Posted on 06/23/2011 6:33:55 AM PDT by tlb
MOSCOW—Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev says he wants Soviet-built airliners similar to the one that crashed this week to be retired starting next year.
The 31-year-old RusAir Tu-134 from Moscow crashed in heavy fog late Monday just moments before landing at the Petrozavodsk airport in Russia's northwest, killing 45. Seven people survived.
The twin-engined Tu-134, along with its larger sibling the Tu-154, has been the workhorse of Soviet and Russian civil aviation since the 1960s with more than 800 planes built.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
Bu I thought it was pilot error?........................
Aeroping
He needs a major campaign to retire Soviet EVERYTHING!
Dozens of people per year in the USSR were killed by exploding television sets.
Medvedyev: Cool idea. But be sure to fix that runway’s failed fog lights.
And, after the first unit in the order is delivered the Russians will copy it down to the last rivet and go into production on a knock-off 777. Once they think they have the design down pat the remaining 7 aircraft in the order will be canceled and Boeing will be stiffed out of the money they spent on the materials for the other seven aircraft. History does indeed repeat itself, ala the B-29. You'd think Boeing, of all people, would see this one coming.
The Tu-4 wasn't an exact copy of the B-29, it was a copy in metric. The Soviets had to re-engineer everything to build the plane with metric tooling and ended up, after several years, with an airplane that was already obsolete. AFAIK, Russian aviation historians think copying the B-29 was a big mistake that kept their aviation industry from developing the knowledge base that comes from doing it yourself.
Some things that Russians make are quite good. Nuclear weapons, AK-47s, Subways. Or at least they use to make them well.
Shhh. Don't tell anyone, but Boeing has operated an engineering design office in Moscow since 1997, employing 1,200 Russian engineers.
That’s all well and good, but does Russia have the capital to just junk several hundred jet planes and replace them? I mean, we did it with used cars, but we can print money a lot faster than the Russkies.
Good. Now they’ll have a hard asset to copy and that is exactly what will happen. I’ve worked with lots of Russian engineers. (Chinese, too) Copying is all they know. Just like the B-29, 727, F-16, and the Space Shuttle, just to name a few......
If you know anything about this history of Russian aviation you know full well there are many examples beyond the B-29 of Russians copying western designs. It is well known that the B-29 the USAAF loaned to Russia was completely disassembled and copied. As far as it being obsolete before it was deployed, what major Air Force in the world still flies prop driven strategic bombers? In fact, they’ve shown up in American, British and Canadian airspace recently!
Have you ever been to Russia?
First, why would Russia copy an almost 20 year old 777 design?
Second, why would they buy a 777 to copy it, when they already have 1,200 engineers who work at Boeing and could get the engineering drawings electronically?
Third, it's far cheaper and faster for Russia to buy 777s than try to take one apart, measure every stinking piece, and attempt to fabricate it.
Yeah, they've copied designs in the past, but that was during the Soviet days when they couldn't buy Western products. Now, they can buy just about anything they want on the open market, so they have no need to copy.
You think Russia is going to flood the world market with cheap knockoff 777s? Ever hear of a little stumbling block called aircraft certification?
Sheesh.
Loaned????
That's a very strange way of putting it ...
Boy, you sure know how to ruin a good conspiracy thread.
Well said.
I think the Russians can buy what they want these days instead of trying to copy us. We (the west in general) make excellent commercial aircraft. Theirs were never cutting edge because they were copies in their attempt as the Soviet Union to appear equals. In aerospace engineering they just aren’t, and nor will they ever be. The innovation and creativity just isn’t there.
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