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A comment on The B-52 was designed in a hotel room over one weekend. Parent comment

Re:The B-52 was designed in a hotel room over one weekend by p_l on Wednesday September 14, 2022 @05:14PM (#32843441)
Buran had different design requirements (once you discard the political), because unlike STS the orbiter wasn't sole launcher of the system - Energia took care of shipping heavy cargo to whatever orbit you wanted. So they had different set of constraints including size & prospective contents of the cargo bay.

They have also flirted with the idea of just putting two jet engines into orbiter for extra cross range, which was probably not an option on STS given the huge dead weight of engines

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Re:The B-52 was designed in a hotel room over one weekend by aerostable_slug on Thursday September 15, 2022 @01:51PM (#32855845)
It wasn't needed because the STS wing area achieved the goal of not overflying the Soviets after dropping off a military satellite (once-around mission out of Vandenberg SLC-6), and the US had many politically friendly potential landing areas, while USSR did not.

Catering to NRO and USAF wartime requirements doomed the STS to cost overruns. Sticking with Faget's designs and the NASA requirements may have salvaged the program's cost goals, but I'm no expert.

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Re:The B-52 was designed in a hotel room over one weekend by p_l on Thursday September 15, 2022 @02:38PM (#32856522)
The two stage design from IIRC phase II of Shuttle project was a marvel
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