[1] https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/real-life-rogu...
The Buran design process is pretty well documented in general, and a lot was written about it. The original starting OS-120 concept was pretty much a verbatim copy of the layout and high-level decisions of the Shuttle (they didn't have the "NASA plans", they only had a layout and open data), but they a) realized they couldn't make the SRBs as they used liquid fuels for ICBMs and didn't have the production capability for such large diameter solid rockets, and b) their own additional requirements crept in. So the design evolved over time into an entirely different one.
>NASA caught on (with help from CIA) and implanted falsified heat tile formulas, which the Soviets copied. Their first Buran only flew once and mostly burned up on reentry due to the bad heat tiles.
The heat tiles used a different material, and it didn't burn up, so this makes little sense.
The Buran launch pad, by contrast, is able to rotate 360 degrees. They could have just rotated the pad to be correctly aligned before launch. But no, they execute the same complicated, mission-risk-adding roll maneuver verbatim. Exactly like shuttle.
I guarantee you the Buran was running stolen launch sequence code from the Shuttle.
Here's the Energiya launch site (a sequence of 360° photos, you can look around). What part of it could rotate, in your opinion? Keep in mind the tower is also missing the massive supports and the cosmonaut escape route, a humongous tube slide that couldn't move anywhere.
You might be thinking of the first R-7 launchpads that had to be rotated to a fixed angle before the launch because the control system from 1950's was unable to compute the roll maneuver in flight, aerodynamics being too complex for it.
Wikipedia makes no mention of that reasoning: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Roll_program
The roll is part of the gravity turn, every craft does that kind of stuff to 'aim'.
Food for thought, even if they did steal code, what would that have looked like in the 70s and 80s? Printing out reams of paper? Wheeling in a giant hard disk?
My wife's dad worked at NASA in the 60s, 70s and 80s - he was appointed to be the manager of one of the Apollo missions that was later cancelled. According to him Congress told NASA they'll partially fund the Shuttle program and NASA can ask the Air Force for any extra money required. Air Force involvement ruined the Shuttle, as the military wanted to have options to use the Shuttle for military operations (such as stealing Soviet satellites out of Soviet radar coverage, dropping nuclear bombs from outside any ground defense range and launching the Shuttle from military fields).
The other thing that ruined the Shuttle was NASA was not able to make any real improvements to it. The initial design had a lot of shortcomings and there was never enough funding to improve it.
We "crudely sent people up" with the Shuttle because sending people up with the Shuttle was part of what we wanted to do with the thing. If there had been sufficient demand for fully-unmanned Shuttle missions, it could've been done; the fact that it wasn't means that there were too few such missions that couldn't be better served by other vehicles (that didn't have to worry about carrying around a ton of baggage focused around keeping people alive).
> a fully-automated landing was theoretically possible (the software was there, but it was never fully tested on the real Shuttle).
That said, landing the shuttle was a challenge and an achievement. No pilot would give up the opportunity to perform such a prestigious landing. And the shuttle commander was always a pilot.
Apparently noways a lot of industries are loosing institutional knowledge/expertise built and past down by each generation. because there is no one to pass it down to.
Edit: a car in comparison was going for 7000 rubles.
This is overselling it. They were aerodynamically very similar, but the shuttle had the SSME (space shuttle main engines, ~250tonnes thrust each) burning from liftoff to orbit, while Buran had only orbital thrusters (9 tonnes thrust)- all the thrust from liftoff through orbit came from the engines on Energia + boosters.
That said, it does seem that at least one of the X-37Bs actually is reusable, in the sense that that it seems to have no major disassembly occur between flights. But it is so closely guarded that we really have only hints, not facts.
> and mostly burned up on reentry due to the bad heat tiles
In my opinion, STS-1 was far more dangerous - and lucky - than even Vostok 1. Vostok 1 at least was using a rocket that had a flight history. And no shaky solids. And a proven heat shield. And though both flights had ejection seats, only one was able to launch those seats clear of the rocket exhaust.
Maybe you should discover some other magazines.
1 https://mashable.com/article/nasa-space-shuttle-secret-spy-s...
2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Grace_Roman_Space_Telesc...
There were a number of classified space shuttle activities.
For example https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-51-C
The cargo retrieval potential was also suspect. Nukes are the one thing that could never be de-orbited into the atmosphere. Shuttle looked like something that could enable nuke weaponry in orbit.
Newer ICBMs are actually orbital, so they don't have to go so high and thus be visible over the horizon to radar. But they obviously deorbit after less than half an orbit. It also enables them to get to the target in much, much less time.
I have read in several places that one of the USAF's requests, re the dimensions of the Shuttle's Cargo Bay, was that it be big enough to hold a Delta upper stage (I think technically called an Altair) and payload.
The idea was that the Shuttle would take the upper stage and payload to LEO, and then the Altair would boost it into GEO (or trans-lunar) orbit. No need to jettison a payload fairing.
Supposedly NASA eventually won and quashed the idea, since it involved putting a non-man-rated upper stage into the cargo bay of a manned craft. And as far as I know, nothing more powerful than some maneuvering rockets was ever carried in in the Cargo Bay.