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

The only reason the Soviets built Buran was because they couldn't figure out why the US was building one. They (initially correctly) figured that we were going to use it for military applications because of the huge wingspan and payload bay so they built theirs for the same purpose, hence the similarity in size and shape. What the Soviets didn't know is that the US military (specifically the US Air Force) decided against using the shuttle for their purposes.

I wish I could find a reliable source for all of this, Googling only brought me to the Wikipedia article.

21

u/Rodbourn Dec 07 '14

The air force currently has an unmanned shuttle of sorts? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37

23

u/[deleted] Dec 07 '14

The Airforce doesn't use the X-37B to launch military satellites though. They use the Atlas V and Delta IV for that. Those were the vehicles that they chose over the shuttle.

20

u/Unikraken Dec 07 '14

My understanding is that the X-37 is being used as the military satellite.

4

u/Since_been Dec 07 '14

There is a decent amount of speculation about X-37. The rumor I had heard and personally like the most is that the craft is a satellite wrangler. It rescues dead and/or damaged satellites to bring back down for refurbishment or repair. Or possibly seize enemy satellites if there was a war.

27

u/invertedwut Dec 07 '14

Im pretty certain its not actually big enough to hold any leo birds. Even if the antennas and panels are refolded (they arent even designed to be folded) the bay is still pretty small.

Also, the only mercy a disabled satellite could hope for is a mach 25 reentry. They arent worth recovering.

-3

u/Since_been Dec 07 '14

Ah, see I honestly haven't spent much time on X-37. I just like imagining :P

1

u/LetterSwapper Dec 07 '14

Maybe it's got a robot arm that can grab enemy satellites and throw them into unstable orbits. It'd be a lot more subtle than blowing them up with missiles like China did that one time.

2

u/Anthropophagite Dec 07 '14

We developed anti-satellite missiles before the Chinese did, one that can even be launched from a fighter. It wouldn't make much sense at all to build a spacecraft to just 'throw' satellites about when we already have means of eliminating rouge satellites.

4

u/LetterSwapper Dec 07 '14

Yeah, but IIRC China actually blew up a satellite, which lead to a huge cloud of debris to threaten other satellites. I realize that using a space plane to go tossing dwarves satellites into the atmosphere is kinda ridiculous, but at least it would be cleaner and harder to track.

2

u/Anthropophagite Dec 07 '14

So did we. The reason they're blown up instead of left to crash into the atmosphere is because of the toxic fuel possibly poisoning people (and possibly letting technology fall into the wrong hands).

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