Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter Ward
The Soviet Buran was a piece of rubbish.
The Soviets failed to develop the environmental systems that were essential to having a crew operate in orbit for prolonged periods. The US shuttle program was simply leagues ahead of the Shuttleski which was destroyed shortly after its unremarkable flight.
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Maybe, maybe not:
https://www.popularmechanics.com/spa...ttle-16176311/
http://www.aerospacengineering.net/b...ts-comparison/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_...ew_preparation
The crew environmental systems were not completed because the entire programme was shelved after the first unmanned flight (that required no environmental system). Also, if you read a little on the first and only flight, I wouldn't call it unremarkable - actually achieved more than the STS first flight.
Additionally, the Buran could be flown as a regular aircraft from take off to landing for crew training (employing turbofan engines) and famiiarisation, whereas the STS could not and needed a converted Gulfstream to train crew.
It is also interesting that the US reverse engineered the Energia rocket system (wanting to use it on another Shuttle system), and also have essentially directly copied the BOR-4 lifting body (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-105), both as the HL-20, and the Dream Chaser (
https://www.sncorp.com/what-we-do/dr...space-vehicle/). And we need also to remember the US reliance on Russian rocket engines for quite some time now in many of their launch systems. Even Elon Musk praises the Russian engines and more so the Soyuz system as a whole.
Cuts both ways, but we really should stop believing so much of the incorrect propaganda and hype. I mean, calling an aircraft rubbish because of an incomplete environmental system on an unmanned testbed is like praising Boeing's creations - the seriously flawed B787 (see the latest news...) and the "wonderful" 737MAX...
