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Comment by fsloth | Hacker News Reader

Great photos. Does anyone have details why soviets thought a carbon copy of the botched shuttle design was a good idea in the first place? Where the economics of the vehicle not so obvious back then?

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According to the book "Energiya-Buran, the Soviet Space Shuttle" by Bart Hendrickx and Bert Vis, they correctly noted that the stated reasons for the US space shuttle did not make any sense, so they assumed there must be some secret rational reason for building it:

> As TsNIIMash [Central Scientific Research Institute of Machine Building] director Yuriy Mozzhorin later said: "[The Space Shuttle] was introduced as a national program, aimed at 60 launches per year ... All this was very unusual: the mass they had been putting into orbit with their expendable rockets hadn't even reached 150 tons per year, and now they were planning to launch 1,770 tons per year. Nothing was being returned from space, and now they were planning to bring down 820 tons per year. This was not simple a program to develop some space system ... to lower transportation costs (they promised they would lower those costs tenfold, but the studies done at our institute showed that in actual fact there would be no cost savings at all). It clearly had a focused military goal".

As for what the secret military goal be, apparently the Soviet speculations was that either it might be part of some nuclear fractional-orbit bombardment system, or it might be part of a plan to launch lots of laser weapons into orbit. In any case, we can't have a space shuttle gap, so:

> [Central Committe Secretary for Defense Matters, Dmitri] Ustinov had made the following argument: if our scientists and engineers do not see and specific use of this technology now, we should not forget that the Americans are very pragmatic and very smart. Since they have invested a tremendous amount of money in such a project, they can obviously see some useful scenario which is still unseen from Soviet eyes. The Soviet Union should therefore develop such a technology so that it won't be taken by suprise in the future.

Let's build it now, and see what it is good for later! :D

Great summary :) - without the internet the F-35 design would probably be evaluated in similar vein - makes no sense so there must be some hidden purpose.

This is how lots of really creative uses for things come about. If you haven't any idea what something's supposed to do, you're now totally free to come up with your own use.

Thanks so much for this summary. I've always wondered why USSR used a similar design. Based on this, and other comments, it sounds like this was a good design for the mission at hand and that it's debatable that the mission at hand was a worthy endeavor.

"Botched shuttle design"? You don't know much about the orbiter, I take it. Shuttle was meticulously - even lovingly - maintained, a hairy complex scrupulously documented piece of kit, well built and designed if not well conceived.

I'll guess your crack is motivated by shuttle's mission, which was misguided (to say the least). Hampered by its LEO envelope, the Air Force should never have contemplated launching satellites on a man-rated platform at all.

But the orbiter itself... a thing of beauty. I've said here before that I'd like to have seen shuttle reattempted, this time with 21st century technologies. (So long as someone else is paying the expense!)

Botched in Design as in expression of intent since the intent was as you stated misguided. As I grow older I have a harder time separating technological merits from economic ones.

As a piece of hardware... yeah, that's a different thing entirely.

According to Wikipedia, because they were concerned about military applications of the space shuttle and wanted to match the US's capabilities. Large payload capacity for launching orbital anti-missile lasers or diving to drop bombs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_programme#Programme_deve...

This might be in the same vein as "New Coke" was a genius marketing idea, but what if the "botched system" did exactly what is was supposed to, and helped economically bleed the USSR out of existence?

Well then I guess we would have stopped flying last century.

What do you mean botched shuttle design? They probably started copying its design from very early on.

One can hold the view that the design was affected by concerns that had little to do with the missions the vehicle actually performed and consequently locked human space exploration to low earth orbit for 30 years.

http://m.space.com/12166-space-shuttle-program-cost-promises...

Shuttle was locked to low earth orbit due to design reacting to concerns that were never realized. It was anything but cheap. It was ill suited as a vehicle of human space exploration.

It did lots of valuable things but it can be argued I understand that those things could have been achieved cheaper and better.

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