Although the Germans and the Soviets improved on it, the father of modern rocketry is Dr. Robert Goddard.
This is not what I was talking about. I was talking about the first satellite, the first animal and the first human in earth orbit, which was all launched by Russia. Braun did not manage to get anything into earth orbit at that time whilst Goddard was dead already for quite some time.
The Amercans had their own SST Program. It was canceled for economic and political reasons. It was to be twice as big as Concorde and would cruise at Mach 3. It was based on the XB-70 which first flew in 1964, five years before Concorde.
http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=592
The USA did even design way faster airplanes. But none of it was designed to carry 100 passengers at twice the speed of sound without using reheat (it is switched of at/above Mach 1.7). This is what I was talking about
The development of what later turned out to be a british-french Concorde project also begun in the 1950's like the XB-70.
The Concorde and TU-144 are neat airplanes don't get me wrong. But at roughly $10,000 USD for a round trip from New York to London, Concorde was a bit like the Constellation Program vs Falcon. The TU-144 was retired after 55 passenger carrying flights for both technical and economic reasons. Not much of a sucess other than as an excercise.
Concorde was expensive for passengers, but not involving loss like many people think. It was profitable since the 1980's already. But it was way less economic than a 747 still. The TU-144 was no successful though.
As for space stations while the Soviets launched Salyut 1 in 1971, two years before Skylab, it was occupied only once for 23 days. It wasn't until 1974 with Salyut 4 that they had real sucess.
Yes. But I was talking about the Mir station which was something totally new nobody ever had before. It consisted of modules which were send into LEO separately. This is the experience NASA build on for the ISS program, even chosing Soyuz as the primary crew and supply vehicle for the ISS.
As for Airbus refusing to sell 380's to the U.S. for Airforce One because they are worried about them stealing technology, perhaps you would share your source.
It was a German-language source. Maybe I can find it again and translate it.
