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Comment by regnerba | Hacker News Reader

I meant the Shuttle, but not so much in a "it was a terrible design" and more along the lines of "it had its design pulled in a bunch of different directions and ended up being less efficient at any of the tasks" which is what I feel the core of the original video.

The Russian Buran(?) was pretty clearly a better system and if I understand right thats because it wasn't trying to be the catch all system with competing goals from the Air Force, internal NASA goals, and congress/the senate(? not American so not sure which is correct here).

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How would you reconcile this claim that Buran was a better system when Buran was stolen Shuttle technology and wasn't reusable? See http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2016/12/14/buran-shut... among other places for more on NBC's reporting on the theft.

And the US rocket program was "stolen" German technology - even including the scientists and engineers. And Germany "stole" a lot of technology from Britain during the industrial revolution. And somebody "stole" silkworms from China a long time ago. And the recipe for gunpowder. And for porcelain. Writing was invented in only a few places - I bet nobody of those using it where it wasn't invented paid the actual inventors a dime (or whatever the currency was then and there, probably wheat). Everybody "stealing" from everybody.

Oh please. Maybe information should just be shared, especially with those worse off where "you have to pay for it" would not even work, and maybe that "debt" concept is stupid to begin with (you cannot pay - you will be in eternal debt because first you have to pay me back, for more and more stuff, than interest). Maybe humans should just be more open and kind towards one another to begin with, especially when it does not even "cost" them (the counter argument "but they will compete with us" just means that you have to suppress them, because in any scenario where they do get to rise eventually they will compete with you anyway, especially when we are talking about a billion Chinese and the other couple of billions of people in Asia).

Yup.

The reason for IP controls is, and has always been, suppression, because technology is a way you get money and power. It's sad that humans have been doing their best to suppress progress that could benefit everyone just so that they could hold on to their share of the pie.

The orbiter was reusable. As for Energia rocket, it burned up but in reality, Space Shuttle's SRB weren't reusable either (it was much cheaper to make new ones than to recover and refurbish spent boosters), and Energia could at least serve as an independent lifter without Buran.

The Russians may have stolen Space Shuttle design (though no one really cares), but they have definitely improved on it.

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