Supersonic aviation in the Soviet Union had enormous potential. The legendary Tu-144 was the first supersonic passenger aircraft in the world. And now, decades later, Russia can once again return to the air a promising technology for air passenger transportation. This event is proved by the resumption of activity on the Tu-244 - a revolutionary project of the 1970s, which was never implemented in its time.
Work on the creation of a second generation supersonic airliner began back in 1971 at the Tupolev Design Bureau. Taking the experience of developing the Tu-144 as a basis, it was planned to launch a fundamentally new supersonic aircraft Tu-244 on Aeroflot's line in the next decade.
The project was approached with all seriousness. The calculation included not only design features, but also the economic competitiveness of the aircraft, environmental safety and the level of passenger comfort. Considering the significantly higher flight speed compared to subsonic liners, it was possible to build a much smaller Tu-244, but the commercial efficiency would be greater.
In turn, the increased noise, greater emission of harmful substances and damage to the ozone layer of the Earth was significantly higher than that of conventional jet aircraft. All these factors were negative for the future project. However, in those years, much less attention was paid to environmental safety than now. The Tu-244 was developed in at least two versions: a giant 360-ton aircraft with a passenger capacity of more than 300 people and a smaller aircraft weighing about 275 tons. Both prototypes relied heavily on innovative new engines, which were in their early stages of production in the 1970s.
The first approved copy was the SPS-1 model, developed in 1973. Four engines with a total thrust of 37.5 kgf were installed on the liner. Upon reaching a cruising speed of 2,400 km / h, the aircraft could cover a distance of 8,000 kilometers at an altitude of up to 20,000 kilometers. In parallel, a prototype of the SPS-2 was considered on which liquid hydrogen engines were used.
The development of ATP-2 was personally led by Andrey Tupolev. An important difference between the Tu-244 and its predecessor, the Tu-144, was the absence of a downward deflecting nose and minimal cockpit glazing. Ultimately, in 1985, the Tupolevs settled on a 275-ton prototype with an engine take-off weight of 24 thousand kgf. According to Novate.ru, the use of variable cycle engines made it possible to fully realize the operation of the power unit in different flight modes.
It would seem that the release of a promising airliner was just around the corner, but the approaching restructuring brought to naught all the grandiose plans. Full technical information about the future project became available to the public in 1993 at the Paris Air Show. And that's all … For more than twenty years no news has been heard about the Tu-244, and only in 2014, information about a possible revival of the project began to appear on the Web.
On January 29, 2019, work on the creation of a domestic second-generation supersonic airliner was officially resumed. Currently, the Tu-244 is at the development stage, which is planned to be completed in a few years. According to sources, already in 2025, the first prototype will rise into the sky. Of course, the appearance of the new Tu-244 will be slightly different from the Soviet developments thirty years ago, but in technical terms, the liner will practically not tolerate changes.
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