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Comment by TallGuyShort | Hacker News Reader

The similarity between these and NASA's shuttle is stronger than I remember. Does anyone know if the more distinctive features like the shape in which the heat tiles are applied, and the leading edge of the edge of the wing are simply because one copied the other? Or are they inherent design decisions you'd almost always arrive at if you tried to design an orbiter / plane-type craft?

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They're not that similar. Buran has no launch engine; it's lifted entirely by the booster group. Buran's heat tiles are a better design than NASA's; they're not as fragile. Buran was capable of unmanned operation; the only flight, which was successful, was unmanned. Buran also was going to have a turbojet in the tail to help with landing; NASA's shuttle landed as a glider.

The wings are almost identical, which is why it looks like a copy.

Yeah the wings are what I'm most curious about - if they're somehow the ideal shape for what is essentially a super-sonic glider or something.

Wasn't aware the tiles themselves were that different, but the layout, with a step near the nose? Very distinctive.

Buran was designed later, so the USSR copied the parts that worked well, like the basic shape, and redesigned the parts that gave NASA trouble.

When Buran was being designed NASA still hadn't too much visible troubles with Shuttle. Buran creators worked from their strong abilities and their understanding of dangers and possible requirements.

The big headache was the tiles. They were tough to install, kept falling off, and were brittle. That was known early, and Buran did it differently.

IIRC as the shuttle lands the nose tilts upwards, and it slows down due to the air resistance of the underside face of that delta-shaped wing.

Any airplane with a nose wheel lands that way.

There has been a request from the soviet government to make it as similar as possible to the Space Shuttle programme. There were some compromises made due to different reasons, like available engine types and location of the launchpad, but mostly it's an exact copy. There's a nice article in Russian that explains the history of this project https://habr.com/post/412271/

Not only Buran was riding atop of self-capable Energiya and therefore didn't carry big engines. Buran was unmanned-first, which required quite a bit of ingenuity back in 1980-s. It had bigger payload than the Shuttle.

One of better features of Buran was nontoxic propellants onboard. Buran's RCS were oxygen-kerosene, and LOX was stored onboard - liquid - for a month-long flight duration. That's something which Shuttle and today's SpaceX designs still lack; after Shuttle landing first order of importance is to get rid of remains of very toxic onboard propellants. Same for Dragon.

from the article I think its a little simpler than that, they just wanted to be able to copy or 'clone' the capabilities of the US.

> The USSR wanted a clone with the same ability: "The decision to build Buran was a response to the perceived military threat posed by the space shuttle. If the Americans hadn't developed the shuttle, the Russians wouldn't have developed Buran. To them it was just another part of the arms race," said Hendrickx.

> The similarity between these and NASA's shuttle is stronger than I remember.

Because USSR decided to copy Space Shuttle (instead of another competing Soviet-produced approach).

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