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Comment by avmich | Hacker News Reader

Western media is used to accuse Soviet system in technology copying. However sometimes the accusations go a little bit too far. Particularly in the aerospace area it would be naive to deny the Soviets their prowess - with Buran, which differs significantly from the Shuttle (see the article above), with Tu-144, which flew before Concord, not to mention today's half-broken Soviet-era technology which manages to lift about half of world space payloads to orbit and provides West with rocket technology - RD-180 for Atlas, NK-33 for Antares etc.

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I picked my examples carefully, every single one is an example of a determined Soviet espionage operation.

That doesn't discount Soviet prowess in technological innovation, but it's still very much the truth.

As I mentioned, the Buran has many close similarities to the Shuttle. It has many differences as well but the shocking thing about the similarities is that they don't make any sense except in regards to attempting to copy the Shuttle.

Regardless of the capabilities of their scientists and engineers we know that the Soviets were obsessed with copying as much western technology as possible.

How Tu-144 could be spied if it flew earlier?

Buran was copied in shape and in overall capabilites, once on orbit, for the reasons mentioned. Buran wasn't copied both internally and on the launcher side - so we might say Buran copied some things, but had others originally developed.

Soviets were great copiers, in many areas - and in many others there weren't where to copy from. They had to develop great many things themselves.

> How Tu-144 could be spied if it flew earlier?

There's a lot of work prior to first flight.

Well, the point is that it's a common belief the thing A was stolen, not developed independently, and in practice for a state of the art technical achievement you usually already have to be pretty damn good just to be able to copy verbatim, not to mention to have substantial advantages.

I won't say Concord was copied from Tu-144. Similarly, I wouldn't say soviet electronics was just a rip-off; there were enough original works even outside of the relatively well known BESM-6 project. Even to copy chips in 1980-s it takes you to have the necessary technology for reverse engineering - something I doubt any country ever had on that scale, at least at the time.

Wikipedia (unfortunately, sourcing a print book so I can't vouch for its having been quoted fairly) indicates Soviet agents were definitely stealing Concorde plans during the Tu-144's development.

I'm, of course, interested in arguments with some base to them. Wikipedia marks the section as "disputed" and mentions that stolen (if) were the preliminary designs.

Again, you have to know a lot to have use of plans like that - especially when the design is a moving target.

The spies were caught. At the time, there was a lot of public outcry in the west.

Pretty much any documentary on the tu144 will explain all this in great detail. YouTube it!

> It has many differences as well but the shocking thing about the similarities is that they don't make any sense except in regards to attempting to copy the Shuttle.

The major similarity is the physical configuration of the orbiter, no? This was, indeed, a deliberate copy; cut down on the aerodynamic testing required. Most other details of the system were really quite different (particularly the engines; outboard solid fuel and internal reusable hydrogen for the shuttle, with a separate tank, outboard kerosene and external expendable (though with reusable designs studied for a future upgrade) hydrogen for Buran).

> Regardless of the capabilities of their scientists and engineers we know that the Soviets were obsessed with copying as much western technology as possible.

There isn't really that much of that going on in Buran. Again, the booster engines are an obvious example; the US had largely abandoned building efficient kerosene engines (they're very expensive to develop) by the time of the shuttle programme.

To choose the shape, the easier path was taken: this one works, so let's safely do the same.

That doesn't mean that the choice wasn't analyzed and justified, not that aerodynamic testing wasn't done - for examples, picture here - http://buran.ru/htm/history.htm - show the evolution of the overall architecture, where the Shuttle scheme was just one of the considered factors.

> Regardless of the capabilities of their scientists and engineers we know that the Soviets were obsessed with copying as much western technology as possible.

They would be stupid not to? Why spend billions of dollars on research when you can spend $100k to pay off a defector or a mole. It just makes more economic sense.

You did read the article, didn't you? In the case of the Buran they copied the concept, not the technology. Funny thing in aerospace, form ALWAYS follows function. So little surprise the two shuttles resembeled themselves a lot optically.

All the rest is pretty well explained in the article.

The Tu-144 was an absolute disaster and had to have every flight pre-approved by the political leadership. It doesn't matter it flew first if it doesn't work.

We're discussing which projects were original developments and which were follow-ons. The criteria you mention opens doors to wild speculation concerning shortcomings of very many projects on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

For those interested in some more background, the Tupolev Tu-4 was reverse-engineered from the Boeing B-29 at the end of the war.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-4

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