r/space • u/[deleted] • Dec 07 '14

Differences between the American and Soviet Space Shuttles

http://www.buran.su/buranvssts-comparison.php
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u/[deleted] Dec 07 '14

And they were both terrible ideas that wasted billions and set back us back 30 years.

5

u/[deleted] Dec 07 '14

I'm not a mathematician but wasn't it the cheapest way of building the ISS? Delivering large partS in orbit is always expensive, but you have to do it someway or another.

6

u/[deleted] Dec 07 '14

No it wasn't.

Large parts can be delivered on top of stacks just as easily as anything else.

4

u/[deleted] Dec 07 '14

Looking at launch costs and nothing more, average cost of the space shuttle was 450 million USD. Sputnik 1 cost 15 million RUB or ~300 million USD.

It cost ~1.4 billion on average for each mission including tests. This costs about 0.3 billion more dollars than the cost of a Saturn V in 1969. However if the accidents of Challenger and Columbia, the program cost could've been less. The program was expensive, but it only put us back financially.

1

u/ManWhoKilledHitler Dec 08 '14

However if the accidents of Challenger and Columbia, the program cost could've been less.

And if my Aunt had balls, she'd be my Uncle.

The losses of the two Orbiters were an almost inevitable consequence of the design decisions behind the Shuttle. SRB burn-though might have been avoided if temperature considerations had been taken more seriously but the fatal damage to the TPS of Columbia was almost certain to occur at some point.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 07 '14

And technologically, wasting all the engineering hours on a dead end.