Alexei Tupolev was an aircraft designer in the Soviet Union/Russia. He died on Saturday May 12, 2001 at the age of 75.
He designed commercial aircraft such as the Tupolev 134, still in use by the airlines of Russia and the former Soviet republics.
He was responsible for the design of the Tu-144, the Soviet version of the Concord, to which it so closely resembled that it was nick-named the Concordski. The Tu-144 made its maiden flight on 12.31.68 several days before the Concord. It was never completly successful and a crash at the 1973 Paris Air Show degrade its appeal.
Tupolev redesigned the TU-144 in the 1970s to provide a swing-wing long range nuclear bomber to the Soviet military.
This aricraft is known as the TU-160 or to NATO as the Blackjack.
He also worked on the Soviet's version of the space shuttle, which made one unmanned flight in 1988, but was later shelved due to funding problems as the USSR colapsed.