. Onsite in Zhukovsky

The United States Pilot Evaluation Team (USPET)[1477] arrived in Moscow on Sunday, September 6, 1998, and was met by Professor Alexander Pukhov and a delegation of Tupolev officials. (Ill fortune had struck the team when NASA Langley research pilot Robert Rivers severely broke his right leg and ankle 2 weeks before departure. Because visas for work in Russia required 60 days’ lead time and because no other pilot could be prepared in time, Rivers remained on the team, though it required a great deal of perseverance to obtain NASA approval. Tupolev pre­sented relatively few obstacles, by contrast, to Rivers’s participation.) Pukhov was the Tupolev Manager for the Tu-144 experiment and a for­mer engineer on the original design team for the airplane. At Pukhov’s insistence, USPET was billeted in Zhukovsky at the former KGB san­itarium. Sanitaria in the Soviet Union were rest and vacation spas for the various professional groups, and the KGB sanitarium was similar to a large hotel. The sanitarium was minutes from the Zhukovsky Air

Development Center and saved hours of daily commute time that oth­erwise might have been wasted had the team been housed in Moscow.

The next day began a very intense training period lasting 2 weeks but was punctuated September 15 by the first flight by American pilots, a subsonic sojourn. The training was complicated by the language differ­ences but was facilitated by highly competent Russian State Department translators. Nevertheless, humorous if not frustrating problems arose when nontechnical translators attempted to translate engineering and piloting jargon with no clear analogs in either language. The training consisted of one-on-one sitdown sessions with various Tu-144 systems experts using manuals and charts written in Russian. There were no English language flight or systems manuals for the Tu-144, and USPET’s attempt over the summer to procure a translated Tu-144 flight manual was unsuccessful. Training included aircraft systems, life support, and flight operations. Because flights would achieve altitudes of 60,000 feet and because numerous hull penetrations had occurred to accommodate the instrumentation system, all members of the flightcrew wore partial pressure suits. Because of the experimental nature of the flights, a man­ual bailout capability had been incorporated in the Tu-144. This involved dropping through a hatch just forward of the mammoth engine inlets. The hope was that the crewmember would pass between the two banks of engines without being drawn into the inboard inlets. Thankfully, this theory was never put to the test.

Much time was spent with the Tupolev flightcrew for the experi­ment, and great trust and friendship ensued. Tupolev chief test pilot Sergei Borisov was the pilot-in-command for all of the flights. Victor Pedos was the navigator, in actuality a third pilot, and Anatoli Kriulin was the flight engineer. Tupolev’s chief flight control engineer, Vladimir Sysoev, spent hours each day with USPET working on the test plan for each pro­posed flight. Sysoev and Borisov represented Tupolev in the negotiations to perform the maneuvers requested by the various researchers.[1478] An effective give-and-take evolved as the mutual trust grew. From Tupolev’s perspective, the Tu-144 was a unique asset, into which the fledgling free- market company had invested millions of dollars. It provided badly needed funds at a time when the Russian economy was struggling, and

the payments from NASA via Boeing and IBP were released only at the completion of each flight. The Tupolev crewmembers could not afford to risk the airplane. At the same time, they were anxious to be as coop­erative as possible. Careful and inventive planning resulted in nearly all of the desired test points being flown.