Russian Shuttle take off

[Brother D]

So I wasn't aware that the Russian Buran Shuttle for testing was fitted with Jet engines for flight testing, enabling it to take off from a runway rather than piggy back on a modified 747 as per the US

Clip here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_MjTjEXi7I

[Eric Mc]

The only reason they did that was because they didn't have a big enough carrier aircraft at the time to ferry the Buran around. They later built the one off Antonov but it didn't exist at the time they wanted to test the orbiter for its aerodynamic qualities.

NASA had originally envisaged fitting its orbiter with jet engines too but they decided against that when they looked at the weight and engineering complexities that followed from fitting jet engines.

And they had the capability to ferry orbiters using a converted 747.