have an additional volume of work related to the experiments," said Sergei. "We're talking about $700,000."

"No, we're talking about $400,000 for seven experiments," Neumann snapped. "We're here to tell you that the United States government and industry have agreed to $300,000 for the sonic boom experiments and $100,000 to TsAGI [the Central Aerohydrodynamics Institute]." Neumann won the round.

Finally Tupolev's accountant, V.V. Andreev, arrived to demonstrate to the Americans that Tupolev has an adequate system in place to track the work being done. A quiet, balding man with a mustache and a dark green corduroy suit, Andreev was evidence that the concept of "accountant" translates freely across the cultural divide. He pulled out his ledgers and explained how work is tracked at Tupolev. Before he could finish, Poukhov rose and insisted that it was time to adjourn to the Red Hall and wind up the day's activities. De Paul protested that Adams needed to hear Andreev out, but Poukhov was insistent. Later, Adams pronounced himself satisfied.

Tupolev's Alexander I. Poukhov leads a toast at the ceremony that marked the meeting's last day. When it came to toasting prowess, the Russians beat the Americans, several of whom attempted to pass off their glasses of water as vodka. Photo: Tom Huntington

Friday was the final day of meetings, and it ended with a reception that would include much toasting with vodka. The final reception at the previous meeting had already become legend, especially the toasting prowess of Poukhov, who managed to get through vodka toasts to all the companies, then every individual member of the American delegation.

The Russian toasting tradition was one of those cultural divides the Americans had difficulty crossing. NASA's Neil Matheny told me about one of his first visits, when lunch devolved into a series of vodka toasts. "I asked Judith if we could slow down on the toasts next time," Matheny related. "I got razzed a bit for that, but the next time there was no vodka on the table at lunch." Afterward, though, one of the Russians left to get some.

Following the signing of the final agreements in Sablev's office, the delegation adjourned to Red Hall, where the long conference table, now covered with a white tablecloth, groaned beneath trays of meats and vegetables, along with bottles of vodka, Armenian cognac, wine, and water. Toasting began with champagne, with Big Sergei translating. "Please charge your glasses!" he announced. "We expect rapid response from the American side!"

As the pace of toasting began to accelerate, the late afternoon sun broke through the clouds, shining through the gaps in the curtains and transforming the small room so that the crystal glasses on the table seemed to turn into clusters of diamonds.

Originally published in Air & Space/Smithsonian, October/November 1995. Copyright 1995, Smithsonian Institution. All rights reserved.

For more information on Russian Aviation, visit the Russian Aviation Page.

webmaster@airspacemag.com
This page served 3547 times since October 30, 1995.