Tupolev Tu-2000

The Tupolev Tu-2000 was a planned hypersonic experimental aircraft from the Tupolev design bureau, meant to test the technologies needed for a single-stage-to-orbit aerospace plane and for the Tupolev Tu-360 intercontinental bomber. Development began in 1986 as a Soviet answer to the American X-30 project, and after the Soviet Union collapsed Russia carried it on until 1992, when it was suspended for lack of funds. The design was a tailless aircraft with a triangular wing and a combined power plant of four turbojets, a main ramjet and two liquid-fuel rocket engines, all using liquid hydrogen carried in tanks that filled most of the fuselage. A crew of two sat in a detachable nose section with an automatic rescue system. The technology demonstrator would have weighed 70 to 90 tonnes and measured about 60 metres long, while the orbital version would have weighed 210 to 280 tonnes and lifted up to 10 tonnes into Earth orbit.