On Sat, 20 Aug 2005 23:01:43 GMT, Cardman wrote:

On Sat, 20 Aug 2005 23:39:25 +0200, "Rene Altena"
wrote:

How do you qualify the russian Buran spacecraft (even though it is out of
service)?

They tend to label it under a "space shuttle".

You can read more about it here...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran

Kind of a shame that this one never had more use than the one
successful auto flight. As the Buran seemed to be a better "space
shuttle" than the US Space Shuttle is.

Its only flight wasn't really all that successful. It just barely
missed being so badly damaged by aerothermodynamic heating that it
broke up in mid-air. It was so damaged that it couldn't be flown
again.

As you say, it was an interesting vehicle and it's too bad they had so
much damage, but I wouldn't really classify it as being better than
the Orbiter. The Orbiter only melts its structure if something goes
wrong, after all.

Mary

--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer
We didn't just do weird stuff at Dryden, we wrote reports about it.
or