Cardman wrote:

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". ;-]

The Soviets also copied the U.S. B-29 Superfortress --

"Shortly after World War II, the Tupolev design bureau in the Soviet
Union manufactured a near-copy of the B-29, the Tupolev Tu-4, based on
reverse engineering of three interned early-model B-29s. Some of these
remained in service into the 1960s in the Soviet Union".

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclop...-Superfortress