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From: birenboi@sal18.usc.edu (Aaron Birenboim)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Re: Soviet and American Shuttles
Message-ID: <1605@nunki.usc.edu>
Date: 11 Oct 88 19:08:41 GMT
References: <1574@nunki.usc.edu> <3020@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
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Reply-To: birenboi@sal18.usc.edu (Aaron Birenboim)
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Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
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In article <3020@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> david@beowulf.JPL.NASA.GOV (David Smyth) writes:
>In article <1574@nunki.usc.edu> birenboi@sal6.usc.edu (Aaron Birenboim) writes:
>>
>>To say that the Soviet shuttle has no engines, however, is a misnomer.
>>THE SOVIET SHUTTLE HAS JET ENGINES.  The soviet shuttle is actually a 
>>full fledged PLANE.

>
>I sincerely doubt that this is true.
>
>1) Why would they want to fly the thing around like an airplane? This would
>require lotsa stuff completely unnnecesary for spaceflight: landing gear
>retractors, juet fuel tanks, all the junk to control the jet engines, ...

The shuttle already has Flight control hardware, and a lot of hardware
for rocket engines.  I am but a student, but I think that whatever
hardware that is necessary for the shuttle's rockets is larger
that whatever jet engine is needed to power the Shuttlesky.  Unfortunately,
I cannot quote documents other than word of mouth of an ex director
of JPL Deep Space Network.  What have you seen that shows no Air intake?
One photo which may have been re-touched is inconclusive.  
Who knows, they may even have covers for the air intake durring launch.

>
>3) The Shuttle is such a bizarre handling aircraft that pilots tend to
>put it into PIO (Pilot Induced Oscillation).  The center of pitch is
>several airframe lengths in front of the vehicle...

Can this be said of Shuttlesky also, without much knowledge of their
design details?  Does anybody have some estimates of the mass of
Shuttlesky?
If Shuttlesky can "fly" it would handle much better, although
the shape of Shuttlesky may raise some doubt.

>4) I doubt that jet engines poweful enough to get that turkey flying
>would weigh less than the SSMEs.

Do people who have worked with these systems think this is a valid accessment?

>Conclusion:  I think we will find that the soviet shuttle has only
>OMS and RCS rockets, no other form of propulsion.  That does make it
>simpler.  And, I'll bet a donut that it will fly with IBM 370s in
>the racks, executing HAL/S software, just like ours.  JUST like
>ours.

They STARTED development quite a while after us.  I expect that their
computers, if nothing else, would be ahead of ours.

Is there anybody else who has heard of Jets on the Shuttlesky?
(flames welcome)

Aaron "The Lumberjack" Birenboim|"In the begining, the Universe was created...
                                | This made a lot of people angry, and was
         GO TROJANS!!           | widely reguarded as a bad move."
 birenboi@castor.usc.edu        |   -Douglass Adams  _The Guide_