On Sat, 20 Aug 2005 18:29:23 -0700, "Reunite Gondwanaland (Mary
Shafer)" wrote:

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

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.

Anyone interested can see a touchdown photo here...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:%...%D0%BD_rus.jpg

You can see that the rear end is quite cooked. Looks to me like they
are missing the carbon wing edges. Not to mention that section of the
back of the US Shuttle to protect the engines.

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.

Every new project is prone to some bugs. Obviously they underestimated
the thermal heating.

In all there were five Buran Shuttles. The main Buran Shuttle made it
into space and back, then in 2002 was destroyed when the hanger roof
collapsed. Ptichka was the most complete other Shuttle, which I
believe is now in Gorky Park in Moscow. They were then fixing this
melting problem in their three second generation shuttles. These three
shuttles are referred to as 2.01, 2.02 and 2.03. I can say that the
half-complete 2.01 shuttle is in the Sinsheim Auto & Technik Museum in
Germany. And the only part complete 2.02 and 2.03 shuttles were soon
broken down, where some parts have been known to be sold on eBay.

So they were busy getting the perfect Soviet Shuttles up and running
before this project was canceled. Another few years and the US
Shuttles could well have had some look-a-like rival USSR Shuttles in
space.

You got to love the Russians stealing these designs. Like here is
another interesting photo to see...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Tu-144.jpg

Concorde you may think. However, that is actually the Soviet Tupolev
Tu-144. And it even had the nerve to fly a prototype two months before
Concorde first flew.

This explains why the USSR failed. They took all the western country's
most advance designs and then spent billions making this "expensive
technological crap". ;-]

Cardman.