Comments by "Keit Hammleter" (@keithammleter3824) on "WHY Did The Tupolev Tu-144 Fail?!" video.
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If you ask if the TU-144 came about due to espionage, you are asking the wrong question. If you think it was for propaganda reasons, you need to think further. What is the value of being seen as a cheating copycat? Not a lot.
A Russian guy gave me an explanation that makes complete sense. In the 1930's, the USSR had put a lot of funds and effort into training their best and brightest as engineers, and spent a lot of scarce cash importing western machine tools and laboratory instruments. But the products of Soviet industry often remained well behind the technology in western factory products.
But because their products looked and worked very different to western products, non-technical top officials like Stalin had trouble evaluating whether Soviet designers had done a good job or not - and the reasonable suspicion was that they hadn't.
Stalin tried making an example of some designers and programme leaders by sending them to Siberia, but that didn't work.
In the late 30's Stalin got fed up and put in place a new policy. Every time the West came up with something new, Stalin and his execs told Soviet industry ""I want something just like that. Not a different product. Something the same." This was Stalin's way of forcing the designers and engineers to catch up and prove that they had caught up. So when they got hold of Studebaker trucks they copied them. When 3 B-29 bombers ran low of fuel over Japan and had to land in the USSR, they copied the B-29. As the USSR was metric and everything in the B-29 non-metric, It would have been cheaper to design their own intercontinental bomber. When Stalin wanted a new limousine, they got hold of a US-built Packard and made one just like it. It would have been cheaper to design their own limo, as the Chinese did for Mao.
It didn't matter whether they copied from a sample, or used spies to get copies of drawings, or worked it all out themselves. What was important was that they followed orders and came up with the same thing. It wasn't super important that the USSR had a business case that would stand up. If there was a clear need for something unique, they usually produced something unique, like radios that ran on kerosene for use by nomadic tribes in remote Mongolia. But because radios that ran on kerosene wouldn't sell in the West due to batteries being readily available and kero not used for heating and lighting in one's yurt, it didn't mean anything to Soviet top leadership.
Stalin died, but the policy remained in place right up to Gorbachev's time.
That's why, when the US came up with the Dynasoar space plane, the USSR built one. When the USA built space shuttles the USSR built a few. Whether they needed them or not. That's why they built the TU-144 - still following the policy set by Stalin that Soviet engineers must continually clearly prove they can do what western engineers can do. The USSR was just a big government department. Government departments the world over, once they set a policy in place, it is awful hard to cancel it. No official wants to take a risk inherent in change.
The Russian Dynasoar, the Russian shuttle, and the TU-144 - they were all a waste of money. That didn't matter. What mattered is that they proved to Soviet top leaders that they could do it. That's strategically important. If a Khruschev or a Breshnev sees a Concorde and he sees a Concordski, he's happy, and doesn't need to demote someone. It doesn't much matter if it proves unfit to carry passengers. They can fly on the regular planes.
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