/sci/ - Science & Math

>>12652868
It was the full Energia system, not just the Buran orbiter in isolation, that was better.
>Kerolox everything instead of hydrolox+solids meant better performance.
>putting the main engines on the tank instead of the orbiter made it easier to switch to vertical stacking for a beyond-LEO upper stage without needing to put a kickstage in the orbiter's payload bay.
>It also made it easier to swap out the orbiter for other side-hanger payloads like the giant LEO laser platforms they were developing.
>The all-kerolox design also meant no SRB rattle and a much less fragile central tank with no fucking foam, removing the Challenger and Columbia failure modes while allowing generally easier aborts.
Really all they needed to do was replace Buran's orbital thrusters with something not wildly toxic/carcinogenic and fix the TPS tiles and it'd STILL be a reasonable design today.