Did The Soviets Build A Better Space Shuttle_ The Buran Story

On November 15, 1988, the world discovered that the Soviet Union had its own space shuttle. It was developed in secret for a full decade and cost the Soviets billions. Many spacecraft were at varying stages of construction. But the Soviet shuttle, called the Buran, was launched only once. Its development was primarily in response to the perceived military potential of NASA's space shuttle. When the Buran was first launched, the world speculated that it would be used to build Soviet space stations or even assemble spacecraft for manned missions to Mars. But as the Soviet Union began to collapse, funding for the Buran program was limited and then stopped altogether. There is no denying the fact that the Buran resembled the American space shuttle. But in many ways, the Buran was quite different from NASA's space shuttle. The Buran orbiter did not have integrated main engines. Almost all of its lifting power was provided by a separate super-launch vehicle called Energia, which consisted of a core stage with four boosters attached. Unlike the American Space Shuttle, which was a single system, the Buran orbiter and its boosters were two separate systems. Although the American shuttle, with its integrated engines, was more reusable, in practice it required intensive maintenance between launches, which more than offset its advantage. But once in space, the shuttle's integrated engines were no longer useful. So for most missions, thousands of pounds of dead weight had to be put into orbit. Without these integrated engines, the Buran could carry a larger payload than the American shuttle. And the Energia could even operate on its own, without the Buran attached. This meant that it could carry an impressive 100 tons of external payload into space. From the start, the Buran had a fully automated flight system, meaning that it could be launched, orbited, and returned to Earth without any crew on board. In the final days of the Soviet Union, when it became clear that the American Space Shuttle had no significant military potential, the Soviet military wanted nothing to do with the Buran. The Soviet space community was left with an expensive, complex, and largely purposeless spacecraft. For further reading: We highly recommend the book "Energiya-Buran: The Soviet Space Shuttle" by Bart Hendrickx and Bert Vis.This book was an extremely useful resource for the research required to make this video. You will not find a more detailed or comprehensive view of the Buran program, covering everything from the program's conception to its legacy:
Thanks for watching! Please like, comment and subscribe!