iPilot wrote:

Afaik, this is the pretty wide-spread misconcept about the development of
TU-144 / Concorde. The fact that the end-result was very similar and many
concepts were the same doesn't nesessarily mean that one was copy of
another. The ways both design teams traveled (making concept-proving
aircrafts based on fighters for example) were very similar and their design
choices were so limited that it would be wonder if the aircrafts would have
been more different than they really were. One has to remember also that at
this time russians were on very top of the supersonic aircraft engineering.
Good example of that was Mig-21. They also knew the theory of tailless
aircrafts and had some experience with them. Putting those things together
results pretty much in the same concept that they eventually flew.

Yes, but there is this:
http://www.super70s.com/Super70s/Tec...aft/Tu-144.asp
and this
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcr...upersonic.html
As for Soviet engineering, the Su 27 and Mig 29 are pretty cool.

Shawn.