In a message dated 10/7/2003 4:54:45 AM Pacific Daylight Time, gjmck@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes: << As for Virgin flying it, I can't believe anybody thought they were serious. It was a typical Branson stunt and, loon though he is, he's not dumb enough to shell out the big bucks needed to keep the thing flying. I really can't see Tupolev having many spare parts left for a programme that was chopped 20 years ago with not many built. Maybe NASA might have some? >> NASA and Boeing own a TU-144 that they are supposedly using for a testbed for HSST. It pains me to think that we probably would have a 300 seat SST if the US government had gone with Lockheed and their much better design