sparkmaster

NASA\'s culture was much more to blame for Challenger than anything else. Recall that: [list type=decimal] [li]They knew about o-ring blow by even before STS-1 [/li] [li]Blow by was experienced by multiple missions before Challenger.[/li] [li]If Challenger didn\'t launch on an absurdly cold day (for Florida, at least), the o-rings would have moved to seal the joint, just as they had in other missions.[/li] [li]Had there not been really really strong windshear, the chunk of fuel would have probably stayed in place until burnout, and would not have catastrophically failed.[/li] More then that, though, it was the design. Simply, the Shuttle was ahead of its time. It stretched materials science and astronautical engineering to its limit. And it ended up not delivering on its promises. Shuttle I should have, IMHO, remained a one or two article engineering program, and not have evolved into a 5 orbiter space moving van program. But what do I know? I\'m just a humble, silly man, posting on a forum about computer rockets and spaceships.

Funding wise, thats wholely incorrect. He had to compete for funding (which was less then NASA\'s in the first place) with Chelomei and Glushko, among others. It also helps that one of the guys on the industrial board which supervised 'Heavy Machine Building' had his son as an engineer on Chelomei\'s team. Anyway, you seem to have a complete misunderstanding as how the Soviet economic model was implemented. It\'s not like money was abolished at all. Money was a huge part of why Korolev had such struggles, he simply didn\'t have the funding. And to keep the funding he did have, he had to come up with success after success. Read up a little about N1 development. They were so tight on funding that they couldn\'t afford an all-up test stand. They essentially put everything together and hoped it worked the first time. The Soviets had the same problems with political apathy and public relations that the Americans had, but it was much more of a problem because they didn\'t have a central space management agency. It was a collection of little fiefdoms (with their contractors and subcontractors) each angling for their slice of the pie.

Asif Siddiqi makes the astute point that Buran was probably the most expensive military project by share of GDP in the history of man.

The wholly ironic thing about your statement is that the Soviet programs were even more affected by budgetary problems then was the US one. See: N1 development and testing; Buran program (which may have been the straw that broke Gorbachev\'s back). Back on topic, did they ever specify exactly what the problem was, aside from some mysterious upper stage failure?

Mun =/ Kerbin

A parachute deployed during landing makes it much more forgiving. Or is that cheating?