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Comment by wkat4242 | Hacker News Reader

Yeah or the Buran. Their excuse at the time was there was only one way to build a shuttle but I don't buy that. Even the windows were in the same place. And they didn't have to spy for it because the shuttle was public.

They did make some adjustments like actively cooled tiles. But they had the smarts to stop the program before it turned into a money sink.

After all, the Shuttle's original goals were never reached. The launch cost was supposed to go down immensely and the cadence to once a week. In the end the shuttle wasn't so much reusable as it was refurbishable.

It did give us the ISS though by making orbital construction possible as it was basically a big space campervan/truck combo :)

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When it came to space matters, the soviets felt they could be comparable in capabilities to the Americans. So when they first saw the shuttle, they felt they had to have similar capabilities. And they were hella scared of the possibility of a shuttle just stealing one of their satellite. That fear was theoretical. The realistic fear was a couple of shuttles loitering in orbit ready to drop nuclear payloads on Russia with very little warning. A new leg on the nuclear triad was a real risk. So they had to come up with a spaceplane of similar capabilities, including single orbit return of a satellite. Those very specific capabilities limits your options severely.

Buran is not a copy of the Space Shuttle. I mean, the most important element of the shuttle, its reusable engines, is not even present on Buran.

I don't think the Soviets were naive enough about orbital mechanics to believe that a Space Shuttle could "loiter" in orbit ready to drop nuclear payloads. That's just not how it works. A Shuttle in an inclined orbit would only occasionally pass over primary targets. And a weapon can't just be dropped. It requires a de-orbit burn and guidance system. It wouldn't necessarily hit any faster than existing SLBMs.

From a military perspective there was at one point a plan to use the Shuttle for overhead imagery with film cameras. Launch from California into a polar orbit, make a single photo reconnaissance pass over the USSR, and land immediately back at the launch site for film processing. But advances in spy satellites eliminated the need for that mission.

The Buran has a lot of innovation inside that exterior shell though. Its flight was fully autonomous, for example.

I've heard a few different accounts of both the US Space Shuttle and Soviet Buran's design decisions here.

I've heard but cannot find a reference for the Space Shuttle being able to land autonomously except for the landing-gear release switch, which had to be manually toggled. This StackExchange thread has a similar observation (also without citation): <https://aviation.stackexchange.com/a/23992>

That may simply be an urban (or LEO) ledgend...

(Up-thread there's discussion of issues with the US craft's somewhat uneven experience in attempting to automate other parts of the landing sequence.)

There's a Nasa report on automated modes of the Shuttle as well, which notes that "converting the Shuttle fleet to an autonomous system will be challenging and expensive", here: <https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20100033420/downloads/20...> (PDF)

I also recall rationales offered for Buran's fully-automated operation being both that the Soviets had lower trust in their astronauts' ability and/or trustworthiness, and that fully-automating the craft enabled non-crewed test flights during project development. Again, no sources, and don't take me as any authority on this point.

On one hand, Buran creators explicitly looked into American design while working. On another, important parts in design are completely different.

Saving expensive main engines? Not on the orbiter, but on separate rocket, in subsequent plans. Solid fuel boosters? Too risky, better use the world's most powerful liquid fuel engines. Carcinogenic onboard propellants for RCS? Use cryogenics instead, and make sure they're preserved well for a month of flight. A few improvements here and there, and while externally Buran is quite similar to Shuttle, the whole launching stack is already less so, and the list of different details is not that short.

APU start/run, air data probe deploy, main-landing gear arm/down, drag chute arm/deploy, and fuel cell reactant valve closure were all landing steps that could only be performed manually. Post-Columbia, they developed a cable and software (RCO: Remote-Controlled Orbiter) to allow these to be triggered from ground controllers or flight software.

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20070019347/downloads/20...

So how did the Buran complete its uncrewed flight? Or would that be post-Challenger (which is what I assume you meant by post-Columbia)?

No, the Shuttle post-Columbia. The use case was that in case an orbiter sustained irreparable tile damage on launch, the crew would hole up in the ISS for weeks until a rescue Shuttle could be launched.

But it was still worth seeing if the damaged orbiter could re-enter and land, so they developed the cable (stored at the ISS) and software to allow an unmanned orbiter to allow that. Obviously was never used.

Implemented on their on-board cluster of PDP-11skis. Really.

There was also an entire programming language developed specifically for the Buran, and it was visual: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAKON

> But they had the smarts to stop the program before it turned into a money sink.

but..did they? Or did the oil prices crash taking USSR and its space program with them?

The Soviets were worried about the military applications of the Shuttle but weren’t sure exactly what requirements led to the design, so they copied the design to ensure there wouldn’t be a gap in capabilities.

Ah, the classic 'looks the same means stolen', like look! they both has wings! It doesn't even matter what they have a totally different propulsion systems.

Next one would be Concordsky.

Yes they changed things up but it's pretty unlikely that two unrelated design teams come up with the same design. And no it goes much further than "it has wings".

I'm not even saying it's bad. This thing happens in IT all the time. Nobody reinvents the wheel. Look at Apple vs Samsung or the likeness between desktop GUIs.

I think it was more pride that promoted them to make excuses. After all these are huge prestige projects.

The Concordski too yeah. The drooping nose was a curious design decision in both (quite a few drawbacks to this, since an actuated mechanism so far from the centre of gravity will cost a lot of payload). They could have gone with something like a periscope instead (like what's on the Soyuz)

I don't buy the "there's only one way to design this" angle especially since both camps had completely separate parts and manufacturing chains with their own strengths and weaknesses.

Where do you put windows on a space plane?

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