Cosmonaut: Soviet space shuttle was safer than NASA's - Polidicks

[QUOTE=amute;31005969]Nice reading, it actually went into space. Poor ridge is butthurt American didn't do that.[/QUOTE] Yeah, if only the Americans had gotten a craft into space...oh wait. IIRC, the 135th shuttle mission just took off yesterday. And even with 14 people dead amongst them, it's still many times safer than Soyuz travel....

The Soyuz killed only 4 people. All of which in the first few years of flight. "Despite these early fatalities, Soyuz is presently widely considered the world's safest, most cost-effective human spaceflight system[SUP][URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_%28spacecraft%29#cite_note-3"][/URL][/SUP] due to its unparalleled length of operational history." [editline]9th July 2011[/editline] I'm not exactly sure what your point is besides that.

[QUOTE=amute;31010697]no[/QUOTE] what do you mean by "Nice reading, it actually went into space. Poor ridge is butthurt the Americans didn't do that"?

[QUOTE=Raiskauskone V2;30998060]God damnit Soviets seriously got shit done back in the days, thought it was good that the Soviet Union collapsed and many nations got their freedom, but when thinking how far we would be if the Arms race would have continued, it's kind of a pity.[/QUOTE] Like it or not, the Soviet Union provided a predictable stability in international relations that is missing today.

[QUOTE=Tac Error;31012067]Like it or not, the Soviet Union provided a predictable stability in international relations that is missing today.[/QUOTE] yeah but that Stability was fucked up. Too much social turmoil.

[QUOTE=GunFox;31001117]It was still a vertically launched space craft with the aerodynamics of a brick. Can't we all agree that shuttles are a waste of goddamn time. Spending a mountain of fuel to launch several thousand pounds of cargo into space is a terrible idea regardless of whether or not the module is reusable. But here we are, reverting back to strapping humans to the front of an ICBM and launching them. Pathetic. Fucking pathetic.[/QUOTE] no

[QUOTE=ExplodingGuy;30997681]You won't have the warheads appearing on radar before it's too late. It would have been the equivalent of an extra-atmospheric stealth bomber.[/QUOTE] MIRVs are a lot smaller than the Buran, and would have a smaller cross-section. Also, there's no way our surveillance systems are going to miss an Energia launch. It would be obvious by their trajectory that they intended to pass over the US at an altitude suitable for deploying warheads. ICBMs can just as easily be detected when they launch, and a few dozen MIRVs are much tougher to shoot down than a nice, fat Buran. It's just a much more expensive way to accomplish something they could already do with existing missiles, and risk a few pilot's lives at the same time. Sure is sad that the only flight-worthy Buran got completely destroyed in that hangar collapse.

[QUOTE=Used Car Salesman;30996302]A spaceplane is a ridiculously inefficient way to deliver warheads. It's a bigger target than a MIRV, costs many times more to launch than an ICBM, and the ability to change it's orbit enroute to target is very, VERY limited. Suborbital bombing runs are a pipe dream and accomplish nothing that ICBMs can't do.[/QUOTE] High costs, inefficiency, and orbital issues were funnily enough likewise the primary issues out of a long list of reasons why the Germans abandoned the concept behind the Amerika Bomber, and additionally why their Japanese counterparts did the same with their Nakajima concept. Too expensive, too complex, too radically hypothetical and untested.

Is anyone forgetting it was unmanned flight and therefore automatically safer?