23 Responses to “Buran Russian Shuttle clone”

1. Peter Reynolds Says:
   April 22nd, 2008 at 5:12 am

   While the US Space Shuttle with its boosters and external fuel tank is the launch vehicle, the Soviet Buran is just “payload” aboard the Energia rocket. The Energia was designed to be used with the Buran, or with other payloads inside its nose-cone or attached to its’ side: A more versatile design.

   Buran is equipped with ejection seats for all occupants. It has two engines, enabling it to fly to a landing spot. And it has a more protective heat shield than the US Space Shuttle…

   Buran had automatic landing capability and landed itself in its’ only flight in 1988.

   All things considered, I think Buran was the better idea.

2. Nacho Strigulev Says:
   April 22nd, 2008 at 8:50 am

   This is the only one of the 10 “ripoffs” that is actually not a ripoff at all. Energia/Buran is an original Soviet-developed space system that is fundamentally different from the Space Shuttle. The superficial resemblance between the two orbiters is functional - they are totally different “under the hood”.

3. redwraithvienna Says:
   April 22nd, 2008 at 11:22 am

   Buran might look like a rip off … but then you could also argue that every Airbus is a Ripoff of a Boeing and vice versa. The Design is alike, the idea and technology totally different.

4. Josh McBloe Says:
   April 22nd, 2008 at 11:58 am

   Get real. To say this isn’t a ripoff is to say the Soviets didn’t like vodka. The idea is a ripoff from the get go, they even tried to spoof the Space Shuttle’s appearance. It was a technology goof that was full of bad design. The irony is that the USSR/Russia made the right decision in not chasing a space shuttle. Their rocket systems, also called “Big Dumb Rockets” work better, are more efficient, and are safer than our space shuttle.

5. Watusi Says:
   April 22nd, 2008 at 1:11 pm

   Safer than our space shuttle? We’ve lost 2 vehicles in 122 flights.

6. Shaun Says:
   April 22nd, 2008 at 1:38 pm

   The reason they look superficially similar is because that design is basically optimum for a space shuttle. Hence why the US shuttle looks like that, and so does the Buran. Not because they ’stole’ it from the US. Ditto the ‘Concorde ripoff,’ it’s that shape for a reason.
   The Buran was a very different machine and in a lot of ways better.

7. Boris Knockov Says:
   April 22nd, 2008 at 2:29 pm

   Give me a break. Russian apologist trying to ignore all the released intelligence data that said that the Buran was copied from the public data straight from Rockwell. There were obvious changes to the design since they thought they could do better. The fact that the automated landing system was included was they couldn’t get the life support subsystems properly man-rated in time.

   Geez. It no longer flies - so get over it.

8. Bob Says:
   April 22nd, 2008 at 2:40 pm

   To say this is a ripoff is both true and false. Visually the Buran Space Shuttle is strikingly similar to the NASA Space Shuttles. However this isn’t a matter of clear cut copy catting like so many other Soviet keep up with the Joneses projects. The simple fact of the matter is that there are only so many ways to build a reusable space plane, you might take a look at the former Xprize competitors and the new crop of space tourists wannabes for proof. There are essentially only two design groups, Space planes which ape the essential shape of the space shuttle, and Space Capsules, which ape the early NASA efforts. Oddly the Space capsule ones don’t try to mimic the much better and much more successful soviet capsule systems.

   Back to the Buran though. As previous posters have pointed out there are lots of reasons its not a knock off, but one that was missed is that the Buran was larger, and had a MUCH larger cargo capacity. If the Burans were still flying they could fly automated missions to and from the ISS, carrying the largest ISS plan modules, something NASA’s shuttle can’t even hope to do. Not to mention that unlike the shuttle’s external tank the Energiya booster wasn’t prone to dropping chunks of foam that would destroy its heat shield and cause the death of the crew. Nor did it have troublesome SRBs that would break in slightly cold weather and kill the crew.

   So again, visually sure its a knockoff, but thats the laws of physics talking not copycatting.

9. D Says:
   April 22nd, 2008 at 3:08 pm

   I read all the comments….. you can argue as much as you want but it is still a rip-off….. they could have done it differently…. sorry guys truth hurts

10. chudez Says:
    April 22nd, 2008 at 11:28 pm

    i’m on the fence on this one

    yes, it can be argued that it is a rip-off. the US came up with the first working US shuttle. the soviets used the kgb to get as much technical data as possible from the US.

    BUT… the soviets did add a lot of design innovations that it can be considered their own design (although they did have the advantage of hindsight). as for how it looks, it wasn’t copied for the sake of style but for engineering functionality. if they had to design it from scratch i’m pretty confident that it would STILL look like this. they’re not going to design a bi-plane shuttle just so that they can say the styling is different. even conceptual designs of shuttles going back to the 1950’s look like the modern US shuttle.

11. jimmunsw Says:
    April 23rd, 2008 at 1:10 am

    Yes , you can say it is more of a copycat in the form of the design and shape of the us space shuttle , but it is made for the future of all mankind to explore the outer space , so therefore , to all the experts out there , i think we should not be arguing like little kids in school !

12. mudwhistle62 Says:
    April 23rd, 2008 at 7:27 am

    Whooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo CARES?!

13. Nacho Strigulev Says:
    April 23rd, 2008 at 8:32 am

    It’s a fact that the Communist bloc ripped off many western technologies. And I’m not arguing that Buran is in any way “better” than the Shuttle, no. A just insist that the term “ripoff” applied especially to the Buran/Energia system is, in the best case, a half-truth based mainly on western post-Cold war hubris rather than on historical facts.

    And as a matter of fact the technology intelligence was going both ways according to the “released intelligence data”. :)

    So, really let’s get over it! But please dont’ distort the facts as they are.

    And BTW I’m not Russian and don’t have any reasons to love them or their technology. :)

14. lgradi Says:
    April 23rd, 2008 at 11:12 am

    Of course huge chunks of the design were ripped off, along with plenty of the construction and operational techniques. It’s just one of those things.

    As current developments at NASA show, a re-usable launch vehicle on a space plane model is very atypical, and a rocket configuration like Soyuz is a more logical progression from the heritage of space flight the diverged at the end of Apollo.

    Amusing anecdote: Buran inverts itself on launch, the same as the Space Shuttle. A friend of mine at NASA got drinking with some ex-Soviet engineers a few years ago and asked them why they did the inversion too (it makes structural and aerodynamic sense, btw), and they shrugged and said “Because you did it… We didn’t have time to work out why, so we just copied it.”

15. Kin Says:
    April 25th, 2008 at 5:33 am

    well the Soviets went to space first, and their rockets are better than the US’s…NASA could not come up anything better than the Energia.

    The Buran unfortunately fell victim to lack ot money and the demise of USSR… but it is much more advanced than the Space Shuttle.

16. Eddie Says:
    April 25th, 2008 at 11:50 am

    It’s funny that an “economic environment which excluded innovators” managed to put the first man in space and the first satellite in orbit.

    Their inferior communist technology put the first space tourist up, too. And the second. And …

    Face it, the Russians invented space exploration. So they borrowed a few ideas back from the Americans later on. Big deal.

17. Tom Says:
    April 28th, 2008 at 2:31 pm

    If it was “Better” how come it only flew once and isn’t still in use? Why has NASA not adopted it’s “better” ideas? RIP OFF

18. Bob Says:
    May 11th, 2008 at 10:01 pm

    Apparently Tom, you are either too young which makes you about 6 or 7, or too ill informed, which would make you yet another one of the nominals in the US Populace to understand the basic reason for the cancellation of the Buran Program. Buran came along and made its first and only flight in 1988, at this point the death throws of the soviet union were well underway. The economy was collapsing, failed soviet plan farming policy was starting to pay off in the form of famines, and the mighty soviet military machine was crumbling under its own weight. In short, the country that created it was dieing and had better things to spend money on than its current manned space program, let alone a new, more advanced, and more expensive one. The Program was finally canceled in 1993 two years after the fall of the Soviet Union, and during a period when the economy, food supplies and military decay were so crushing that Russia was on the verge of becoming a third world country. Thats why Buran died, not due to something lacking in its design.

19. Bryan Says:
    May 21st, 2008 at 2:03 pm

    It’s interesting to see the apologists on here saying that this wasn’t a blatant ripoff. There are files and documentation on where Russian scientists and designers admitted to COPYING designs they got from Rockwell and from other sources. Just like saying that the Meizu M8 isn’t a blatant ripoff of the iPhone, because the M8 has some advances in features and tech. WTF?!?

    A smart copier does this - they copy the general idea, and makes improvements where they think they can. That way, there isn’t that direct comparison.

    The reason Buran died though, as Bob states, is purely economic. Going back to before the Sputnik, the US and USSR were in a race to see who could do things first and fastest. The USSR got the first satellite up, and they got the first person in space up. Though it is interesting to note the sacrifices they made to do so, such as safety, which got thrown out the window. Either way, eventually the entire economy just collapsed, and it has taken Russia quite some time to get back to where they are at now, economy wise…

20. alex Says:
    May 24th, 2008 at 2:04 pm

    космос будет наш!

21. Been there Says:
    March 10th, 2009 at 4:02 am

    Some of these Russian excuse-sters are rediculous beyond words. Even going so far as saying Buran is better? Buran flew once, and they’re lucky it did that, so how can you know it’s BETTER? Chances are those posters were barely whelped when it flew, and they don’t know squat about what the Iron Curtain really was. The USSR was a country where it was against the law to have a Xerox machine. ROFL!

22. nicsoew@hotmail.com Says:
    December 24th, 2010 at 7:41 am

    I red alot about Buran, its so much better than Space Shutle!

23. Nick Says:
    March 24th, 2012 at 9:56 pm

    It’s easy enough to talk up the safety record of a craft which made one flight. The Buran was a fascinating vehicle with many technologies that were theoretically superior to some on the Space Shuttle, however it was still a largely untested design. Had the Buran flown with the same frequency as the Shuttle, it is almost certain that additional problems would have revealed themselves. Regardless, I don’t feel like it was really a rip-off, in the same way that later ballistic missiles were not rip-offs of the V2. There are significant visual similarities between the Buran and the Space Shuttle, and certainly its design was influenced by data from the Shuttle program, but it possessed significant differences in its overall mechanism of operation.

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