11–20 of 49 posts
This article says the detached boosters fire rockets as they are landing and deploy landing gear. Was that ever demonstrated to work? I'm curious of there is precedent for this prior to SpaceX or just wishful thinking.
Why did I get the vibe I was reading pro-Buran propaganda in 2016?
Still, great reading.
The Buran boosters came down on parachutes and then landed on landing gear -- did that actually happen during either test?
The shuttle itself completed several atmospheric and one orbital flight, demonstrating autopiloted runway landings from orbit. The reusable booster technology was just planned, though. The project was cancelled long before they could be tested. I'm not even sure there were any finalized specifications.
There were two launches - the first of a "fully armed and.. oh" space battle station (I shit you not), the second of the Buran.
Interesting, I was just reading up on the space shuttle design process, and how the shuttle design was hurt by politics and scope creep. Apparently the project was in jeopardy at some point and needed buy-in from the Air Force. So they made a few changes, such as making it much bigger, and the tank disposable for potential military applications. Well, turns out the shuttle was never used by the military. But the lega…
Largely, yes. With the added benefit of hindsight they were able to give it much safer heat shielding and boosters, and did a million other small improvements.
But the size remained, because Soviet intelligence couldn't quite figure out what the Shuttle was supposed to be good for. The Buran was essentially a just-in-case program: Once they figured out what the US wanted to do with it, they'd have the launcher necessary to copy it.
Unfortunately, the US never figured it out either. For the roles the Shuttle ended up being used in the 80s and early 90s, existing Soviet hardware was more than a match, so the Buran was cancelled.
Only much, much later was the ISS planned around the Shuttle's capabilities and found a limited use for its construction. (Some Shuttles, the earlier ones were too heavy to reach the ISS with any useful payload.)
On engine difference, which is critical but has not been pointed out: - Buran had no launching engines, whole Energia rocket has been lost (apart of boosters?) - Shuttle did, thus the most expensive part has been returned back This resulted in a fact that STS launches were expected to be much cheaper [citation needed]
The main advantage of Buran over STS is that
it was made from start to be fully automated.
PS. Now reading the linked article, it appears that all its software goodness fit into less than 4 Megs. I'd totally read the memoirs of whoever was behind that firmware masterpiece.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The shuttle itself completed several atmospheric and one orbital flight, demonstrating autopiloted runway landings from orbit. The reusable booster technology was just planned, though. The project was cancelled long before they could be tested. I'm not even sure there were any finalized specifications.
I don't agree - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energia There were two launches - the first of a "fully armed and.. oh" space battle station (I shit you not), the second of the Buran.
Only the orbiter returned, like with the Shuttle.
Interesting, I was just reading up on the space shuttle design process, and how the shuttle design was hurt by politics and scope creep. Apparently the project was in jeopardy at some point and needed buy-in from the Air Force. So they made a few changes, such as making it much bigger, and the tank disposable for potential military applications. Well, turns out the shuttle was never used by the military. But the lega…
> This is where the Buran comes in, they largely copied the shuttle, but did they have the foresight to improve the poor parts of the design? Largely, yes. With the added benefit of hindsight they were able to give it much safer heat shielding and boosters, and did a million other small improvements. But the size remained, because Soviet intelligence couldn't quite figure out what the Shuttle was supposed to be good…
I'm reminded of this famous joke: http://militaryhumor.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/military...
> Only much, much later was the ISS planned around the Shuttle's capabilities
IIR, the STS program (of which the shuttle was the only surviving part) was always intended to ferry cargo and some future spacestation parts into orbit. The ISS was the eventual compromise station and was a mere shadow of the original proposal.
