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Comment by SmellyGeekBoy | Hacker News Reader

I can't believe I'm about to defend the Russians here but... Not only were they first to pretty much everything space-related, they're the only country still flying manned missions. How are you defining "behind", exactly?

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Don't forget the Chinese program.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shenzhou_program#Missions_laun...

From what I understand the Soviet's Buran shuttle was far ahead of our own.

Are you being sarcastic? It completed one unmanned flight in 1988, that's all.

It was pretty sophisticated. The fact that it was able to make an unmanned flight is an example of something that was superior to the Shuttle. It just didn’t get the resources needed to keep flying, which is a separate issue.

Not to argue that the Buran was "far ahead" of the Space Shuttle, but reasons for not continuing to use the Buran include many others beyond it not being advanced enough. Whether or not it was useful or economical to continue using it are also legitimate (and probably more likely) reasons for it to have been discontinued regardless of its technological achievements. One could imagine the Soviet Union wanting to continue flights even if it weren't more advanced if it were otherwise reasonable to do so. (And that also ignores internal politics.)

The sophistication was in realizing the entire design is pointless and abandoning it early.

It wasn't ahead, but on the contrary it was behind.

They didn't managed to add engines to their copy and US launcher had reusable parts, but "Energiya" was strictly for single-time use.

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