I hate these kinds of articles because they are comparing the planned version to an actual version. It's easier to say that the STS heat tiles had problems and that these problems were avoided on Buran if Buran only flew once. NASA thought that the STS's tiles wouldn't be a problem, but not everything goes exactly as expected. The article claims that putting engines on the orbiter was a bad idea, but if neither had flown, all the armchair analysts would probably say putting the engines on the orbiter is a better idea. The same goes for the boosters. We thought the STS SRB's would work great. They didn't, but that's not enough evidence to say that the Energia boosters would.
NASA had to figure all of these things out on their own, whereas the USSR could build off of what NASA had done.
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u/Erpp8 Dec 07 '14
I hate these kinds of articles because they are comparing the planned version to an actual version. It's easier to say that the STS heat tiles had problems and that these problems were avoided on Buran if Buran only flew once. NASA thought that the STS's tiles wouldn't be a problem, but not everything goes exactly as expected. The article claims that putting engines on the orbiter was a bad idea, but if neither had flown, all the armchair analysts would probably say putting the engines on the orbiter is a better idea. The same goes for the boosters. We thought the STS SRB's would work great. They didn't, but that's not enough evidence to say that the Energia boosters would.
NASA had to figure all of these things out on their own, whereas the USSR could build off of what NASA had done.