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I think being able to walk away from a project like this is actually quite commendable, in a way. Not that it's always the right call, but to be able to avoid t

• ricardonunez 11y ago
  I agreed. I have thought the same thing about the Superconducting Super Collider. Imagine the thoughts on the people that had to walk away from these projects.
  • ctdonath 11y ago
    Anecdotes & analysis of the psychology of "just walk away" under such scale & conditions would be fascinating. Prior company I worked for was next to another business that "just walked away": seems everyone at the vaccine supply company literally just up & left one day all at once, leaving everything including lunches behind.
• rbanffy 11y ago
  > I think being able to walk away from a project like this is actually quite commendable, in a way. Oddly enough, this is much easier to do without a democracy. It was not what happened there (it was the Soviet Union's collapse that did it) but the reasoning stands.
  • mikehawkins 11y ago
    Well put - centralized decision-making with a minimum of public interest groups does tend to speed things up. But yeah, it was their utter economic collapse that caused this particular case.
  • rdtsc 11y ago
    Well they did keep their Soyuz and other space programs. I think even the wasteful Socialist bureaucrats realized this is not a project worth pursuing.
    • rbanffy 11y ago
      It was built, most likely, to replicate the American capability of launching, stealing a satellite and returning within a single orbit (hence the cargo bay the size of a Hubble/Keyhole and the enormous wings). Since the Energia was a stand-alone heavy launcher (that didn't rely on shuttle engines), that they had a whole fleet of lighter launchers and the Soyuz/Progress were excellent for carrying astronauts and cargo to LEO, the only mission for which the Buran was indispensable was stealing American spy satellites. That's a very narrow niche for a very expensive spaceplane.
      • yellowapple 11y ago
        There was also the appeal of having a reusable spacecraft. The Buran's similarities to the Space Shuttle are no coincidence; the Soviets weren't about to let the United States have the coolest spaceship ever, so they had to build one that was cooler. And by God was the Buran cooler.
• clarkmoody 11y ago
  Robert Gates killed a couple of large-budget defense projects while Secretary of Defense. The airborne laser which had "16 years of development and a cost of over $5 billion"[1] was cancelled in 2010 under his watch. Quoting from Wikipedia, sorry: [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_YAL-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_YAL-1
  • drzaiusapelord 11y ago
    Sounds like it wouldn't have done anything useful, especially compared to other missile defense strategies like SM-3 deployments. "If the ABL had achieved its design goals, it could have destroyed liquid-fueled ICBMs up to 600 km away. Tougher solid-fueled ICBM destruction range would likely have been limited to 300 km, too short to be useful in many scenarios, according to a 2003 report by the American Physical Society on National Missile Defense."
• cicero 11y ago
  I worked for General Dynamics on the A-12 Avenger II program[1] that was cancelled by Dick Cheney. Even when the Navy threatened to cancel the project, a lot of people thought they would never do it because so much money had been spent on it. However, the end of the Cold War, some technical problems, and the need to rebuild political capital after the Gulf War all contributed to it being cancelled. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_A-12_Avenger_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_A-12_Avenger...
  • drzaiusapelord 11y ago
    Wow, I've never heard of that plane. Its gorgeous. I guess the B-2 took its place a few years later.
    • brock_r 11y ago
      The tip-up wings are wild, too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_A-12_Avenger_II#/media/File:A-12avenger2.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_A-12_Avenger...