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Not talking about that, but about the design. It was way safer than US Shuttle.

Buran was by all means a better shuttle. Far safer, too. It could fly with more payload than the American Shuttle, and it could go all the way from takeoff to orbit to landing on a runway with no crew onboard, meaning that no crew had to be risked for missions that did not require them. It had far more abort options thanks to Energia's liquid boosters, which could be shut down unlike the SRBs on the American Shuttle. If the orbiter wasnt required, Energia could even fly on its own with massive payload making it more flexible.

Unfortunately Buran was really just the product of the cold war tensions. It was developed as a response to some capabilities the USSR thought the American Shuttle had, mainly in the realm of satellite recovery, which it did not. Therefore, and much like the MiG-25/F-15 situation, it was overbuilt. It came at a time where the USSR was speeding head first into economic collapse and despite the spacecraft's (and rocket's) fantastic capabilities, it just was not possible to finance a program like this. Buran ended up flying once, flawlessly, and Energia twice, equally flawlessly (despite the failure in the actual payload, Polyus).

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What's the significance of "SHUTTLES" being all uppercase here?

Well yeah, given it never had a live human occupant to kill so naturally it'd be safer.

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um, please do a cursory read of the actual title of a post before spewing nonsense.

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:-)

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The OP asked about their space shuttle program, not their space program.

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If you want to learn from Buran, I STRONGLY recommend you this article. It is in spanish, so you may need to translate It, but I assure you. It is worthy. Checked the Google translation and it is workable.

The most complete lnformation about Buran that I've found comes from this article and another ones like it on that blog.

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Only one Buran was ever fully assembled and it made one uncrewed flight. It sat in storage in a hangar until the roof collapsed.

https://www.wired.com/story/jonk-buran-photo-gallery/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10235217/Eerie-photos-abandoned-Soviet-space-shuttle-left-gather-dust-enormous-rusting-hangar.html

Actually . . . it did fly. November 15th, 1988. Two orbits and a runway landing, all 100% automated.

What?! Michael Jordan played for the Chicago Bulls. Please do at least a cursory search before spewing nonsense. Michael Jordan - Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Jordan

https://www.russianspaceweb.com/energia.html and https://www.russianspaceweb.com/buran.html come to mind as sources if you don't want wikipedia.

I think u/healing-souls was saying that the Buran shuttles were never fully-developed. He's right.

I seem to recall they flew one of them, unmanned.

Nope. It was far more safe and better.

Nobody is disputing that. We are talking about the Soviet shuttle programme. That is the question on this thread. It never flew. Gargarin went up to space on a Vostock, not a knock-off space shuttle, had it been the latter he would likely have never made it.

Its called the Buran. ANother ripoff - just like concordski and would likely have been about as safe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_(spacecraft)

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