On a slight tangent, it always amuses me how the British press seem to feed the idea that the tu-144 was a copy of the Concorde, while ignoring the similarities between the French Super Caravelle and British Bristol Type 223, the two independently developed predecessor concepts to Concorde. Just who copied from whom? Or could it be that designing an SST using contemporary technologies meant that the aircraft was predestined to to look a certain way.
IMHO the aborted American Boeing 2707 looked more like a tu-144 than it did a Concorde.
JAS