It is said that was also the reason they started the Buran and Energia project - while their engineers though the Space Shuttle was too complicated, expensive and dangerous (and they were right...) they also though there must be something special about it, otherwise the Americans would not build something that bad.
They have seen some dangers like sattelite theft and others, so they have built a vehicle with similar capacity just because you have to match the opponent, even if the idea doesn’t really work and there are more efficient ways of achieving same results.
It's a cute theory but you should be skeptical of the claim that this study was the motivation for the Soviet shuttle program.
But why did the Soviets need that much cross-range? First of all their spy satellites were not generally put into polar orbits (they used shorter lived satellites that didn't need sun synchronous orbits) and second of all, one polar orbit around from Baikonur runs right over Russian land rather than the Pacific Ocean, so they had no need for all of that cross range.
The only thing that makes sense to me is that a design goal for Buran was "copy the STS, but don't do quite as many silly things" because I simply can't find a use case for that much cross range for them.
The popularity of the Space Program in America has fluctuated over the years with a corresponding amount of support and funding from the government. That being said, the Space Shuttle was seen at the time as a major iteration in space technology. Moreover, it closely resembled an actual "space ship" from science fiction lore! For the first time space technology was recognizable and relatable to the American taxpayer.
They probably could have accomplished more with a less iconic design, but they would have had trouble selling it to Congress and taxpayers. For a society that's used to seeing billion-dollar metal tubes used up every several minutes before exploding into the ocean; the reusable "Space Shuttle" was a comfort investment for Americans that boosted confidence and enthusiasm for the Space Program.
Think snagging enemy’s secret sattelite from orbit and bringing it back for research.
https://falsesteps.wordpress.com/2012/10/06/mtkvp-glushkos-o...
Voila, you are now in completely different orbit, one that a conventional spacecraft can't achieve due to the delta-v requirements an inclination change would require.
Also once you have don this, you can put your perigee above the atmosphere by a short OMS burn.
With larger anti-sat sats you could actually latch on to the target and de-orbit it for zero orbital debris destruction. This requires many more, much larger such devices because while it takes relatively little delta-v to raise or lower an orbit, it takes a lot more to match an arbitrary target's orbit (to which more fuel has to be added for de-orbiting).
> antisat weapons that only ever raise or lower their orbits and fire .22s at their targets.
raising your orbit is the hard and expensive part, it takes a lot of propellant, which generally rules out smaller vehicles, right?
And if you want to destroy a satellite, you need a lot of kinetic energy, which for a tiny projectile means lots of speed relative to the target... But since your absolute speed determines the height of your orbit, the only way to get more than ~1000 ft/s is to have your gun-sat in an opposite-direction orbit to the target, right? And isn't it the case that our satellites are all orbiting in more or less the same direction, since they launch from canaveral and have to head east to be over water?
Otherwise raising orbit is expensive(ish) depending on whether you want a circular orbit. Matching an orbit can be expensive. If the target has auto avoidance like Starlink does then matching orbit becomes war of attrition; even getting the target to burn off its fuel is a win as it will drastically shorten its life span.
Deorbiting is relatively easy at LEO, just increasing frontal area is a cheap way to achieve it. Above LEO would normally require fuel of some amount.
Can you identify a time when cost was obviously a signifcant factor in a military choice? To me it seems that cost is low in the grand scheme of things.
If they could have 1,000 asat sats, they'd want to have 1,000. Can you imagine them saying "sure, let's just have an X-37B, one, just one, it will do"? If you need these in a shooting war, 1 ain't gonna be enough. You need lots of them. You can't have lots of them if: they're big and heavy (launches are too infrequent and too expensive) or if they're too expensive (you want 1,000 but can only afford 10).
No, but that seems a little bit disingenuous. Aircraft carriers are neither missiles nor weapons either. We can recognize things as military assets that are neither missiles nor weapons.
The X-37B is a DOD asset, operated by the military, capable of deploying weapons systems. In that way, it is part of the military capability of the US.