Just to clarify a few points:-
1. The Russian TU-144 was largely developed thanks to informants placed inside the French Concorde development team. The French found out about this and fed the Russians duff information.
When the first Tu144 flew in1969 , 2 months ahead of Concorde the Russians quickly found out the design was flawed setting back their programme by several years.
The PAris Air show crash pretty much killed off the TU144, I beleive it did enter service breifly as a freighter before being scrapped. In the late 1990`s NASA acquired one for future testing purposes, they flew it for a few months before mothballing it again.
2.President Kennedy announced in the early Sixties that the US would create a Supersonic passenger plane, it was eventually discontinued after $400m had been spent and nothing more than a wooden mock up built.
3.Concorde did make a substansial profit for BA who used their planes much more than AIr France. Of course BA were given the planes in the first place.
4.Concorde has flown more Supersonic hours than all the world`s airforces put together.
5. Many technologies used on modern airliners were first used on Concorde such as fly by wire and Carbon fibre brakes.
6. After Concorde`s development Airbus was formed as a joint European challenge to Boing, today Airbus and Boing have roughly equal market share, while Rolls Royce who developed Concorde`s engines sell more civillian airliner engines than their American rivals.
A good website to check out Concorde stuff is:-
http://www.concordesst.com/
