This makes me think of the current book i'm reading about the Soviet space shuttle [1]. They started building it because of military paranoia. They did copy so

This makes me think of the current book i'm reading about the Soviet space shuttle [1]. They started building it because of military paranoia. They did copy some of the design but it was to be able to accomplish the same type of mission. If I remember correctly, notably polar orbits. The west calls it a shuttle copy, I think it's probably more a design convergence. Buran was able to fly by itself, it was boosted by modular liquid fuel rocket [2]. The book goes into details about the differences between the two and a bit of history pre-shuttle, programs like the spiral space planes. It's also humbling when you find out that people in the ~1900 thought about going to other planets [3]. [1]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1712747.Energiya_Buran https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1712747.Energiya_Buran [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energia [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_rockets#Early_20th-century_rocket_pioneers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_rockets#Early_20th-...