News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on US military's mysterious X-37B space plane zooms toward orbital record. Parent comment

Re:US military's mysterious X-37B space plane zooms toward o... by asdff on Tuesday June 28, 2022 @07:56PM (#31914665)
The buran did some cool things though. It took off, orbited the earth twice, then landed pretty close to target completely remotely. Apparently it only lost like 8 heat tiles on that flight too. Imagine if the program really got going and they were running automated space shuttle missions while the U.S. was still crudely sending people up. That would have been an even bigger a PR disaster for NASA than the shuttle disasters were already.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_(spacecraft)

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:US military's mysterious X-37B space plane zooms toward o... by JonathonW on Tuesday June 28, 2022 @08:09PM (#31914798)
All of Shuttle launch and most of reentry was automated; the landing itself was always done manually but a fully-automated landing was theoretically possible (the software was there, but it was never fully tested on the real Shuttle).

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).

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:US military's mysterious X-37B space plane zooms toward o... by dotancohen on Wednesday June 29, 2022 @02:10AM (#31917008) 

  > a fully-automated landing was theoretically possible (the software was there, but it was never fully tested on the real Shuttle).
Actually, the only hardware missing for a fully automated landing was a relay to deploy the landing gear. Later shuttle flights - maybe only one - actually carried a wiring harness that _could_ have been configured to enable remote / automated landing gear deploy.

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.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:US military's mysterious X-37B space plane zooms toward o... by iJohnDoe on Tuesday June 28, 2022 @10:44PM (#31915878)
That is actually impressive. Imagine if Russia kept their sh#t together and continued progressing. They got some things right.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:US military's mysterious X-37B space plane zooms toward o... by bigDinosaur on Wednesday June 29, 2022 @01:21AM (#31916754)
The USSR had no shortage of brilliant technical talent, although they did have a habit of imprisoning them even after they had had a major success.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:US military's mysterious X-37B space plane zooms toward o... by borissk on Wednesday June 29, 2022 @02:08AM (#31916999)
They had like 300 million people population and for a long time were the country training the largest number of engineers every year. So yeah a small percentage of these engineers did turn out to be brilliant.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:US military's mysterious X-37B space plane zooms toward o... by me_me_me on Wednesday June 29, 2022 @04:41AM (#31917783)
Its not only the populations size. Technical people were precised as prestigious and well paid. After soviet collapse, this changed causing exodus of talent to west and overall decline in numbers.

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.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:US military's mysterious X-37B space plane zooms toward o... by lnsru on Wednesday June 29, 2022 @06:11AM (#31918258)
Technical people were never prestigious nor well paid. That was not desired in communism where workers were presented as ruling class. Engineers salary was 110-130 rubles, casual worker ~70 rubles and small caliber boss ~200 rubles. Depending on workplace engineers could steal way less than workers (who had direct access to product) and resourceful bosses.

Edit: a car in comparison was going for 7000 rubles.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:US military's mysterious X-37B space plane zooms toward o... by borissk on Wednesday June 29, 2022 @12:33PM (#31922462)
I believe (not an expert) that during Stalin times technical people were very well paid. But Khrushchev returned to the policy of leveling (uravnilovka) and tried to make worker and engineer salaries the same.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:US military's mysterious X-37B space plane zooms toward o... by bigDinosaur on Wednesday June 29, 2022 @05:05AM (#31917890)
Fair enough. I'm not saying they were necessarily unique. And they did do a good job of doing horrible things to much of the talent that got to the top.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:US military's mysterious X-37B space plane zooms toward o... by bayesian_horse on Wednesday June 29, 2022 @08:45AM (#31919378)
No shortage, but no surplus either. They just sank a ruinous portion of their GDP into that stuff.
[ Parent | on HN ]