Just to probe the depths (I noticed some russophiles and space-type-people here)…
1-Do you know what I’m talking about?
2-Is/was Buran a rip-off of the US Shuttle?
3-(Any comments, feelings, thoughts, questions, pictures, you would like to send our way, or you would like to hear)
So…
1-Big fargin’ yes.
2-Most likely, although there are some unusual features I can go into, if need be.
3-I first heard about Buran not quite a year ago. I was instantly hooked. The thought that the USSR had a space shuttle like we did…What’d they do with it? What happened to it? Why hadn’t I heard about it before? I went on a quest to learn more about it, and piled up pics on my hard drive and books on my desk. I now consider Buran to be one of the best, most recent 'coulda, shoulda, woulda been’s.
My understanding is that the Buran (trans. “Snowstorm”) went up once or maybe twice, unmanned, for testing, and then shortly thereafter the program got scrapped. Yeah, it looked like a blatant rip-off of the space shuttle… one big difference was that it was strapped to one of their Energia rockets, instead of a hydrogen fuel tank and a pair of solid-rocket boosters.
“Buran” = Snowstorm, Whirlwind, or Blizzard, depending on who you believe.
It only flew once. And that one flight was unmanned. It flew by remote control and landed on autopilot, something our shuttle cannot do.
Also, our orbiters use their main engines for launching. Buran has no launch-type engines; thus, all of the Energia rocket is booster (not ‘some boosters + a fuel tank’, like ours).
My understanding is that the Buran (trans. “Snowstorm”) went up once or maybe twice, unmanned, for testing, and then shortly thereafter the program got scrapped. Yeah, it looked like a blatant rip-off of the space shuttle… one big difference was that it was strapped to one of their Energia rockets, instead of a hydrogen fuel tank and a pair of solid-rocket boosters.
2: Depends on what you mean by “rip-off”. The launch configuration is very different - the Soviet system used expendable engines mounted on the main booster, while the U.S. system uses reusable engines on the orbiter. They did copy the aerodynamic design of the orbiter. NASA already cosnidered and tested numerous designs before coming up with an optimal design; there was no point in duplicating the effort.
The Buran/Energia system was interesting because the Buran was just a capsule riding on this huge booster. The Energia booster coud also be fitted with a simple payload canister instead of the Buran orbiter, allowing up to 200 tons of payload, if I recall correctly. The Space Station could have looked very different if this was in operation.
