The aircraft is heavier than air, designed to fly in the atmosphere using power plant , which creates thrust and stationary relative to other parts of the apparatus wings creating lift force. A fixed wing distinguishes an airplane from a flywheel and a helicopter, and the presence of an engine from a glider. An airplane differs from an airship and a balloon in that it uses an aerodynamic rather than aerostatic way to create lift.

The word “airplane” was used to designate aircraft in the 19th century. So, in 1857, 1st-rank captain N. M. Sokovnin used this word to mean a controlled balloon. In a sense close to modern, the word “airplane” was first used by journalist and writer Arkady Vasilievich Ewald in the article “Ballooning”, which was published in 1863 in the newspaper “Voice”, where he first proposed the idea in Russia like an aircraft. Russian technology sophistication has, ever since, been evolving around the development of airplane’s structure. This mode of aviation is definitely important to the country.

History of Aviation in Russia

The first Russian aircraft project was proposed by Nikolai Afanasevich Teleshov in 1864. In 1882, in the presence of representatives of the military department of The Russian Empire and the Russian Technical Society, an attempt to take off on a plane with a steam power plant was made. The plane was built according to the project of the Russian naval officer Alexander Fedorovich Mozhaysky . According to a number of studies carried out in the 20th century in the USSR, the available engine power also did not allow Mozhaisky’s aircraft to perform a steady flight; however, based on some reports of contemporaries, there was a short-term separation of the device from the ground. The reasons for this were: the lack of a theory of flight and control, the theory of strength and aerodynamic calculations. In this regard, the aircraft was built without the presence of engineering experience.

In Russia, the practical development of aviation was delayed due to the government’s orientation towards the creation of aeronautical aircraft arranged on a “lighter than air” principle. Based on the example of Germany, the Russian military leadership relied on the development of airships and balloons for the army and did not timely assess the potential capabilities of the new invention – the aircraft.

In 1909, V.V. Tatarinov – an inventor – received 50 thousand rubles from the Ministry of War for the construction of a helicopter. In addition, there were many donations from individuals. Those who could not help with money offered their work for free to realize the plan of the inventor. Russia had high hopes for this domestic invention. But the venture ended in complete failure. Tatarinov’s experience and knowledge did not correspond to the complexity of the task, and a lot of money was thrown to the wind. This incident negatively affected the fate of many interesting aviation projects – Russian inventors could no longer obtain state subsidies.

Nevertheless, it is the Russian scientist Nikolai Egorovich Zhukovsky who can be considered the “father of aviation”. In 1904, he formulated a theorem giving a quantitative value of the lifting force of an airplane wing; and also identified the main profiles of the wings and propeller blades of the aircraft; developed a vortex theory of propeller. He published his discoveries in 1906 in his work “On the Fall in Air of Light Elongated Bodies Rotating About its Longitudinal Axis”. As was written in the book “Tales of the Russian Championship”, published in 1950, Zhukovsky discovered the “secret of the wing” – he explained and gave a method for calculating the lifting force of the wing, the force that keeps the plane in the air, and became the founder of the science of aerodynamics, without which there would be no aircraft or aviation.

In 1909, the Russian government finally showed interest in airplanes. It decided to reject purchasing American aircrafts and build aircraft on their own. The first success of Russian aviation dates back to 1910. On June 4, a professor of the Kiev Polytechnic Institute, Prince Alexander Kudashev, flew several tens of meters on a biplane of his own design. On June 16, the young Kiev aircraft designer Igor Sikorsky first took off his plane in the air, and another three days later, the plane of engineer Yakov Gakkel took off, a biplane with a fuselage which was still considered unusual at that time.

Modern Russian Aviation

On June 8, 2016, at the roll-out ceremony of the new aircraft, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev assured that Russia would not disappear from the “major league” of the world aircraft industry. He asserted, “For obvious reasons, new projects in the aircraft industry are not cheap at all. In general, there are very few states where aircraft industry is developed. This is called the Major League. And we should by no means disappear from this league.”

He emphasized that Russia is capable of creating aircraft competing with foreign manufacturers. “The current event confirms that we are capable of creating such machines that advance our aircraft industry and will compete with other aircraft.” Medvedev said.

For the first time in the Russian aircraft industry, composite materials are widely used in the design of an airliner – about 40% of them. The use of carbon plastics allowed to increase the wingspan, and composites are also used in the tail of the aircraft. Future promising long-range aviation complex is designed taking into account the experience of creating the MS-21. It is a project of a family of short- and medium-range jet passenger narrow-body aircraft. It is designed to operate flights at distances of about 6 thousand km and is created as a replacement for the Tu-154 and Tu-204/214 airliners, as well as foreign-made aircraft Airbus A320, Boeing 737 and others.

Now it is safe to say that Russia takes the development of its own airplanes very seriously because there is a long history in the book of Russian aviation and it is definitely something to hold on to and be proud of.