Originally Posted by
AndoniP
"launched supersonic travel" puts a nice spin on things
Well technically that's true, I suppose.
RT's "over five decades after launching supersonic travel " is a reference to its first flight in December 1968, nine weeks before Concorde first flew. So, notwithstanding its troubled history, it did set several precedents (including first M2+ airliner).
Whenever the subject of the Tu-144 comes up, I'm reminded (and ashamed) of the schadenfreude expressed by my aerodynamics lecturer at uni (a Pole, who shall be nameless) when teaching us the morning after the Paris crash which killed 8 people on the ground, including 3 kids, as well as the crew.