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Supposedly Buran's launch pad is also due to this. Because it's pad was built on top of an earlier Apollo pad the shuttle launches in the wrong orientation and
by oiuytghyujki 16y ago
Supposedly Buran's launch pad is also due to this.
Because it's pad was built on top of an earlier Apollo pad the shuttle launches in the wrong orientation and has to make a roll just after takeoff to head into orbit.
The Russians copied this non-optimal arrangement for Buran believing that there must be some advantage that they didn't know about but Nasa had discovered,
- Luc 16y agoSo the Soviets copied this with no more than a shrug of the shoulders? That's kind of hard to believe. Those engineers were just as good, if not better, than the ones in the west... Any rocket needs roll, pitch and yaw to get into the right orbit, or to reduce stress along a certain axis, or to orient comms antennas towards the ground. Saturn V did this too.
- pvg 16y agoThat specific thing does sound a little urban-legendy but there's no shortage of known cases of precise copying of technical details of some design, especially in early iterations or when the copiers didn't yet fully understand what they were copying. The aspect of this I find more surprising is that the Soviet space program went so far in emulating the entire idea of a reusable space plane, well after it must have become quite clear just from the US experience that it's very hard, very expensive and likely incapable of meetings its original design goals.
- Luc 16y agoThey started development in 1974, so only a few years after work on the Space Shuttle started. I'm not sure at what point it became clear that the Shuttle was not living up to expectations, but anyway Buran's development didn't exactly go smoothly either. This is a better article than Wikipedia's: http://www.astronautix.com/craft/buran.htm http://www.astronautix.com/craft/buran.htm