Energia-Buran

[Blackhog]

So I was reading stuff about the Energia rocket and the Buran.

And I was honestly amazed.

There is this launch system from the 80's.

It not only could put 100 tonnes into LEO, or the Buran( If like You'd want to fight a space war), but It supplied the Russians/Soviets a medium launch vehicle, which was It's booster the Zenit that could replace the Soyuz , the Energia M which was meant to replace the Proton, the Energia II (Uragan), which was fully reusable, and the Vulcan-Hercules variant which could put 175 tonnes into LEO.

 

And I am sitting here, and thinking that the Russians built a rocket 30 years ago, that was basically the Falcon Heavy, the SLS, the Space Shuttle,*Ariane V and the Atlas V all in one.

And that is so friggin awesome. I mean, Why people aren't talking about this? Why isn't this thing a thing? How can something this awesome not be used?

 

Oh my god, like seriously We can design this absolute beauty and not use it? 

What are we APES?

 

Oh yes, we are.

Sorry.

Other than economic ones of course, Is there reason at all, Why the Energia is nothing more than a forgotten relic?

 

Edited April 18, 2016 by Blackhog

[lude]

Pride and the eternal curse of being monkey apes.

Most glory for space travel came from western scifi after the fall.

[magnemoe]

Soviet Union collapsed. 
Yes it was an impressive system, but only knew about the Energia rocket and the Buran.
No medium lifter who i know about, it might well be an related program based on the same technology. 

In short the US build the space shuttle, Russia wanted one themselves, main difference was that they put the engines on the booster, 
It might be that they was not able to make reusable boosters, they wanted an heavy lifter too, or found that the shuttle did not made much sense as an system.
System was to expensive to keep up after the fall, they could anyway not support the missions it was designed for. 

[Blackhog]

1 minute ago, magnemoe said:

Soviet Union collapsed. 
Yes it was an impressive system, but only knew about the Energia rocket and the Buran.
No medium lifter who i know about, it might well be an related program based on the same technology. 

In short the US build the space shuttle, Russia wanted one themselves, main difference was that they put the engines on the booster, 
It might be that they was not able to make reusable boosters, they wanted an heavy lifter too, or found that the shuttle did not made much sense as an system.
System was to expensive to keep up after the fall, they could anyway not support the missions it was designed for. 

The Zenit is the booster of the Energia, well the Zenit is based on the boosters

What I am interested about is that, Why did the Angara win against the Energia M? There was this contest for a medium launch vehicle, and I kinda thought that a rocket which already had been developed in one form would have won it rather easily.

I also read that They are actually trying to resurrect the Energia, but with not much success.

But yeah the Energia was hella expensive.

 

[Nibb31]

 

Quote

Other than economic ones of course, Is there reason at all, Why the Energia is nothing more than a forgotten relic?

It's not forgotten. Pretty much every space enthusiast knows about it.

I don't see how you can compare it to Ariane, Atlas or Falcon. They are totally different classes of vehicles. The Energia variants that you mention were never more than paper rockets, which are always better than real ones.

Also, the economic and political reasons are the main driver here. Engineering is pointless if it doesn't have an economical justification. 

Also, the whole point of the US Space Shuttle was to recover and reuse expensive hardware. The only purpose of having a reusable orbiter was to reuse the very expensive SSMEs (which were very expensive partly they were reusable). The whole spaceplane design was built around that unique requirement. The Russian Shuttle didn't even have that capability. In fact, you could consider it a very expensive and very complex reusable payload fairing.

As we all know, the Space Shuttle concept made very little sense in economical terms. The USSR knew that the Space Shuttle didn't make sense economically, so they assumed that it had a military purpose. The sole reason Buran existed was because the USSR seeked to maintain operational parity with the USA, whatever that operational capability turned out to be.

This trait of Soviet policy was later exploited by the Reagan administration with bluff projects like NASP or SDI, forcing the Russians into spending money to keep up with the USA.

Edited April 18, 2016 by Nibb31

[Kryten]

 

21 minutes ago, Blackhog said:

What I am interested about is that, Why did the Angara win against the Energia M? There was this contest for a medium launch vehicle, and I kinda thought that a rocket which already had been developed in one form would have won it rather easily.

Angara was based on the same engine family as the Zenit, and partway through the competition Lockheed started ordering the exact same engine for Atlas III; the greater production kept the unit cost lower, and kerolox booster engine are cheaper in general than hydrolox. Angara could also use pads that had already been built for Zenit in Baikonur and Plesetsk with some modification, whereas Energia-M would require construction of a big brand new pad at Plesestsk.

21 minutes ago, Blackhog said:

I also read that They are actually trying to resurrect the Energia, but with not much success.

Krunichev had a design for basically a re-arranged Energiya called Yenisei 5, which they entered into the Russian competition for a super-heavy rocket; the higher-ups at Roscosmos were skeptical about their ability to economically resurrect the RD-0120 main engine, among other things, and they were reported to have already decided in favour of Progress's STK methalox rocket design before the ruble crash hit and the program was cancelled.

Edited April 18, 2016 by Kryten

[Blackhog]

4 minutes ago, Nibb31 said:

 

It's not forgotten. Pretty much every space enthusiast knows about it.

I don't see how you can compare it to Ariane, Atlas or Falcon. They are totally different classes of vehicles. The Energia variants that you mention were never more than paper rockets, which are always better than real ones.

 

The Atlas is a lot like the Zenit, the Energia M is like the Ariane V, one cryogenic engine at the main stage with 2 boosters, both are medium lifters , and the Uragan was supposed to land like a shuttle making it fully reusable, as the Falcon Heavy supposed to be partially reusable, though I do not know the Energia IIs payload capacity.

I do not really know how good the variants of the Energia rockets supposed to be, but the fact that It was able to be used in so many different ways was remarkable, that's all that I'm saying.

10 minutes ago, Nibb31 said:

 

Also, the whole point of the US Space Shuttle was to recover and reuse expensive hardware. The only actual purpose of the whole orbiter was to bring back the SSMEs to reuse them. The rest of the design was built around that unique capability. The Russian Shuttle didn't even have that capability. It could be considered a very expensive and very complex reusable payload fairing.

 

 

The Buran part is really a "whatever, good for you" part of the program. But It could do It If it wanted to, which is always nice.

[Kryten]

CZ-5 is a better point of comparison to Energiya-M, it has Kerolox SC boosters and an LEO configuration with no upper stage. It's even related to it, via reverse-engineering of Zenit's RD-120.

[fredinno]

8 hours ago, Blackhog said:

It not only could put 100 tonnes into LEO, or the Buran( If like You'd want to fight a space war), but It supplied the Russians/Soviets a medium launch vehicle, which was It's booster the Zenit that could replace the Soyuz , the Energia M which was meant to replace the Proton, the Energia II (Uragan), which was fully reusable, and the Vulcan-Hercules variant which could put 175 tonnes into LEO.

Soyuz is an entire new weight category compared to the Zenit. You could use a 2-chamber RD-180 instead on the 1st stage, and a smaller 2nd stage. but then you have the Atlas V.

8 hours ago, Blackhog said:

 

And I am sitting here, and thinking that the Russians built a rocket 30 years ago, that was basically the Falcon Heavy, the SLS, the Space Shuttle,*Ariane V and the Atlas V all in one.

And that is so friggin awesome. I mean, Why people aren't talking about this? Why isn't this thing a thing? How can something this awesome not be used?

Because its facilities are abandoned and antiquated, and it died long ago.

8 hours ago, Blackhog said:

The Zenit is the booster of the Energia, well the Zenit is based on the boosters

What I am interested about is that, Why did the Angara win against the Energia M? There was this contest for a medium launch vehicle, and I kinda thought that a rocket which already had been developed in one form would have won it rather easily.

I also read that They are actually trying to resurrect the Energia, but with not much success.

But yeah the Energia was hella expensive.

The Angara used more existing tech and commonality- specifically with Zenit/Atlas V/(cancelled) Rus-M via the RD-190 engine, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RD-0124 also used on the Soyuz-2.

Also, Energia-M's design was far from optimal- it was too big for even the biggest GEOsats (30T to LEO), and probably had bad GTO capacity for its size and H2 engine due to a lack of an upper stage.

 

A better question is why the RP-1 and LH2 LR-1 were never used in the Saturn Family (and possibly a 1-chamber version on the Delta family)

[magnemoe]

10 hours ago, Nibb31 said:

 

It's not forgotten. Pretty much every space enthusiast knows about it.

I don't see how you can compare it to Ariane, Atlas or Falcon. They are totally different classes of vehicles. The Energia variants that you mention were never more than paper rockets, which are always better than real ones.

Also, the economic and political reasons are the main driver here. Engineering is pointless if it doesn't have an economical justification. 

Also, the whole point of the US Space Shuttle was to recover and reuse expensive hardware. The only purpose of having a reusable orbiter was to reuse the very expensive SSMEs (which were very expensive partly they were reusable). The whole spaceplane design was built around that unique requirement. The Russian Shuttle didn't even have that capability. In fact, you could consider it a very expensive and very complex reusable payload fairing.

As we all know, the Space Shuttle concept made very little sense in economical terms. The USSR knew that the Space Shuttle didn't make sense economically, so they assumed that it had a military purpose. The sole reason Buran existed was because the USSR seeked to maintain operational parity with the USA, whatever that operational capability turned out to be.

This trait of Soviet policy was later exploited by the Reagan administration with bluff projects like NASP or SDI, forcing the Russians into spending money to keep up with the USA.

Pretty much this, not sure how much economic the Soviet understood but they was good in long term strategy. 
They had also bluffed the west successfully for 30 years, yes it was an ridiculous easy target as in believing that you told them

Anyway, stuff after 1990 don't really register on cold warrior like me. Yes the industrialization of China and the growth of an global milde class was extremely positive is extremely positive and earlier than predicted, Weight up on most serious technology issues like fusion and superconductors who reminds unsolved. 
Its obvious that Russia would try to rise again after the fall. 
9/11 the islamists / arabic spring is 2 order effects and ignored, later data confirms this. 

In short born the year after they landed on the moon it worked out better than expected, far better. 

[Blackhog]

Yeah, I'm just saying stuff that I actually know of. I am in no way a rocket expert, so I'm just here learning about this stuff.

But yeah thanks for the replies.

6 hours ago, fredinno said:

Soyuz is an entire new weight category compared to the Zenit. You could use a 2-chamber RD-180 instead on the 1st stage, and a smaller 2nd stage. but then you have the Atlas V.

 

I read that they kinda meant to replace the Soyuz with the Zenit, but I guess the Zenit was just more expansive for that role.

[Nibb31]

Most importantly, Zenit is a Ukrainian rocket, not Russian. That became an important distinction after the USSR broke up. The whole point of Angara was to stop the reliance on a foreign launcher.

Edited April 19, 2016 by Nibb31

[1greywind]

>>> Most importantly, Zenit is a Ukrainian rocket, not Russian

Please stop this nonsense. There are no "ukrainian" rockets (if you want to know how ukraine can into space, google history of "independed" Cyclon-4). Because there are no "Ukraine" before 1991 coup - it was УССР. The post soviet "Ukraine" is successor of short lived political entity from begining of XX century - the УНР. And from the moment of "independence" and breakup of union-wide cooperation space industry in former УССР was deemed to death. Look into current state of КБ Южное and ЮМЗ - they are dead, dead, dead.

[Nibb31]

56 minutes ago, 1greywind said:

>>> Most importantly, Zenit is a Ukrainian rocket, not Russian

Please stop this nonsense. There are no "ukrainian" rockets (if you want to know how ukraine can into space, google history of "independed" Cyclon-4). Because there are no "Ukraine" before 1991 coup - it was УССР. The post soviet "Ukraine" is successor of short lived political entity from begining of XX century - the УНР. And from the moment of "independence" and breakup of union-wide cooperation space industry in former УССР was deemed to death. Look into current state of КБ Южное and ЮМЗ - they are dead, dead, dead.

Whether you like it or not, the former-Soviet aerospace assets that were located in Ukraine, including Yuzhnoye and Yuzhmash, became Ukrainian when Ukraine broke away from the USSR (just like Baikonur Cosmodrome belongs to Kazahkstan, not Russia). This left the Ukrainians with a rocket and no launch site, and the Russians with a launch site and payloads, but no launcher.

Agreements were made to continue to provide Zenit rockets to Roskosmos, but both parties were unconfortable with the situation. So Russia started development of Angara in order to get a new rocket that did not rely on Ukraine, and Ukraine partnered with Boeing to create Sea Launch in order to develop a market for Zenit that did not rely on Russia.

 

Edited April 19, 2016 by Nibb31

[Kryten]

1 hour ago, 1greywind said:

>>> Most importantly, Zenit is a Ukrainian rocket, not Russian

Please stop this nonsense. There are no "ukrainian" rockets (if you want to know how ukraine can into space, google history of "independed" Cyclon-4). Because there are no "Ukraine" before 1991 coup - it was УССР. The post soviet "Ukraine" is successor of short lived political entity from begining of XX century - the УНР. And from the moment of "independence" and breakup of union-wide cooperation space industry in former УССР was deemed to death. Look into current state of КБ Южное and ЮМЗ - they are dead, dead, dead.

Then who are building the Antares first stages? Ghosts?

[asmi]

4 hours ago, Nibb31 said:

Agreements were made to continue to provide Zenit rockets to Roskosmos, but both parties were unconfortable with the situation. So Russia started development of Angara in order to get a new rocket that did not rely on Ukraine, and Ukraine partnered with Boeing to create Sea Launch in order to develop a market for Zenit that did not rely on Russia.

Zenit uses Russian-made RD-171M and as such it simply can't fly without Russia being involved. Boeing partnership with Energia to create Sea Launch initially was supposed to market both Atlas-V and Zenit, but they couldn't find customers for AV as Zenit undercut it price-wise pretty much across the board. This all was a product of 90s, with a lot of these things were done for political reasons, and not purely commercial.

There are two Zenit launches lined up AFAIK, and both of these will lift Russian payloads from Baikonur. And after that it's probably done, which is a shame as this LV has a lot of potential for improvements.

On topic - Energia was great because if was a fully functional LV in it's own right, unlike Space Shuttle. But it was too expensive, and I suspect it still would be too expensive even if it would exist today. BTW - it was able to send 40 mT to the Moon/Mars without any additional upper stages if timed just right for direct burn-to-escape.

Edited April 19, 2016 by asmi

[1greywind]

6 hours ago, Kryten said:

Then who are building the Antares first stages? Ghosts?

Underpaid workers who have no other place to go. ЮМЗ is on single day work week from begining of 2015.

 

7 hours ago, Nibb31 said:

Whether you like it or not, the former-Soviet aerospace assets that were located in Ukraine, including Yuzhnoye and Yuzhmash, became Ukrainian when Ukraine broke away from the USSR (just like Baikonur Cosmodrome belongs to Kazahkstan, not Russia).

To name Зенит "ukrainian" is same like name iPhone a "chinese" becouse it is made in China. It is "Soviet" rocket (not even Russian) - product of joint work of all nations of USSR. КБЮ and ЮМЗ were part of Минсредмаш СССР, they were never on УССР budget and as soon as "independence" broke in they became burden for УНР that was systematically mined for money without any investments in modernization  (as other soviet derivered space infrastructure, most notably fully operational automatic landing complex for Buran in Crimea and Deep Space communication facility in Eupatoria).

 

Edited April 19, 2016 by 1greywind

[Nibb31]

1 hour ago, 1greywind said:

Underpaid workers who have no other place to go. ЮМЗ is on single day work week from begining of 2015.

 

To name Зенит "ukrainian" is same like name iPhone a "chinese" becouse it is made in China. It is "Soviet" rocket (not even Russian) - product of joint work of all nations of USSR.

By that standard, there is no Russian space technology at all, because most of it goes back to Soviet design work and launch facilities, product of the joint work of all nations of the USSR.

Legally, the intellectual property of Zenit, as well as the tooling and manufacturing facility, now belongs to Yuzhnoye, which is located in Ukraine. Whether they are in business or not, or who designed the rocket before the collapse of the Soviet Union is irrelevant. Just like Soyuz now belongs to RSC Energia, Proton belongs to Krunichev, and Baikonur facilities belong to the Republic of Kazakhstan.

1 hour ago, 1greywind said:

КБЮ and ЮМЗ were part of Минсредмаш СССР, they were never on УССР budget and as soon as "independence" broke in they became burden for УНР that was systematically mined for money without any investments in modernization  (as other soviet derivered space infrastructure, most notably fully operational automatic landing complex for Buran in Crimea and Deep Space communication facility in Eupatoria).

Tough. That's the thing with sovereign countries. They are free to dilapidate their assets however they want and you have nothing to say. It doesn't change the fact that Yuzhnoye was located on Ukrainian soil and that Ukrainian independence agreements were recognized by all parties.

[1greywind]

17 minutes ago, Nibb31 said:

there is no Russian space technology

Yes. And I personally think so. Sputnik, Gagarin, etc were not just "Russian" achievement. After breakup of USSR solely Russian space industry performing very weak even after 20+ years of "independence" and shows no signs of improvement (having average live span of Earth orbiting satellites in under 5 years and no active interplanetary missions in XXI century is just sad).

 

30 minutes ago, Nibb31 said:

that Ukrainian independence agreements were recognized by all parties

You know, we have good saying about agreements and other layers stuff: "закон, что дышло - как повернул, так и вышло". Anyway ukrainan "independence" means death sentence to all remaining spacefaring expertise that was left from soviet days.

[fredinno]

10 hours ago, asmi said:

Zenit uses Russian-made RD-171M and as such it simply can't fly without Russia being involved. Boeing partnership with Energia to create Sea Launch initially was supposed to market both Atlas-V and Zenit, but they couldn't find customers for AV as Zenit undercut it price-wise pretty much across the board. This all was a product of 90s, with a lot of these things were done for political reasons, and not purely commercial.

There are two Zenit launches lined up AFAIK, and both of these will lift Russian payloads from Baikonur. And after that it's probably done, which is a shame as this LV has a lot of potential for improvements.

On topic - Energia was great because if was a fully functional LV in it's own right, unlike Space Shuttle. But it was too expensive, and I suspect it still would be too expensive even if it would exist today. BTW - it was able to send 40 mT to the Moon/Mars without any additional upper stages if timed just right for direct burn-to-escape.

Most of the rocket is still made in Ukraine, and it is owned by a Ukranian Company, thus, it is Ukranian.

[asmi]

1 hour ago, fredinno said:

Most of the rocket is still made in Ukraine, and it is owned by a Ukranian Company, thus, it is Ukranian.

It depends on how do you define "the most". AFAIK booster engine, avionics and payload interface are made by Energia corp in Russia, and I'd argue that LV can't function without those (so no independence). But it all doesn't matter now, because it's not "being made" in Ukraine. Not anymore. Two LVs which are slated for launches are already in Baikonur.

6 hours ago, 1greywind said:

Yes. And I personally think so. Sputnik, Gagarin, etc were not just "Russian" achievement. After breakup of USSR solely Russian space industry performing very weak even after 20+ years of "independence" and shows no signs of improvement (having average live span of Earth orbiting satellites in under 5 years and no active interplanetary missions in XXI century is just sad).

I'd count Angara LV family as all-Russian tech.

[Kryten]

Atlas V uses swiss payload fairings and some european avionics, nobody says that isn't an american rocket.

[Northstar1989]

On 4/18/2016 at 10:05 AM, Nibb31 said:

Also, the whole point of the US Space Shuttle was to recover and reuse expensive hardware. The only purpose of having a reusable orbiter was to reuse the very expensive SSMEs (which were very expensive partly they were reusable). The whole spaceplane design was built around that unique requirement. The Russian Shuttle didn't even have that capability. In fact, you could consider it a very expensive and very complex reusable payload fairing.

As we all know, the Space Shuttle concept made very little sense in economical terms. The USSR knew that the Space Shuttle didn't make sense economically, so they assumed that it had a military purpose. The sole reason Buran existed was because the USSR seeked to maintain operational parity with the USA, whatever that operational capability turned out to be.

The Shuttle/Buran allowed the recovery of scientific payloads and ENTIRE SMALL SATELLITES, which is hardly a trivial functionality (although it was used far too little, in my opinion).  There is simply no other system we have ever had in operation, or have in operation now, which allows or allowed the recovery of similarly-sized payloads from orbit...  The Shuttle was designed with a future in mind where we would make much more extensive use of space, and Buran sought to copy its capabilities...

The Russians didn't stick expensive reusable engines on their version of the Shuttle because they REALIZED that Shuttle-style reusable engines don't make any economic sense.  At least not with the level of performance you need out of them to get something like the Shuttle into orbit and back (a big part of the reason the SSME's were so expensive to refurbish was because they were so very, very complex in order to obtain maximum performance- a simpler engine with less complexity would have been MUCH less expensive to refurbish...)  I would argue that you could have stuck cheaper, simpler engines on the Shuttle and refurbished them at a substantial economic benefit if they were only meant to SUPPLEMENT a main set of engines on the external booster...  But to get the kind of performance you got out of the SSME's, and still re-use them profitably, just wasn't possible...

So, the Russians took the cheaper approach of using conventional disposable boosters instead.  But with a very cool reusable spaceplane attached so as to acquire the desired payload-recovery function.  The Buran really was a better system when your goal is to recover payloads and you don't obtain any economic benefit from refurbishing your engines.  The Russians decided they would rather use the space the Shuttle used for engines for things like payload/cargo and crew space (as well as a considerably more advanced avionic system than the Shuttle's, capable of flying back to the runway entirely autonomously- as it in fact did in the Buran's single orbital flight and re-entry/landing, which was completely unmanned...)  Given the premium you paid for every cubic meter of volume in the Shuttle/Buran, they probably weren't entirely wrong in the assessment that the space was better used for other purposes than expensive-to-reuse engines...

 

Regards,

Northstar

 

 

Edited April 20, 2016 by Northstar1989

[kerbiloid]

Originally (and in further use) Energy was meant as a reusable rocket. That's why its boosters have parachute containers (filled with a measurement equipment during both flights).

https://translate.google.ru/translate?sl=ru&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.buran.ru%2Fhtm%2Fgud%252021.htm%23rocket&edit-text=&act=url

 

Edited April 20, 2016 by kerbiloid

[Nibb31]

32 minutes ago, Northstar1989 said:

The Shuttle/Buran allowed the recovery of scientific payloads and ENTIRE SMALL SATELLITES, which is hardly a trivial functionality (although it was used far too little, in my opinion). 

Because it doesn't make any economical sense. It was only used a handful of times to recover failed satellits, and each time it would have been cheaper to simply replace the broken bird with a new one. Developing the EVA procedures and chartering a mission for that sole purpose was expensive, and with hindsight, dangerous.

It was quite obvious from the beginning that the military and space-station tending missions that were envisioned for the Shuttle were simply not feasible economically. For most of its life, It was left to work as a mini-station (Spacelab/Spacehab) or to deliver commercial and government satellites, which was a waste of resources, and finally to build the ISS.

32 minutes ago, Northstar1989 said:

The Russians didn't stick expensive reusable engines on their version of the Shuttle because they REALIZED that Shuttle-style reusable engines don't make any economic sense.  At least not with the level of performance you need out of them to get something like the Shuttle into orbit and back (a big part of the reason the SSME's were so expensive to refurbish was because they were so very, very complex in order to obtain maximum performance- a simpler engine with less complexity would have been MUCH less expensive to refurbish...)  I would argue that you could have stuck cheaper, simpler engines on the Shuttle and refurbished them at a substantial economic benefit if they were only meant to SUPPLEMENT a main set of engines on the external booster...  But to get the kind of performance you got out of the SSME's, and still re-use them profitably, just wasn't possible...

As I said, the whole point of the US Shuttle was to bring back those engines for reuse. Without that capability, you'd be better off with a manned capsule and a disposable cargo bay below it, or even better, launch cargo and crew on separate vehicles. 

32 minutes ago, Northstar1989 said:

So, the Russians took the cheaper approach of using conventional disposable boosters instead.  But with a very cool reusable spaceplane attached so as to acquire the desired payload-recovery function. 

Which is what they thought the Americans had a military use for. They knew that it didn't make any sense economically.

32 minutes ago, Northstar1989 said:

The Buran really was a better system when your goal is to recover payloads and you don't obtain any economic benefit from refurbishing your engines.  The Russians decided they would rather use the space the Shuttle used for engines for things like payload/cargo and crew space (as well as a considerably more advanced avionic system than the Shuttle's, capable of flying back to the runway entirely autonomously- as it in fact did in the Buran's single orbital flight and re-entry/landing, which was completely unmanned...) 

The Shuttle actually flew mostly on autopilot. It only really needed a pilot to deploy the landing gear. Reentry wouldn't have even been possible manually.

For any real Shuttle mission, flying unmanned was rather pointless anywat, since the main point of a manned vehicle is to bring back the crew. For cargo missions, you don't need a Shuttle. 

32 minutes ago, Northstar1989 said:

Given the premium you paid for every cubic meter of volume in the Shuttle/Buran, they probably weren't entirely wrong in the assessment that the space was better used for other purposes than expensive-to-reuse engines...

They were wrong in trying to copy the Shuttle's downmass capability, as it turned out to not be very useful at all. The only thing of value that Buran could have brought back was the crew, and you don't need an 80 ton spaceplane for that. They should have stuck with their more affordable BOR/Spiral design.