Earlier this week I had the great pleasure of a late afternoon followed by a full day at the Sinsheim technical museum near Heidelberg. Highly recommended and much more than just a museum; just ask my children what they thought of the helter-skelter from elevated Ilyushin IL-18 back down to the ground, or the twisting and turning stainless steel tubular slide from museum roof mounted DC3, through a hole in the roof, and back to the ground level entrance! The staff I encountered were all friendly and informed and I now look forwards to a day at the sister museum in Speyer - replete with 747-200 on the roof on which visitors can walk the wing.
Anyway, of relevance to this thread I thought I'd shared some of my photos of Concorde F-BVFB and Tupolev TU-144 77112. It was tremendous to be able to walk backwards and forwards between the two, directly comparing design features and relative elegance of execution. Both are achievements for mankind but I have to say that to me not being an aeronautical engineer, Concorde won every time - dreary Air France cabin notwithstanding - with the larger Tupolev coming over as somewhat clumsy; let alone knowing engine technologies to be a world apart, just compare the wheel bogies as one example, and then the cleanliness of wing design as another. Yes, the Tupolev canards were a novel feature, but I understand they were only necessary in the first place because of lower speed control issues as a result of more basic aerodynamics.
Like any aircraft on static display exposed to the elements both airframes could do with some TLC, but here are the photos:
Concorde aft cabin door
TU-144 aft cabin door
TU-144 No 4 engine location viewed from exhaust towards inlet (and directly in to the sun!)
To be continued in separate post as I have hit the photo count ceiling in this one.