One of the fun side effects of this Quickies column has been seeing what people comment on. Thought at first I thought I'd be able to predict and only leave open ones that I felt like were good for commenting, I'm quickly realizing that its the ones I least expect that yield the best results.
With that said, after I wrote about
supersonic flight the other day I got an email from my friend
Vikram with info on the
Tupolev Tu-144: Russia's answer to the Concord. According to
this site, it was "Built as a competitor to the Anglo-French Concorde from modified plans stolen from the French it was the first supersonic commercial aircraft beating Concorde by two months." Althought it wasn't very successful (three crashes between '73 and '85), it certainly had the best nickname for an airplane with "Concordski."