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NASA’s newest cargo spacecraft began life as a Soviet space plane
- bootload 10y ago"The HL-20 would be replaced as an emergency escape vehicle by the Russian Soyuz capsule, which did not land on a runway but rather thudded into the steppes of Kazakhstan upon return to Earth." This is linked to this article on the new Russian spaceport, Vostochny cosmodrome ~ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11687445 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11687445 80M rent per year for the Baikonur cosmodrome and less access to Kazakhstan.
- burfog 10y agoIt doesn't look particularly Soviet. NASA studied lifting-body spaceplaces long ago too.