There's a good discussion on the Soviet analysis of the US shuttle program in "The Making of a Soviet Scientist" by Roald Sagdeev. Sagdeev and Keldysh were agai

There's a good discussion on the Soviet analysis of the US shuttle program in "The Making of a Soviet Scientist" by Roald Sagdeev. Sagdeev and Keldysh were against the shuttle since they could not find any justification, economic or otherwise, for the space shuttle. Eventually the argument that won the day was that "The Americans are smart and pragmatic, so there must be some use" for the space shuttle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roald_Sagdeev https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roald_Sagdeev https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mstislav_Keldysh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mstislav_Keldysh