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This was somewhat common voluntarily or not thanks to the Farewell double-agent "revelations" of an actual massive technology siphoning operation from the west
by 0x_rs 5y ago
This was somewhat common voluntarily or not thanks to the Farewell double-agent "revelations" of an actual massive technology siphoning operation from the west to the Soviet Union. There's a funny anecdote on Buran's TPS, which was allegedly based on a very early US iteration of the Shuttle tiles that was discarded and "given away like candies" to foreign spies.
- refurb 5y agoThe FOIA files are on cia.gov, but that disinformation campaign around the Shuttle is a pretty epic story. They basically took STS blueprints and added a bunch of fatal flaws then let the double agent pass it to the Soviets.
- sandworm101 5y agoExcept the soviets ended up building a very different craft. Buran was visually similar but radically different in basic layout (no main engines on orbiter etc). The Soviets didnt fall for all the bad intelligence they were fed. And there is a flip side. Bomber gaps, missile gaps, the MiG-25 fiasco, that time the CIA double-counted bombers because the russians painted different tail numbers on either side ... America gobbled up its share of false intelligence too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-25#Western_intelligence_and_the_MiG-25 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-25#Wester... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqKE5xCogH0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqKE5xCogH0
- papito 5y agoSpeaking of. The pictures of the remains of the program are fascinating: https://www.boredpanda.com/abandoned-soviet-space-shuttle-program-buran-baikonur-cosmodrome-kazakhstan-ralph-mirebs/ https://www.boredpanda.com/abandoned-soviet-space-shuttle-pr...