Getting up close and personal with Concorde, Concordski, and Buran

Re:Getting up close and personal with Concorde, Concordski, ... by nradov on Sunday August 25, 2024 @09:53PM (#41353296)

Correct. It's a cool and unique piece of space history, even though it never went to space.

Early Space Shuttle designs had jet engines for powered landings or ferry flights. But they were too heavy and had to be removed from the final design.

https://avgeekery.com/201522how-the-us-space-shuttle-lost-it...

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Re:Getting up close and personal with Concorde, Concordski, ... by sandworm101 on Sunday August 25, 2024 @10:12PM (#41353395)

There would have been plenty of room had shuttle not been hauling around three useless launch engines. The Buran orbiter didn't have launch engines. Buran was launched essentially as cargo by the Energia heavylift rocket. That meant Russia had a huge lifting rocket that could launch separately from Buran. The shuttle stack couldn't ever work without the orbiter. The Russian program would have been much more dynamic and flexible had the economy not pulled out the rug.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energia_(rocket)

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