Mind you if 110 Bengal Tigers had died then it would be a big deal as there are ownly about 6000 left.
But really why mourn over 110 people having a quick sudden relatively painless deaths, while there's infinitly more people dieing slowly of starvation every day. Why didn't you make a post in anandtech about them, maybe cause its not news-worthy?
Its like when this millionaire yachtswoman got stranded off antartic, during one of these round the world yacht races, & the Australian govt had to spend a couple of million sending half the bloody navy to near the south pole to rescue her. When those same resources could have saved the lives of thousands in the third world.
Also, the reason nothing came of the TU-144 program, is after the Soviets made all those planes for all the wrong reasons (international prestige), they had nothing for them to do except high speed mail flights between Moscow & Vladivostock. Eventual once they realised what a waste it was fuel wise, they just spent most of their time parked at different airports. They couldn't fly 'em internationally because of all that sonic boom hooha, as they'd have all these NIMBYS (not in my back yard) demonstrating over perceived noise like they had with the Concord back in the 70s - thats why the Concord only flys between New York, London & Paris.
BTW, it wasnt a American spy plane that buzzed that TU-144 in Paris. What happen was that the Concord was made with a compromise subsonic/supersonic wing, whereas the TU-144 was made with a supersonic wing that was very inefficent at slower speeds. So the Russians had retractable cunard foreplanes installed at the front, which increased lift by over 20% at subsonic speeds. Well the French sent up a Mirage to take photos of the canard foreplanes, while the Tu-144 was to do its demo run at the Paris airshow. Well the French plane got in the way & it the TU-144 to twist to avoid a crash, the Gs' stalled the engines (it was a civilian aircraft so the engines werent designed for high G manuevars) So the Russian pilot was force to dive so air being forced through the engines would restart them, but the shock of him trying to pull out of the dive disintegrated the aircraft just above the ground. Yes its the bloody French again. But they still made more TU-144s than Concords (17 as opposed to 13) plus they have a higher top speed & can carry 30% more passengers, plus because of the retractable canard foreplanes they have a longer range too, as they use less fuel (no need for a compromise wing).
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