>>11898111They totally didn't buy the actual reasons for Shuttle existing, they thought that the US was simply lying when they said it existed to be reusable and cheap. That's why Buran didn't have the stack's engines; the engineers knew it would be pointless. Instead, they built a neato super heavy lift rocket that they could strap an orbiter to the side of, so that they could have super heavy lift capability while also being able to do whatever spy shit Shuttle could supposedly do if they ever needed that capability.
It kinda sucks that the Soviet Union collapsed when it did, we could have seen a Moon mission happen in the 90's.
Just think of it; Energia launches twice and assembles two ~100 ton modules in low Earth orbit, then a slightly modified Soyuz with two crew members launches to rendezvous with the Lunar spacecraft and boards, then the entire thing boosts off and into Lunar orbit. The two men climb into the lander module, go to the surface, do their thing, America shits a brick at the sight, then they go back to Lunar orbit, and from there back to Earth. Imagine the absolute shitstorm occurring at Nasa during this sequence of events.
