The Soviets didn't copy most of the design - actually Buran is a completely different design from the Space Shuttle. The Shuttle had a big tank attached to it a

The Soviets didn't copy most of the design - actually Buran is a completely different design from the Space Shuttle. The Shuttle had a big tank attached to it at the start, but the main engines where part of the Shuttle. Buran was launched by an Energia rocket (which was planned to eventually be reused like Falcon 9) and the main engines were on the rocket, not on the shuttle. My wife's dad worked at NASA in the 60s, 70s and 80s - he was appointed to be the manager of one of the Apollo missions that was later cancelled. According to him Congress told NASA they'll partially fund the Shuttle program and NASA can ask the Air Force for any extra money required. Air Force involvement ruined the Shuttle, as the military wanted to have options to use the Shuttle for military operations (such as stealing Soviet satellites out of Soviet radar coverage, dropping nuclear bombs from outside any ground defense range and launching the Shuttle from military fields). The other thing that ruined the Shuttle was NASA was not able to make any real improvements to it. The initial design had a lot of shortcomings and there was never enough funding to improve it.