What Makes A Big Tourist Attraction?

well something big and heavy,

and as aircraft go they do not get much heavier than this, photograph Derbent News, the giant ekranoplan was designed in 1975 by Rostislav Evgenievich Alexeyev, a prominent developer of of hydrofoil ships and ground effect vehicles. It used a cushion of air beneath its giant wings to hover at about 13 feet above water, making it hard to detect. It was built as part of the Soviet WIG program, which dated back to the 1960’s Cold War, and was the only Lun-class ekranoplan to ever be completed and equipped with supersonic missiles, the experimental aircraft got its nickname from the CIA. When spy satellite photos revealed this giant airplane with “KM” stamped on the wings, they named it Kaspian Monster, not knowing that the letters actually stood for Korabl-Maket (Prototype Ship), the MD-160 ekranoplan was retired in the late 1990’s and had been sitting abandoned in a Russian naval base ever since. On July 31, the vehicle was taken under tow for a move to Derbent, Dagestan, with plans to turn into a tourist attraction as part of a park. When it arrived, authorities realized that there was nowhere to put the giant aircraft, which dwarfs a 747 jet, now called the Caspian Sea Monster, it now lies abandoned, waiting for the Caspian Sea to claim her, I dread to think how much it cost to developed and build, and there it now is rotting away, it seems such a shame.