On Sat, 20 Aug 2005 20:20:49 -0400, John Doe wrote:

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

Buran is history. There are no plans to fly it again. (what is the
status of the Buran that was in the hangar whose roof collapsed ?). And
because its name was/is "Buran", it wouldn't have been confused with the
NASA "Shuttle".

Oh, it's a Shuttle alright. The Russians may have tweaked the design
some, but it's lineage is clear. I prefer to think of the US Shuttles
as the "Enterprise-class" and the Soviet Shuttles as "Buran-class".

Brian