By the way, I should add that Nova produced a fascinating one hour television show called "Supersonic Spies" detailing Concorde's development and the Soviet espionage efforts in stealing Concorde technology to build the Tu-144. The mysterious circumstances surrounding the crash of the Tu-144 at the 1973 Paris Air Show and the ensuing cover-up could come straight out of the pages of a Cold War spy novel. The consensus appears to be that an unexpected incursion by a French Mirage fighter engaged in its own espionage (related the the Tu-144's unique canards) resulted in an ill-advised reactive maneuver by the Tu-144 pilot that caused the structural failure and in-flight disintegration of the Concordski. That incident was not only fatal to the Tu-144 involved, it was in all likelihood also the fatal blow to the commercial viability of the Soviet answer to Britain and France's supersonic bird. I'd encourage anyone interested to order a copy of the video from PBS.

[This message has been edited by cAAl (edited 07-18-2003).]