Can the space shuttle defend itself?

Factual Questions
21

[ol][li]Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev “bankrupted his country’s space program” is sometimes said, spent way more than was logical I would say, by launching what was the largest and the most expensive project in the history of the Soviet space exploration to build the Buran: maybe[/li][li]a copy of NASA’s space shuttle: wrong[/li][li]because some subset of his advisers persuaded him that the United States wanted to use the SHuttle for bombing from Space: wrong[/ol][/li]

All information from the k26 Group website, which is the most complete list of information about Buran and Energia I have found.[ul]
[li]Buran 1.01 (‘Buran’) was destroyed in the aforementioned hanger collapse[/li][li]Buran 1.02 (‘Ptichka’) is under possession of Kazakhstan, allegedly stored at Baikonur. It is, or at least was, the most completed of all orbiters (Buran never had any life support or cockpit controls installed, as the only flights it made were unmanned). Condition is unknown, but after 15+ years of presumably little maintenance it probably isn’t in flyable condition without rework. [/li][li]Buran 2.01 (unnamed) was 30-50% complete at the time of program cancellation, and was sold to an aviation museum in Sinsheim, Germany.[/li][li]Buran 2.02 (unnamed) was 10-20% complete at the time of program cancellation, and was left to rot at the Tushino Machine Building Plant just outside of Moscow. It appears to have been scavenged for parts for enthusiasts.[/li][li]Buran 2.03 (unnamed) was in an unknown state of construction at the time of program cancellation. It was dismantled.[/ul][/li]There were also a number of static and aerodynamic test models that were created as part of the development program. (Part of the reason that Buran cost so much more and took longer than STS was because it had a more extensive development and test program than NASA had for STS.) The k26 Group site has a partial list of test articles, but I believe that there were additional test models including several subscale aero/flight dynamics models.

There are no complete Buran airframes still in existance (though as noted above, Buran 1.02 was mostly complete and is allegedly mothballed, albeit in an uncertain state of maintenance and documentation). More importantly, while the S.P. Korolev Rocket and Space Corporation Energia (the commerical derivative of the government aerospace bureau which produced the Energya rocket) is still in existence, they haven’t built an Energya in almost two decades. It’s possible the the main tooling still exists in a usable state, but it seems likely, as with the Saturn V, that subcontractors and vendors (or the Soviet equivlent thereof) have gone out of business or lost documentation. Energia is still making rocket motors and boosters, including the Russian version of the RD-180 (a derivative of the RD-170 from the Zenit boosters) used on the Atlas III and Atlas V boosters and the R-7 heavy lift rocket for Soyuz/Progress. Energia is working on a new design called Angara which is a modular design which could (possibly) be scaled to boost Buran with minimal payload, but it seems unlikely that they could start cranking out Energya boosters again.

More to the point, why try to use Buran? Both American and Soviet experiences with heavy booster lifting body shuttles demonstrated that they are more expensive to operate than anticipated, and (at least with the STS) less reliable and more difficult to turn around than is acceptible. (Strictly speaking, the reliability of the American Shuttle is better, in terms of heads to orbit, than any other booster, and the major problems have been at least in part the paradoxical risk-adverse/risk-ignorant attitude of NASA, but nonetheless it failed to live up to even the modest and reduced goals expected of the final design.) The tendency after Challenger and the fall of the Soviet Union was to go to small, dedicated personnel lifting body shuttles and (now) capsules, and perform heavy lift operations via large unmanned boosters. This doesn’t allow for recovery and return of defective or malfunctioning satellites in orbit (one of the original mission requirements of the STS) but that turned out to be not cost effective anyway.

It’s probably cheaper–or at least it would be under a less bureaucratic organization than NASA and less money-grubbing contractors than the major aerospace/defense contenders for prime contract–and certainly safer to seperate personnel transport and heavy boost functions. The STS was mostly a justification for going to space and supporting Space Station Alpha/Freedom Station/the International Space Station, and the ISS has become the destination for the Shuttle now that it’s been firmly established that the STS cost to much for commercial launch and the Air Force doesn’t trust it from a risk standpoint.

Stranger

22

I’m going to ask for a cite or at least some back-up on that. Not that the Soviets were worried about the earlier X-20 (I agree that they were) but the flat assertion “wrong” that they weren’t worried about the Shuttle being used as a bomber. I know that is difficult (what it does is essentially ask you to prove a negative) so to be fair let me provide my cites:
The Executive Editor of Space.Com saying so in a history article, the russianspaceweb article, anacademic book on a U.S. military website (pg.57 pdf pops), a blog with forums where Security types hang out, and for good measure a wiki cite which we can correct if you come through – all of which that say the Soviets (and what I said was “some subset of the Soviets”) did indeed believe the Shuttle could be used as a bomber. I would like to invite you to provide a counter argument - and hopefully you will add a little weight besides your say so. Not being as chesty as that sounds - I want you to fight my ignorance if you can
BTW re the snip of “a copy of NASA’s space shuttle”: Here is astronautix, the CIA and FAS calling Buran a flat out “copy” - but I see/know this list of differences on these sites and your points -so I’ll take it you are objecting pedantically (as is legitimate & important on the SDGQ and not meant pejoratively) to the word “copy” and don’t argue this point further
Encyclopedia Astronautica Index: 1
Encyclopedia Astronautica Index: 1
Soviet Military Power - 1983

23

If the movie ‘Contact’ has any basis in fact, what with our broadcasts all out there in space, then the big slow space monster would be keen on the Three Stooges eye-poke defense.

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Unfortunately, your cites all essentially add up to a collective “some guy said…” I can’t explicitly disprove the claim that fears of the STS as a weapon carrier were a driver for develepment of Buran, but I’ve seen no authoritative evidence to support this. Beyond that, it really makes no sense; the Shuttle isn’t a good delivery vehicle for bombs. Let’s go into that further: [ol]
[li]The Shuttle is slow: The Shuttle is slow to launch. Even in conceptual phase it was realized that the Shuttle would take a couple of weeks to turn around. And you can’t leave it fueled on the launch pad indefinitately; due to its use of cryogenic fuels it can only remain exposed for a few scores of hours, then it has to be purged and refueled at great expense of time and money. [/li][li]The Shuttle is expensive: The Shuttle is vastly more expensive than any number of conventional nuclear weapon delivery systems. For a single Shuttle launch you could purchase a whole wing of Minuteman missiles, or about ten Peacekeepers.[/li][li]The Shuttle isn’t stealthy: The Shuttle is a big, fat, slow, radiating pig of a target with very limited maneuverability, easily taken down by ASAT weapons that are known to be possessed by the Soviet Union. A Shuttle launch is spectacular, easily seen from satellite surveillance, and because there are only two facilities (LC-39 at Kennedy Space Center in Florida and SLC-6 at Vandenberg AFB in California) from which the Shuttle can be integrated and launched (both in ready view of geostationary satellites) it would be very easy to discriminate an unannounced launch.[/li][li]The Shuttle isn’t needed as a bomber: Back in the late 'Fifties and early 'Sixties, antipodal bombers were still the rage. Due to the limited range and very limited accuracy of unmanned ballistic missiles a manned suborbital antipodal bomber was the bugaboo of defensive forces; something that could fly much faster than conventional bombers and much higher than existing anti-aircraft defense could intercept. In fact, work for both high altitude, supersonic bombers and interceptors was done by both the U.S. and the Soviet Union (see the XB-70 ‘Valkyrie’, Sukhoi T-4, XF-108 Rapier, YF-12, CF-105, Tupolev Tu-28), and which continued into exoatmospheric vehicles like the X-20 and the Mig-105 Spiral system. However, while engineers were struggling with the problems of high altitude supersonic/hypersonic flight and material properties for winged/lifting body re-entry vehicles, the range, accuracy, guidence control, reliability, and speed of deployment of ICBMs grew by leaps and bounds. By the mid-'Sixties–while the STS was just a vague, post-Apollo concept and Buran had yet to be conceived–it was realized that high speed, high altitude “unstealthy” bombers were unnecessary; the ability to rapidly deploy large fleets of unmanned missiles that didn’t have to worry about a return profile superceded the need for manned bombers. Both the U.S. and the Soviet Union went on to develop successively more accurate and capable ICBM and SLBM systems and let the idea of high speed interceptors and orbital/suborbital antipodal bombers lapse. (The U.S., of course, turned their program into the A-12 ‘Oxcart’ and later the SR-71 ‘Blackbird’ for surveillance use.)[/ol]Now, it’s true that part of the design parameters for the STS specifically include carrying payloads for the Air Force (including, presumably, hypothetical SDI payloads), and in fact for a number of years it was (and was intended to be) the only vehicle capable of carrying these payloads. This isn’t because the U.S. wasn’t otherwise capable of fielding a heavy-lift booster other than the STS, but because of a politicial decision to validate the existance of the STS as much as possible. After the failure of Challenger the Air Force developed its EELV specification and encouraged the development of competing heavy lift boosters for use in boosting heavy payloads (surveillance birds) at lower cost and greater capability, and eschewed use of the STS. The Soviets, of course, never had this problem as they kept their very capable R-7 rocket in continuous production.[/li]
And even if the U.S. was planning to deploy active weapon systems with the STS, building the Buran system as a strategic response doesn’t make much sense. It’s not as if you’re going to launch a Buran to chase down a Shuttle, or that identical parity offers any strategic advantage. As previously mentioned, hitting an attacking Shuttle is trivial in comparison to hitting an incoming ICBM, or even a satellite intercept, something that the Soviets much have already appreciated even before they began building their own shuttle system in earnest. The real reason for building Buran appears to be insecurity; the Soviets lost (and lost badly) on the Moon race after a significant head start and early successes, and wanted another chance to beat the U.S. at its own game, espeically as the fortunes of the U.S.S.R. were otherwise on the wane. Somebody might have mentioned to Brezhnev the use of Buran as justification to counter alleged military use of the Shuttle, but I see no authoritative indication that it was a primary driver.

The Buran system is a “copy” of the STS in the sense that it is superficially similar and was intended to fulfill essentially the same mission roles as the American Shuttle. However, there are significant functional differences in how it is constructed, integrated, propelled, and operated, sufficient that referring to it as a copy vastly understates the originality of the design. Although the shape was (most likely) originally copied from American concepts, the Soviets did substantial aerodynamic testing and presumably honed into the same optimum configuration as American engineers did. There are numerous ways in which Buran is superior to the STS, including the previously mentioned tiles, the modularity of its propulsion system, et cetera. One might as readily claim that the concepts for the Soviet Kliper personnel shuttle are copied from the EADS Hermes or the X-38 CRV based upon visual simularity.

Stranger

25

So in essence you can’t say its wrong - and probably isn’t. As an engineer and someone who knows the design and this stuff inside out it strikes you as ludicrous that the Soviets could ever have thought that or based important decision tree points on that – fair enough.

To say though that it was flat out “wrong” that the Soviets believed that and that this erroneous belief factored into the development of Buran is another matter - and we should say that on the SDGQ.

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Fair enough; it’s illogical, and there’s no substantial evidence that the Shuttle being used as a bomber was justification for the Buran program. But no, I can’t demonstrate that no one ever suggested this as a rationale, and it’s entirely possible that someone extended this as a justification. The primary justification, however, as with the Soviet manned orbital andmoon shot programs, appears to have been to do the same thing the Americans were doing, and be seen doing it better.

Stranger

27

It is a little known fact that onboard each space shuttle flight there is a dog that can shoot bees out of its mouth stowed away. I think this would prove very valuable against most attacks.

28

You’re all wrong … it uses 1920’s-style death rays.

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Also note: The Soviets “painted” the Challenger with a laser on one occasion.

30

What about self destruck?