It wasn’t quite as open, but yes, the Chinese did it too. Especially during the Cultural revolution, they erased a whole generation of knowledge and scientific skill from their nation - they did such a throough job that it took them until the mid-80’s or so to get back in line with the world, if they even could be said to be there now.
These people even sent frikkin architechs to work in the fields, though it later came back to bite them in butt-hocks. There are a suspiciously large number of fancy, elaborate tall buildings in Beijing which have no heat, the water won’t go above the 3rd story, the “front” door’s located in some dingy alley half a block away…
As far as I know they finally got some skill back in the design, but the construction work itself is still largely done by people with no responsibility or accountability and no incentive - and there’s no one at all who really organizes it.
Actually, the Soviets *did have a complete set of stolen blueprints for the Concorde, and tried to use it as the basis of the Tu-144.
They denied it for decades, but it’s undeniable now. They admitted it in the 90s. We’ve seen their internal documentation. Key surviving figures have testified to it, and many public documentaries have interviewed them about it. Perhaps most convincing of all: French intelligence caught some of them in the act in 1965, and used the captured agent to counteract the damage by (e.g.) passing on false material samples and chemical formulas.
I know I should back that up. A Google search turned up a NOVA documentary on the subject. Here’s the transcript. I know it’s not the most academic source, but it’ll give you the key names and terms to search for. Let me know if you can debunk it.
However, that doesn’t mean that the Tu-144 really deserved its insulting nickname “Konkordski”. As it turns out, the Soviets couldn’t make effective use of the blueprints. Their technology, industrial capacity, measurement and technical conventions, etc. were too dissimilar to those used in or assumed by the blueprints. Having done a fair amount of interdisciplinary science, I can believe that comprehending, recalculating, developing necesary ancillary technologies, and creating an entirely retooled entire mini-industry to use the stolen blueprints could have taken longer than simply designing the most troublesome systems from scratch, using methods and approaches that your own experts understand well.
In the end, the two plans had substantial differences in fundamental systems. The french, for example, pumped fuel between the wings to aid in supersonic steering and stability, and used a droppable nose for the subsonic landings. The Soviets added small canard wings to accomplish much the same with a fixed nose.
Sorry. I know this is a bit of a hijack, but it’s not entirely irrelevant to the main topic.
The droop nose isn’t for aerodynamic reasons (like the canards), but for visibility. A delta-wing plane has to fly at a high angle-of-attack at slow speeds, and they designed the nose to drop down so the pilots could see where they were going.
And the Tu-144 has a droop nose too. I was just in one yesterday.
I said “drop nose”, not “droop nose”, because the nose of the Concorde “dropped” for visibility in take-off and landing. In cruise, its nose was straight.
The original Tu-144 had a “droop nose” that was permanently canted at an angle to the axis of the fusilage. It’s carnard served (in part) to compensate for this permanent droop through (IIRC) the trans-sonic regime, and provided a crucial control and stability in the initial “flat-winged” Tu-144, which had a rather precarious stability at subsonic speeds Tthis was the version which “beat” the Concorde to first flight but to be extensively re-engineered in all later models. The D- revison was the one that first saw actual passenger use [grudgingly] on the Moscow-Alma Ata route)
KP, everything I’ve read about the Tu-144, and doing some research just now on the web, says that it has always had the same drop-nose configuration as the Concorde. Also, the canards were not present on the original aircraft. They were added in later versions to improve handling at low airspeeds.
I did a bit of research, and it seems that previous posters were right…Russia had FIAT build the Togliattigrad factory. The deal was paid for partly with Russian steel. One problem for the Italians: the Russian steel was hot rolled (not cold rolled, as everyone in the West does). This meant thant the stamping presses (at FIAT’s Italian facyories) had to be re-adjusted to deal with the Russian steel. This lead to problems with the stampings, leading to gaps and increased rusting.
The LADAS were exported to canada and the Carribean-you still see a few on the road in Jamaica. I guess their main attraction was low cost-ant canadians Dopers know more?
[minor nitpick] Chevy’s once-ubiquitous Powerglide can only be called a “3-speed” if you count reverse. The PG actually had only two forward “gears,” long, sloppy ranges that engendered the nickname “PowerSlide.” Used to buy 'em at the local boneyard for twenty bucks… [/minor nitpick]
Many years ago, multiple people told me a story about a DEC VAX that disappeared during shipment to a customer in West Germany. It just vanished from the train. Supposedly it soon reappeared on the other side of the border. This was not a small computer. It would have had the size and weight of a small automobile. How it was smuggled into East Germany is a mystery.
US chip designers use to complain that many Soviet chips were direct rip-offs of American designs, even to the point that they included all of the non-functional elements from the American masks.
mks57: Yeah, I’m sure the Soviets copied the VAX (in as many of its incarnations as they could manage) and the PDP-11 and any other successful US hardware design. I picked two examples I could find external cites for in a short amount of time.
I’m actually more interested in Soviet software design. Were there any homegrown Soviet OSes, or were they simply copying US designs for those as well? I’m sure they would have gotten some UNIX source tapes if they went to the trouble of nabbing PDPs and VAXen, but it’s also likely that their talented engineers managed to write plenty of software of their own.
It would be really cool to boot into a genuine kremvax…
